Ryan and Lily's Playdate

My good friend Mary was off this week so she and Lily came over for the morning - we played outside for part of it and just loved the picture of the blue-eyed beauties - I didn't photo-shop the one (looks like I did) - I just had my camera meter set a little differently so it really must have brought out the colors in their eyes. We had a fun day with them!

Fresh Haircuts

I have a love of fresh haircuts on anyone (except myself b/c the bangs are always a little too short, or the sides, or the back, etc for the first week or two!) It is especially lovely for me to see little men, i.e. boys under the age of 10ish, with them-they just look so handsome afterwards!Therefore, I had to take pictures of my little men right after their end of summer cuts. I always splurge and take them to Great Clips - haha! I don't even like to take them unless I have a $4.99 coupon which I DIDN'T!! Since we moved, we haven't gotten on the local mailing list yet so I had to pay a whopping $10/haircut today! Robbery, I tell you! Anyhow, we were in and out in about 20 minutes with suckers and the boys do great for their cuts - clippers and all!

Fire Station Open House./Ice Cream Social

Today was the 61st annual Washington Township Fire Dept Ice Cream Social. We tried to cram a lot into one day since it was so nice out(very hot but nice!)- before this, my mom and I took the kids to our neighborhood pool. At the event, the kids enjoyed seeing and sitting in the vehicles, dunking people in the dunking machine and spraying with a real firehouse. It was catered very well to the young population, they even sprayed a bunch of foam onto the ground and let kids run through it and then hosed them down from a ladder after that! Morgan thought I was a mean mom because we had plans to meet our friends, the Wolfs/Goodmans/Montgomery's at Marions Pizza, followed by a trip to the Centerville Parks Waterpark so I told her she had to wait to get wet! We enjoyed pizza afterwards and went on to the park - you will see pictures of our outing below! We still can't convince Bradley to play in the waterpark part of the park - I joke that his OCD personality can't deal with the unpredictability of where the water may/may not come out of!

Extreme Home Makeover in Beavercreek!

I love the show, Extreme Home Makeover, so when we heard it was coming to Beavercreek (our old neighborhood), we were so excited! My mom, Morgan and I went over on Monday, the big reveal was 3 days later, to see how it was going - the amount of labor put into this is crazy, beyond imagination! It takes so many caring, thoughtful people to devote their time to help someone else - amazing! They shuttle everyone in from a car dealership that closed down by school buses so you don't have so much traffic in and out of this neighborhood. Anyhow, here are a few pictures of what we got to see. Michael is the tan man - one of the show designers if you don't watch it much. Can't wait to watch the actual episode when it airs - not sure when that will be yet!

Butterfly Festival

Hiking trails are excellent!

Morgan and Bradley at the kids station

zebra butterfly

a caterpillar wanted to come home on our stroller

lots of caterpillars waiting to cocoon

our family on the infamous bench

We decided to head out today to the Butterfly Festival at Cox Arboretum and face the crowds. I definitely feel that adding the 3rd to our family, as much as I adore him and his always scrunched up nose, that it sure makes outings more challenging. Between everyone needing dressed, fed breakfast, then naptime for Ryan, then lunch, it takes us all day to get out the door but we did it! Hooray for us! and we loved the hiking - thank goodness we had the jogger stroller! We will definitely go back for the hiking paths (maybe leave the stroller and Ryan with Nanny Cherry) Beautiful, perfect day!

Okay, I know you are all(or those 3 of you that read this-guess I'm being generous with my "all") thinking "what!? is Lisa actually posting something?" I am! Now don't expect miracles people! I am going to try and stay current and go back as I have time. Now that we have moved, and are for the most part, settled, I am ready to try this again. I have always enjoyed doing it but things just got a little crazy the past several months. These are just some current pics of the kids in case you forgot what they looked like :) I just took them yesterday - I also got my new Canon rebel so I am anxious to play around and hopefully have good pictures to be putting on this blog of mine! Enjoy and more to come(past and present!)

New House

Well, as most of you know, we made the big move from Beavercreek to Centerville - we are settled and really enjoying the house and neighborhood. The benefits are that Kirk is closer to work, we are much closer to my mom, and quite frankly, we are saving money without really giving up any square footage. The down side is we gave up some very important people, The Humphrey's, who backed up to us and were like an extended family living behind us - we also just got a great euchre group started up in the old 'hood so we are still commuting to it once a month - just can't walk to them anymore! We miss our old neighborhood but look forward to feeling like this is home(hopefully for a long time b/c this move stressed me out!) and exhausted me! It's always fun to re-decorate a new place so I posted a few of my new house but don't want to put them all out there b/c some of my friends haven't made the 18 mile drive to the OTHER side of the world(yes, you know who you are :) I do forgive you and look forward to someday seeing you at my front doorstep! I love the open-ness of the back of the house, even though it is an older home and I LOVE being able to look right out the kitchen windows into our SHADY backyard - have always had homes where the main floor is up a level(our bi-level, our 2 story with the walk-out) so this is so nice to keep on eye on the chid-lins!) I also have a very handy hubby -which saves us oodles of money on labor!) who updated our exterior light fixtures and I am lovin' them! I have a before of the post light and the old lights on the house were just like it except they had the standard long pillar pole below them (and if you can't tell, they have the plastic yellow glass that really dated them!) In the after picture, you can see my big mama light by the door and the 2 on either side of the garage are that style but a smaller version and the post light is also updated(you can see that on the view of the whole house) Thanks Kirk!