sisters

tonight we headed out to take some summer pictures of the sisters. 

i pretended to be a photographer and i am pretty darn happy with how they turned out. 

enjoy.

how does our garden grow....

Like crazy!!!

Our garden has been growing like crazy. It's just so fun to watch. The girls love watching it grow and they love finding produce to pick. Well, mags thinks everything is "apples" and she LOVES picking "apples!"

happy Tuesday!

hey, hey it's monday!

oh goodness.

this weekend was a good one. my mom came up to visit. we did fun things like eat chinese, hit the farmers market, go junking, eat chocolate malts, eat BLTs, ya know good stuff.....that seems to mostly revolve around food. hmmm.

good weekends help you get ready for good weeks.

the girls and i have been working hard on our goal of 100 parks in 2014. as of this morning we are at 48. i told the girls we are almost halfway there. when i asked ellie if she thought we would make it to 100. she laughed and said "probably not, but that doesn't matter mom we are having fun." yes, we are having fun.

tim has been working away in the basement. getting so close to having the drywall mudding all done. so excited for how that space is turning out. its gonna be good. right now i am hunting craiglist pretty hard for some furniture for down there.

i have a meal plan for the week.

monday: we are going to eat at a friends. (now that is about the easiest meal plan ever!)
tuesday: cheeseburgers and green beans
wednesday: chicken enchiladas
thursday: brats and roasted potatoes
friday: pasta with meat sauce

we redeemed summer reading rewards at noodles and company today. i think I fell in love with their mac-n-cheese! oh my! 

and finally. i told the girls not to put any water in the sandbox this afternoon. and look what happened to mags. do you think she got that way without any water in the sandbox? i think not.

dishes

with our family growing, one thing we want to get is some new dishes.

right now we are using two mismatched sets of four that tim and i got when we got married. we weren't really sure what we wanted then. and eight dishes seemed like a ton for two people so we went with it. well 12 years later they still work, but we never seem to have enough clean dishes. we just need more.

so here is what we want

• 12-16 place settings
• white
• classic
• easy to store

we definitely want to go with corelle brand dishes. here are some options i have came up with.

option #1


link

i found these at target and loved them. white, simple design. however you can't purchase any extra pieces--like serving bowls, platters, butter dishes.

option #2

link

plain white. no design...kind of boring, but very classic. you can purchase all kinds of extra pieces.

option #3

link

white, simple design and you can purchase the extras. however, my mom has these. hmmm.

option #4

link

fun and simple, black and white. limited on the extra pieces you can purchase.

option #5


link

complete throwback to my childhood. basically you can find any number of pieces on ebay. i am talking plates, bowls, serving pieces, cups, pitchers, cookware. anything. fun and funky, yet cute and simple too.

so here we are. pretty much the same place we were 12 plus years ago. no idea. we will have to do something though, because we simply need more plates.

gone fishing

a few weeks back, we took a trip down to southern iowa to visit tim's parents. they recently purchased an acreage that includes a quiet pond. the girls were pumped to do some fishing.

a little casting practice.

as soon as cece got her line in the water, she caught a fish

then she caught another one. a big ole' bass.

finally ellie got started. right away she had a fish.

then momma caught one. needless to say it was a good day for fishing.

it got a little warm. time to cool off with freeze pops, pool and slip and slide.

tim might have made the best catch. a big black crapie. after some research they realize it might be close to a state record.

happy wednesday!