June 2013 - Our Cone Zone

Summer Vacay thus far

June 26, 2013 Leave a Comment

We’ve been super busy thus far this summer!

We’ve attended two weddings:

The Sobey Wedding: (side note: I cried when the groom also presented rings to the bride’s two little girls, symbolizing how he was becoming their father).

All of their kids below them

Sobey Wedding 1 Sobey Wedding 3 Sobey Wedding 4

The Brooks Wedding:

The only photo of the couple that I could steal from Facebook, since they are still not letting any wedding pictures be posted!

With my high school friend Stephanie and her two month old baby! BABY FEVER, I tell you!

Me with my boss

Gregory flat out refused to dance with me, and instead bopped to the beat by himself in a corner

We had my niece Rachel’s Graduation Party:

3 legged race!

As you can see, Jesse and I were WAYYY behind everyone else. Next to us is my brother in law David and my (future?) sister in law, Emily!

AJ was too pooped to party and fell asleep on Aunt Janelle’s lap

Last but not least, we’ve been to the beach twice and plan on going again this Friday!

At Pismo Beach with our school

At Avila Beach last week with just our lil fam

Right here, you see the difference between my children. Gregory is screaming with joy, and Anthony is howling in terror.

Due to Anthony’s fear of the waves, he and I spent most of the time watching from a safe distance, eating sand

Gregory definitely got knocked around by a few waves

Dadda and Gregory playing catch

We have many more summer trips planned, including *a trip to LA (next week), * a trip to Sacramento/San Francisco (the following week), * another trip to LA when the Unruhs are in town, * a family trip to north Seattle (possibly), and a * trip out to TX (possibly). Oh, and Big Sur camping! Can’t forget that!

The Bartels

June 26, 2013 Leave a Comment

I’m just now getting caught up on my “meant-to-post-that!” list. Included somewhere in there is Anthony’s 12 month letter. You know, now that he’s 14.5 months.

Last week was what I’ll title the “Bartel Week” of summer.

Sunday, we met them at church. It was a bit distracting for me, personally, because I really forgot all about Jesus once adorable Gwen got there.

Look at this sweet ball of adorableness!

I neeeeeed a baby girl someday, people….however, Anthony has some definite jealousy going on in that department. The moment I held Gwen, he flipped a biscuit and wouldn’t stop howling until I held him again. He was soooo clingy after that, I’m shocked and surprised he let Godfather Tim take him up for communion! And he definitely gave Gwen the stink eye for quite some time….

Bartels:Cones group shot

On Monday, we had the older and the younger Bartels over for a BBQ. Sadly, I was too busy learning that we had NO napkins or paper towels to accompany our steaks to take any pictures.

Then, on Thursday, the boys went to see Superman, while Hope and I spent a quiet morning/afternoon together with the babies. 7 hours hanging out? Yes please!

Anthony came over to investigate this baby who tried to steal his Mommy and was now playing with his toys

Ah, I love how social my kids are. So warm and welcoming. See the hitting?

“Seriously, mom, who is this?”

Gwen pulled up and stood for the first time! After this, she kept pulling the huge wooden cube down on herself. The girl’s got muscles!

The offspring photo op!

Even though they had to leave the next morning to back down south, we will be seeing them in just another week and a half! Yay for 3 whole months of summer vacation!!!

New Laundry Room

June 25, 2013 Leave a Comment

When we moved in to our new house 4 months ago (4 months, can you believe it?), we knew that we would eventually enclose the carport and either make a giant family room, or a laundry room and a bedroom. We chose the latter, mainly because it worked perfectly for what we need (aka, we need a 4th bedroom so that the boys can have a bigger space eventually, and a mudroom/laundry room for all of our dirty stuff? nice!…).

For frame of reference, the area I am talking about is right beyond this door in the kitchen:

Valle Kitchen After

Before we moved in, here was the view from this door:

Valle 10

Here is the view from the outside looking in:

The door to the left goes to the kitchen, for reference. The door in the middle goes to our backyard.

AFTER we moved in, it became even worse, filled with moving boxes galore. We could hardly move around in there, much less park a car. A few weeks ago, we officially hired a friend who works as a contractor. He began work on “THE WALL”– aka, our new laundry room!

DAY 1

DAY 2 (or 3?)

It was somewhere around this time that the Bartels came over, and, in the usual manner of wives who are about to have company over, I convinced Jesse to put in a couple good hours to stack/throw away boxes. The rest of the foraging was done by a removals in Glasgow company. And we got this!