In Recent News...

It's Official.

I just made a pot of my favorite soup, bellybutton soup. And now I am pining for autumn days. Thinking about our favorite pumpkin patch. Those AMAZING & amazingly simple pumpkin muffins my friend/enabler Katie got me hooked on. Searching for fall decorations. Waiting for the beautiful mums to bloom. Football season starting. Hoodies, jeans, the leaves changing, weenie roasts, Halloween..... oh, I am so ready. COME, FALL, COME!

Home Sweet Temporary Home

As I sit here waiting for the state of Illinois to grant me a cosmetology license, (they told me it could be 3 more months but that is a whole 'nother story) I thought I would share our new digs with you. You may or may not know, Devan took a new job with White Oak Resources, LLC in McLeansboro. We loved Bowen and Knoxville, but were searching for a way to shorten our 6+ hour drive to see family. Devan sent his resume to White Oak on a whim, as they were looking for a mining engineer, which he is not, but they liked him anyway and the rest is history. We never dreamed we would have an opportunity like this to live in our hometown without being farmers or working at good ol' General Tire, so this turn of events was completely unexpected. We had just a couple short weeks to look for a place to rent here while our Knoxville house is on the market. We ended up with two, yes TWO, renting options, and chose the one that didn't have a leaky basement. As stubborn as I was moving in, I have come to appreciate everything that this temporary house is for us.

It was probably built in the late 1960's - early '70's, I'm guessing. Every interior wall is paneling. The kitchen cabinets are dark, with outdated hardware and layers of gunk. They also don't stay closed. The wall oven is T-I-N-Y. There is NO disposal and NO dishwasher! There have been, however, several mice. The carpeting is original. None of the outlets have a hole for the third (grounding) prong, so we've had to use adapters for everything which kinda makes me feel like we are testing the electrical and the house is going to go up in flames one day. There is no garage door, so everything in the garage is covered in dust. Our bedroom is barely big enough to fit our furniture, so on one side the light switch is almost hidden behind our headboard, and on the other side is about 6-7 inches between the bed and our closet.

HOWEVER, there are many great things about this house that I have come to appreciate after living here for three months. First, as I've discussed before, I'm very thankful for our unfinished basement. As scary basements go, it's not bad. Our laundry is downstairs, which has thrown me for a loop, as what I need to wash is not down there when I am, and when I'm upstairs I forget about it. There are toys everywhere, Jalen's tv and bean bag (a.k.a. The Man Cave), oodles of storage, and I've set up a makeshift haircutting area for family members. The "shower" area is a great place to dump out poopy water from a bucket of soaking undies and not have to worry about messing anything up! And a few times during this miserable summer heat, Mace has been able to come down and chill on the concrete where it's at least 30 degrees cooler.

One of my other favorite places is the living room. It is sort of an odd shaped room, (well, it's a rectangle with the front door in the middle on one side and a hallway in the middle on the other side) so it's split into two sections which completely work for us. On the north side is the tv area with the couch and loveseat, and the south side of the room is the toys/computer area. So we can all be combined yet separated while doing our own thing.

Another benefit is, I have overcome my fear of buying curtains. All of our bedroom blinds are about an inch short on each side so they don't cover the entire width of the window. Jalen had to have some sort of curtains, as his room saw the sun come up, and the beach towel over the window wasn't cutting it! I thought this was the perfect opportunity to practice buying and hanging curtains, and it went great. I hung them myself and am pretty proud of them.

But I think the best part of this house is outside of the house. The house sits back from the road on a hill ("the house on the hill" as local people refer to it) with abundant grass to run in without kiddos getting in the road or the dog pooping in someone else's yard. I did chuckle when we first moved and everyone was talking about the house on the big hill, because in Knoxville everyone's house is on some sort of a hill! Our backyard looked just like the front yard here only STEEPER! While the garage doesn't have a door, it does have a built-in closet that runs the length of the garage, so we can keep some things in there with a buffer from all the dust. From the garage to the front porch is a narrow sidewalk; a perfect road to ride your bike on or to push Sis in her stroller. The front porch is a giant canvas for all sorts of sidewalk chalk drawing. As a sidenote, Jalen so far hasn't tried to jump off the porch, however, Mace did knock him backwards down the steps the other day.

Some yards away, I don't know how to measure yards....a couple minutes of walking..... is a pond that we are welcome to use, so we walk down there and throw the ball in the water for Mace a few times a month. Usually, he is needing a bath because he rolled in something that smells like you would NOT believe!

When we want to take a walk, while we don't have a subdivision to cruise around, we have a church nearby with a playground. It is completely unheard of to try to take a walk without stopping there. In fact, "take a walk" is synonymous with "go slide" to Jalen. We are down the road from Devan's parents, about 10 min from my dad, around the corner from my two cousins, and about 15 min from town or the interstate. And when we look out the windows....all we see is corn. I must say, it's a simple life, and it's a good life.

The sunset a few nights ago

The shop we share a driveway with - these are the farmers who own the house

A view of the sidewalk from the garage to front porch

The porch. Jalen is coloring

Front of house view from our road

View from the garage looking West at the pond

View from the house to the North...See all the corn? That was all under water when we moved in. Now our lake view is gone, but I like this view too.

From the blacktop up the "big hill" to the house

Summer Days

Well, it's been quite a while (again) and I hadn't even uploaded pics off my camera in months. So I thought I would just pick a few from the past few weeks and throw them on here. The first one is Jalen in his "man cave." He loves the basement: he can turn on the tv without help and I just keep it on NickJr for him, he can watch in his bean bag, ride around on his bike or tricycle, play with toys he doesn't have to clean up, or shoot hoops. He is very intrigued by something on the tv at this point....

Upstairs in the kitchen, having a grilled cheese "sammich" and some pineapple, while Tess attempts (probably successfully) to throw her cup in the floor.

Trying some pineapple-infused water

Hmmmm..... not sure, I don't remember what he was doing, but it turned out cute!

Out in the garage, trying a few practice swings on the tee. It was another one of those hot & sweaty days.

Sis cheered him on from her perch in front of Mace's fan.

Just last night, Tessa's FIRST bang trim - only 9 months older than Jalen was for his first haircut!!

YIKES! Mommy left the scissors out!

So, while I'm here maybe I'll try to remember some other stuff to update you all on (those of you who still stop by to see if I've updated anything)! Jalen cracks me up all the time with the stuff that he says these days. This morning, he was running down the hallway with his toy mower saying, "This is AWESOME!" Didn't know he knew the word "awesome". Sometimes he will randomly ask, "Mom, you 'member (remember) me? (or Sis? or my cup? or YOU?) Instead of saying "yours", he says "yous". Of course, I can't really think of anything right now, but I'll try to keep up with it on here as it comes to me.

Tessa is all but walking now. She has taken up to 12 steps this week, so I think as long as we work with her and try to keep her standing up instead of crawling she will get it nailed down. She can find her nose when asked, she babbles but doesn't really talk much still. She is a great sleeper as long as we stick to her routine. She is NOT ready to share a bed, as Brianna and I found out this weekend. Tess, Jalen, and I went to Bri's apartment in Edwardsville, and the girls tried to share a bed but we got about 3 hours of sleep, since it was like having a jackrabbit in the bed. She is a pretty good eater and I try to give her table food as much as possible, but we're not completely done with baby food just to fill in the gaps. She seems to be much less picky than Jalen is. We are only a month and a half away from a FIRST Birthday!