For My Father In Law

I know many of you will look at this post at little puzzled and wonder why I have chosen to post pictures of someones house. Well the truth is that my father in law has not been back to Iowa in some time and has not seen his mother's new house. So these pictures are of her house so that he can see what the new house looks like.

Leif wanted me to take a picture of the ceiling as there are mood lights in the molding.

Informal living room with my kids and their mess.

Another view of the living room...I would like to point out the pictures on top of the entertainment center. They are all of the pictures of the different grand kids weddings. Although we all "fought" (this was a super friendly fight in which we all kept moving out own picture to the front) I would like to point out that Leif and I have two pictures of our wedding to everyone else's one!

I would like to take a moment to tell a story here. As we were driving up I told Leif it was so interesting how they would have two or three houses on one farm he said,"those are the kids houses" I told him "you don't know that!" And his answer was "yes I do. They all stay together out here." Well this is the view from grandma's bathroom to... cousin Derick's house. yes our cousin. And just down the road a bit is Uncle Denny's farm and just around the corner is Leif's aunt's house.

laundry room and the back door that leads to the garage...which has no steps, and it is a 36 inch drop!
Master Bath...I debated as to if I should label this because if you don't know what it is well....wow!

Master bedroom.

View from the formal living room...the dining area, kitchen and front door.

View from the dining area; the hallway leads to two rooms if you go right it is the sewing room and the room to the left from the hallway is the guest bedroom. And of course there is a partial view of the formal living room.

Formal living room.

In case you didn't figure it out this is the sewing room! Grandma does the coolest thing for every grandchild or great grand child she sews a blanket. Aurora and Leif still have theirs.

A view as you walk into the sewing room.

This is the guest bedroom and the walls are a very light purple.

The pictures that Grant (my father in law) sent to his mother and she had framed....yes I know it is little boy blue...
You can't have one without the other!

Sometimes I hate technology

The most depressing post ever!!

I am not even going to lie this is by far my most depressing post ever! I took some of the cutest pictures of the day that we arrived in Iowa and cannot find any of them. They are there on my memory card and when I upload to the computer it says that they have been uploaded but I cannot find them! I have searched and searched for hours and I have now decided to give up. So here are the pictures I have; I don't like these but its all I have. If one day you see a Eureka post you will know what it is.

We went to the Park on the day we arrived. Leif says that he remembers going to this park when he was young so it was nice that the kids got to play at the same park that Daddy had played at when he was young too.

Baby Leif took off his shirt too, especially when daddy was chasing them.

This is Leif's cousin Josh and his girlfriend. I have to say Josh was by far one of the best story tellers I have ever met.

This is the backyard at Grandma Geiselhart's house. (Leif's maternal Grandmother)

This is Grandma Geiselhart's front yard and right here is where I would add all of my other pictures that I have but instead this will just be the end of the first day we had in iowa. :(

Iowa here we went.

I want to thank all of you for your suggestions as for what to do in the car ride there. When the kids were babies we used to travel at night because they would sleep the entire time and we would arrive without cranky kids. Then what would happen is we were super sleepy and we had kids in a strange place bouncing off the walls while we were sleeping. We decided that the kids would have to ride during the day and we would have to provide activities for them to do. we brought cards and coloring books and our van has a DVD player so the kids did extremely well on the car ride there and here are our pictures of the car ride there. It was a 2 day drive and the second day it rained for 8 of the 10 hour drive.


After the rain stopped the skies were so beautiful I had to take a picture.

Here is Aurora in the back seat. Yes she is wearing a seat belt I know it looks like she isn't but she is. She is holding her nose because she doesn't like the smell of the cows.

Leif driving through Iowa

Leif's picture that he colored of Dora and boots. He was so proud of it!

Leif coloring more pictures. The coloring books were a great idea!

Iowa here we come!

There are only 9 more days till we leave and head off to Iowa. Leif and I have been together for what feels like forever! Ok but really it has been more than 10 years and well I have never met his extended family. This is just sad in my opinion. In 9 days I am about to meet my inlaws and well I am not even close to being ready.

We will be driving there and the kids have the DVD player but I need more ideas other than just DVD's to keep the kids occupied for the drive. Something small that is not going to take up too much room in my car. Got any ideas I could use all the help I can get.

Slip and Slide!

One of my favorite memories as a child was using the slip and slide on hot summer days. Leif and I found a slip and slide with three slides in one. Of course only the middle really fills up with water so that you can slide all the way down.

As we all know my husband is one giant kid and so he joined in on the fun and this is the only picture that I could find. I swear I had more pictures of the kids on the slide and sadly I cannot find them on my computer so I will post the only one I can find and just say that it was a fun day.

I Scream!

I don't know how many of you know how the Sign Language Interpreting world in New Mexico works but I am going to tell you. Here in New Mexico we all pursue our own contracts and own our own business. Many of us contract with some of the same agencies. Some of the agencies send out an email and say who is available to work so many of us have PDA's so that we can get our email quickly and respond back.

I have a very sick phone that has literally made me scream on a daily basis because it doesn't want to work correctly. Many times it will disconnect from my email server and I wont receive my email. Just recently it has started turning off all together.

I received an notice from alltel telling me that I eligible for an early upgrade!!! We called and wanted to make sure it was legitimate. The 1-800 number said if you have a paper go into the store and show it to them and they can help. So that is just what we did. We arrived at the store and they told us we had to call the 1-800 number!!!!! Can I start screaming now?

Through it all Leif was such a champ he didn't SCREAM which is very big for my son. He listened and was a very good boy. Right next door to alltel was a baskin robin after the waste of time at the store I decided we should take Leif for Ice Cream. Aurora was at school so this is why she was not with us. He was so cute!!!

This was his first time at baskin robin, I picked him up to show him all the cases. He looked down at the first case and said, "CHOCOLATE!!!" I told him wait till you see them all and he said OK we got to the second case and he said "CHOCOLATE!!!" I said wait we have one more case and he said OK and we got to the third case and he said,"CHOCOLATE!!!" The clerk got the idea real quick and got him a taster spoon of chocolate and he loved it here are some pictures to show you!

yummy! Ice Cream

he did not want to wipe his face

perfectly happy

Easter

Easter

Aurora and Leif sat and ate some Easter cake after mass. We changed Leif out of his suit because the mess could have been out of control.

This was our Easter bunny cake, Oh and by the way I baked and decorated this cake all by myself! We did color eggs but I forgot to take pictures of them coloring eggs.

Aurora and Leif after mass searching for Easter eggs in the front yard. It was so windy outside that we couldn't stay outside very long. But they still had fun

Aurora and Leif in their Easter clothes! They are so cute! Or I am just bias because they are mine.

New School

Sunset View Elementary

Aurora started her first year at kindergarten this year and it has been an interesting one. We live in an area that in previous years has been nothing but dirt but in more recent years has grown immensely. As a result the schools have been over crowded. A.PS. (Albuquerque Public Schools) decided to add portables to Ventana Ranch Elementary and made two more schools. One is Sunset View Elementary and one is Tierra Antigua. Aurora has always gone to Sunset View Elementary but it was always with the understanding that eventually they would move to a new campus. We thought it would have been better to move at the end year A.P.S. however thought it would be better to cancel school for two days 1 month before the end of school so that the fifth grade students could move into building before they graduated to middle school.

So here is the first day of school at the new school. The kids played with the parachute in the new gym.

Aurora is behind the girl in green. The girl in green is our next door neighbor Vanessa and aurora's best friend.

Here are Aurora's two teachers and aurora is in the pink. I know its kinda of hard to see.

That is Aurora across the way squatting down.

Aurora again in the pink across the way.

And here is the new library and aurora is right in front with the wiggles.

Here in the library again. Daddy is across the way in the picture in a green shirt.

Aurora and Vanessa at the police helicopter.

Aurora again not paying attention...the apple doesn't fall far from the tree I guess.

17 inches

Beautiful Lengths

I have not cut my hair in any major way since I got married in 2005. I had a trim here and a small cut there but nothing major. After about a year of thinking about cutting it and then 6 months of procrastination I finally cut my hair.

I decided that if I was going to cut my hair I would donate it. I however have always like to be the person that doesn't go with the crowd and so I DID NOT donate my hair to locks for love. I should go on to say that I think lock for love is a wonderful organization that does wonderful things for children. I believe that although there are many children who need wigs there are also many many adults who have cancer and cannot afford wigs. This is were beautiful lengths comes in. They are an organization similar to Locks of love they take donated hair and make wigs for adults who cannot afford it.

Above is a picture of the two pony tails they totalled 17 inches long. So really 17 inches is the part I donated. I would say I probably cut off about 20 inches all together.

I also decided to highlight my hair as well but I think that the highlights are hard to see.

The stylist took the picture above and so we also get to see a part of her thumb. Oh well!

Here I am at the salon as you can see from the smock I went to J.C. Penny. I can say that I will never go there again for a hair cut. The woman was clearly not interested in what I wanted I asked her to cut my hair so that it sat at my armpits and she just kept cutting and cutting, and of course I had my head down or to the side or was turned away from the mirror so I could not see what she was doing the whole time and did not know how much she had cut until it was done. But it looks OK I think.

St Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day

As many of you know St Patrick's Day is huge for our family, this year we decided to go out.



We hired a babysitter for the evening and we all went downtown to go bar hopping. From left to right: Marti, Leif, Holly (Erica's girlfriend), Erica, Elida (Erica's Mom)

Yes this is one of the first pictures after I cut my hair but it is not a great picture. Hopefully I can post another blog about my haircut.

When we got downtown the lines were outrageous and we could only get into Ned's bar. I have to say that was one of the worst bars I have ever gone to. There were two bartenders for about 150 people.

Erica and Leif spray painted their hair green and of course added the "Famous F" Many people really liked the green "hair" because several people asked if they could take a picture of Leif's head.