Wonder what's going on inside that head...

Just had to take a picture when I saw this. Just wondering what he was thinking while setting this all up. Love it.

Getting in shape

Evan and I are hitting the treadmill these days. He's beginning to train for the Cleveland 10k and me, well, I'm working my way to running a 5k at home. ha. Seth takes the easy route and just does the stretches. Here he is with Daddy. Enjoy!

Christmas 2009

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with their families! We certainly are blessed with a loving family and are grateful.

Seth had a much more exciting Christmas. We'll try to sum it up briefly in photos:
Our Family – December 2009 in our new house

The view on Christmas morning

The look on Seth's face as he came downstairs and saw everything

Trains from his stocking

Having a "ball" in his Ball house/tunnel

Pausing a moment for a picture

Opening a present

It's a car garage! His favorite!

Petty Christmas with Santa. Notice Seth's location in lower right. Totally could care less. ha!

Seth's turn on Santa's lap. Giving the jingle bells a shake!

Tackle It Tuesday: Living Room

Well, it's taken nearly a month of random nights and weekends working on our living room...but it's finally finished. We still have some final touches left to do, but overall, it's complete.

Let's start the before and afters:
The room was a light gray done in the ragging technique. Ugly. The trim was an off white which looked old and drab next to the white windows. The mantle had a large, old mirror from end to end and up to the ceiling. It was huge. It was already taken down when these photos were taken. We hope to replace the brass fireplace cover in the future, as it is also very ugly. Now, we had to work around the burgundy carpet. It's not in the budget to replace right now and we figure as long as there are little ones around spilling things on it, we might as well keep it. So we chose a nice, warm, neutral tan for the walls.

Vacation to North Myrtle Beach

This post is long overdue. I keep forgetting that some people don't see our Facebook photos, so I need to put them here as well. Here are a few pics from our trip starting with the view from our balcony:

Tackle it Tuesday: Weekend Landscape project

Though work has been keeping me pretty busy lately, it does come with its benefits: a little money to fund projects around the house.

This weekend we tackled the landscaping in the front of the house. It wasn't hard to make it look better considering there was nothing there, just some old mulch and weeds. So, on Friday we went to a couple garden centers and took advantage of the discounted shrubs/plants. Evan got everything planted on Friday and we finished Monday (since we were out of town on Saturday and Sunday).

Here are the before and afters:
Before

After

Seth's 2nd Birthday

Well, Seth turned 2 on August 30. We had a small family party. It was so nice to be able to host and have enough room for everyone! Seth got many nice gifts, so thankful to all our family!

Well, here are some pics from the day:


Seth waited patiently to dig into this chocolate cake! He was doing the sign for "more" like crazy as he waited. ha.


Yes, we bought him a drum. He loves the drums so much, we just had to. Every Sunday he makes a beeline to the drummer as he practices for service. Needless to say, he loves his drum and took the sticks to bed with him that night. In the last photo, his cousins were holding the little cymbals and Seth was rocking out going back and forth between the drum and cymbals. :o)