Miss Tippy Toes

It's so hard to get a decent picture of Ellie these days. She's such a busy girl. This is Mary's toy table. Looks like Ellie was just tall enough to reach whatever Mary had tried to keep out of Ellie's way.

Shhhh...they are sleeping.

Ellie was asleep by 7:30 and Mary by 8pm. Woohoo! I think John fell asleep with Mary. It's nice and quiet in here.

I've been thinking a lot about our home and property. We are so happy here. I'll never forget the first time I stepped into the house. We came by to see it in November 2006. The previous owner still lived here, but was kind enough to let us come see it. She sold the house to John's Dad and Step-Mom and we ended up buying it from them in June 2007. So anyway, we walked into the kitchen having no idea what to expect. The lady had several animals in the house, and it was very (to put it mildly) messy. But I immediately saw through the mess. I saw it as a home. It was cozy. Sure it needed a little TLC. But I loved it. I can't believe that was 2006.

We came back up here at Christmas and the house was empty. We took some pictures. We talked about putting our Evansville house on the market, and about what improvements we'd make to this house before we moved. John still had to figure out what he'd do as far as a job, etc. Anyway, here's a picture John took of the front of the house in December 2006.

Turns out those trees being SUPER close to the house were causing MAJOR erosion issues. So they got cut down, the house repaired and the downspouts re-routed. So when we bought the house, there was nothing around it as far as landscaping. I can see it in my mind though. We started by planting our plum tree in September 2007. Last year Mom brought some ornamental grasses and they are on the end of the house. Now I've planted a row of hostas on the side of the house. Yesterday, we mulched those two areas.

When the grasses are up for the year, I'll take another picture. I have a row of coneflower seeds planted in front of the grasses, but they haven't come up yet. Hopefully they'll be up this week.

Here's another area we mulched yesterday. I call it the daffodil garden. There are ferns from my Grandpa Joe's woods, columbine, some big hostas that my sister in law gave me this spring, and some small hostas I brought from Evansville.

Isn't this a cool picture? I took that around 8 in the morning, and by 10:30 it had bloomed.


These poppies are planted next to our new maple tree, on the opposite side of the driveway from the daffodil garden. The maple tree is the outer edge of what I call our "front" garden. But there's no garden. It's just in my mind right now. I want to completely change the front porch before we finish landscaping the front. Who knows when. Someday.

And here's the best before picture of the view as you pull up to the house.

See those planters outside the garage? The were completely rotten (they were old wooden barrels) and were actually being held together by the ivy.

Now, we have these BEAUTIFUL planter boxes that John made me when I saw something very similar in Cottage Living. I have pots inside, and I just got them filled with annuals on Friday.


You can see our plum tree (that's decided to grow crooked, we're getting ready to stake it back up and hope for the best. John thinks the wind comes over the house and encourages it to grow that way.) next to the house. I think it's tripled in size since we got it. The new maple and the poppies are off to the right, just barely out of the picture.

I'll try to take more pictures later this summer when my annuals are bigger and the grasses (and hopefully the darn coneflowers!!) are taller.

And now, some random pictures.

Mary and "Bippy" the turtle whose life was saved yesterday when John and Mary found him in the road on the way to get the mulch. Mary had never seen a turtle up close before. She and John took him down to the creek and he jumped right in and swam off. Mary named him Bippy. Yesterday afternoon and today I heard "What do you think Bippy is doing right now?" about 400 times. We'll never see Bippy again I am sure, but I do hope he's happy down in our creek.


The same poppy as above, this pic taken about 6pm.


The morning dew on one of the hostas up by the side of the house.


I hope we never move from here. I hope I have years with this house and yard to make it as amazing as I see it in my head. I hope the girls will love to garden as much as I do. I hope my Mom will continue to come over in the spring to help me divide and move plants. I hope that friends and family keep giving me their free, extra plants so that I can look at them and have memories of each person. Stay tuned and watch it grow with us:).

Blog posts in my mind

I spend time every day thinking about things I want to blog about, but by the end of the day, I'm too worn out to deal with it.

On May 6th, I wanted to write a post about how it had been 4 years since the day I got pregnant with Mary. Four years. Four years of being a Mom full time. Four years of either being pregnant, nursing, being pregnant AND nursing, and then nursing my two babies. A full time job. I wanted to write this beautiful post about how it's all changed me. But Ellie didn't go to bed until 9pm that night. And she's waking up probably 10 times a night right now (teething). And when she went to bed at 9pm, all I wanted to do was go to bed myself.

I could write an entire post about how dang tired I am. Really tired. Exhausted beyond exhausted. The same thing happened when Mary was teething. Up 10 times a night, sometimes more like 15-20. Ellie isn't nearly as bad about it. She doesn't cry all night, but she wakes up. And wants to nurse or wants her paci or wants me to hold her for a while. I feel like I don't sleep anymore. I feel like I get nothing done around the house. I'm too tired. All my energy is devoted to the girls during the day. Half the time, I'm pulling Ellie off Mary. Oh, Ellie loves to pull up on ANYTHING. Including Mary. Poor Mary. Or I'm fishing out tiny toys/old play-doh/dirt/old food out of Ellie's mouth. I must take 50 things a day out of her mouth. Who knows how much I miss. The other day I was doing a craft with Mary. I thought we were being really careful, gluing some buttons onto a picture frame. The next morning, I carefully opened up Ellie's poopie diaper and found.....a green button. Hmm. I saved it. It's going right in the baby book. I know that this phase will pass. Well, I hope it will. I think it will. I get NOTHING done around the house. By the time I get the kitchen cleaned up in the morning, Ellie's ready for a nap, then I need to cook lunch, then we go outside, then Ellie takes another nap. Then dinner. Mary goes to bed at 7-7:30 and Ellie's down at 8pm on a good night. And then I just want to go to bed. But I don't. I sit up looking at crafty blogs. I look at decorating blogs. I imagine the day when the girls are in school. Because NOTHING is getting done before that. I'm not complaining. Well, maybe a little. Mary's so smart and funny. I love hearing the next thing that is going to come out of her mouth. Today she helped me mulch the garden. She said "oh! Mom!" I thought something was wrong. "You know that good egg we had for breakfast? I want that again tomorrow." Huh? We're out mulching, it's 4pm, and she's thinking about breakfast. Okay.

Was I going somewhere with this post? Hmm. I'm tired. I think I already covered that though.

We've been working super hard outside. We got 2 "scoops" of mulch today, which completely filled the bed of John's truck. We got about half of it spread. Mary loves to help, and Ellie will sit and eat grass without needing too much supervision. I stopped every 5 minutes, and got the rocks/grass/tree bark out of her mouth and let her at it again. I'm hoping that I'll get some pictures in the morning of all our hard work. This is our 3rd summer here (moved here in June 2007) and I think it's pretty amazing how much we've done outside considering I was pregnant and miserable last summer and now we have 2 kids to entertain while we work. It's fun though. Really great. John and I both love living here so much. We love working outside too. Mary loves watching things grow and taking care of plants. She calls them her "buddies." The girls and I went to get our annual flowers and some potting soil yesterday and then planted them (I was in WAY over my head trying to watch a fussy 8 month old and an overtired 3 year old....WAY OVER). Mary said "oh, let's water these buddies! Let's help them grow!" Mary's been driving my absolutely crazy lately, but today we had a lot of fun while John watched Ellie. I think Mary and I are going to have a great summer taking care of our plants outside.

So that's it. A long, crazy post when I should be going to bed. Probably an incoherent post about nothing. Life I guess.

It's been a while

I guess chasing after a crawling 7 month old keeps a person busy. That and fishing Mary's toys out of Ellie's mouth.

We finally finished this project:


And after! Woohooo!


When John hung the door back up, Mary noticed we had painted the edges a light green. She said we now need to paint the rest of the kitchen! I agree! But, that's way down at the bottom of the list. I think I'll just go with the dated fake wood paneling until we remodel (in 10 years).

I forgot to blog about Earth Day. Well, I think every day should be Earth Day. So we waited until the weekend and we planted a new tree (to replace a dead one) in our front yard.




It's a maple tree that has bright read leaves in the fall. We have one out back too. John has since cut down the dead sumac tree. I'll take a new pic if the sun ever comes out. I think the tree has some leaves on it now too.

Alright, it's madness here.

Project 33: the chop

This is the stylist's version of what she did to me. I'll never get it to lay that nice since I don't own a blow dryer or flat iron. Or styling products for that matter. I just washed it (which was totally freaky!!!) and am letting it air dry.

My neck and head feel funny.

Who is this kid?

Seriously! Miss Ellie is growing up too fast. She learned to crawl about a week before she turned 7 months old. A week later, she was on to pulling up. I really hope it takes a while before she learns to walk. She gets into everything as it is, and since she's too young to understand "no" all I can do is try to keep things out of her reach.


I actually stood her up at this chair and let go of her for the pic. But as soon as she saw me sitting on the floor, she let go with one hand. Then she fell, crawled to me, and used me as her personal jungle gym.


This is a little old toy of Mary's. Ellie can pull right up on it like a pro. (I'll have to see what my Mom thinks, but I think Ellie looks just like me in the picture. Mainly in the eyes.)


She stood there and played forever. What a big girl! She's a sweetie too. I told John last night that when I'm out at the store (or wherever), I always noticed people smiling at me. It's nice, but sort of strange. Yesterday I realized they are smiling because Ellie is smiling. She loves to smile at people! It's also strange (to me) that Ellie weighs at 7 months what Mary weighed about 3 months.

Here's Mary at 7 months. She was probably 21-22 pounds. Yay! My big healthy girl. I was so looking forward to having another butterball baby, and then I got skinny little Ellie.


Their personalities are completely different too. It amazes us daily how different they are considering they are sisters. I love my girls so much.

a small project

Inspired by Karen, I came home from Evansville ready to tackle some home improvement projects. In some ways, it seems like we just moved here. It seems like just the other day we were unpacking boxes and trying to get things looking like we lived here so we could have John's 30th b-day party. Then we were busy getting ready to host 18 people for Christmas. Then I was pregnant. Then I had a baby. So the house is largely the same way it was the month we moved in. Our big, big project is to get new windows. But that won't happen for probably another year. I've been thinking we shouldn't do anything before that, but now I guess I just want SOMETHING done. So, first off, this little window I've been saving.


Mary provided the artwork. Top L to R: Mommy and Daddy. Bottom L to R: Mary and Ellie. Don't mind the horrible paneling on the walls. I want to take the paneling down and paint. But that means that I want to put up new trim work. But I don't want to do that until we get new windows. Plus, I have NO IDEA what color to paint the dining room. And trust me, I think about it a lot. Sometimes I think about just jumping out of my seat and running in there and ripping the paneling off while John's at work so that we HAVE to paint.

I have another project in the works, but it will probably be the weekend before it's done. Oh, and a HUGE change coming next week.

In other news, Ellie can crawl. Last week she'd only do a few feet every so often. Now she crawls everywhere! And pulls up. She's a pulling up FOOL. Ugh. She's dangerous. I can't tell her no because she can't understand me. She just turned 7 months old last Friday.

Speaking of Ellie......gotta go.......