Somebody pinch me! There's actually stuff happening on our lot! When we signed the contract with our home builder in July, he acted like they'd have the hole dug by the end of the month. Well that came and went with pretty much NOTHING happening. It's so frustrating to be in a hurry, when no one else really seems to care. 

Anyway, after we called and emailed a few people for a week or so, they got the hole dug on Wednesday, the 20th. Much to our surprise, they had the footings poured on Thursday, and the foundation walls poured on Friday! I'm just PRAYING that now that we've started, we'll continue to see activity without having to beg for it.

{I didn't get this posted right away, so I'm backdating this blog entry...just go along with it.} TODAY was Ivy's first day of 2nd grade, and Ada's first day of Kindergarten! Since we moved, we're in the St. John's parish, so they're going to the same school that I attended when I was their age. Ivy was excited to be switching schools since this means that she has more than like 3 other girls in her grade. She already knows a few girls from volleyball and basketball teams and also from the pool we joined this summer. 

Ada was so excited and ready for Kindergarten, she could hardly contain it. She's in the same grade as her cousin, Elise, and is so happy to be going to school with her. Tonight, when Ada was taking a shower, she poked her head out of the curtain and said, "Mom, am I dreaming, or am I really going to school?".

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I finally took Ada into the doctor's office today to get her skin checked out. She's had these little white/clear/skin colored bumps on her inner thighs for months, and lately they have started spreading to her hands, arms and torso. The doctor confirmed, what a couple of my smart friends had suspected, that she has molluscum. Apparently, it's a virus that doesn't really have an effective cure, and can last for months or years. 

There is one bump in the crook of her elbow that she can't stop scratching, so she has a nice little eczema patch around it. Dr Jones froze it off in the office, so hopefully that will help. She recommended Benadryl cream during the day, and oral Benadryl before bed for as long as she has them. I couldn't help but think about how this might have a fantastic effect on the endless bedtime routine lately, and just in time for school...

Normally I try not to take all three kids to the store with me, but I needed some essentials yesterday and didn't want to wait for Eric to get home from work. So after ample bribing, and promises of treats, we headed off to Wal-Mart. On the way into the store I noticed a little old lady with a walker waddling up the lot. She walked in and stopped in front of a row of carts and I grabbed one from another row. Of course the one I picked didn't have a functioning baby seat buckle, so I had to swap it out with another cart. As I was doing this, I noticed a Wal-Mart employee pushing more carts from the parking lot into the row that the old lady was standing in front of. Apparently, he didn't see her, because he just kept shoving them until they knocked her over. It was like slow motion, watching this poor old lady being pushed to the ground by a row of carts. She hit her head on the floor and either the fall or her broken glasses caused her head to bleed at the temple so there was blood gushing out of her head. 

So there I stood, holding Eve, watching my other two girls staring at this lady on the floor. I froze. There were other people bustling about, calling 9-1-1, attending to her on the ground, getting paper towels to clean up the blood. All I could do was stand there and think about how horrible I would be as a nurse or a doctor. I thought about my sister and nurse friends, who would be those people holding onto her, cleaning her up. I like to think that if I hadn't been holding Eve, I would've been down on the ground with her. Although I'm not sure that I would have been, and that makes me feel like a heartless person. 

After the incident, we headed in to try to get our shopping done. I couldn't concentrate on what I needed to get, my heart was still racing, and apparently the older girls felt the same way. When we got to the candy aisle, I told them to pick something out. They both just stared at everything in disgust. I said, "You don't have to get anything if you don't want to??". Ada said, "Maybe my heart doesn't feel like I want candy right now". I almost started to cry, it was so sweet.

We spent about the last week at Lake Okoboji while Eric had some much deserved time off. We had a fantastic time and the weather was beautiful. It was warm enough to be out on the lake during the day, and cool enough to wear pants and a sweatshirt at night. The first couple days we just hung out by the beach and swam in the lake, etc. On Wednesday Eric rented a boat and tube for 3 hours and we had a blast. The kids loved tubing, and couldn't get enough of it. Dawn and I even gave it a whirl. I'm getting too old to play I guess, I got thrown off the tube, mid-turn. My upper body is still sore from grasping onto the handle for dear life. I think maybe I should stick to driving the boat, now that's fun. Eve had fun at the resort park, going up and down an old metal slide...I guess they don't make them like they used to. She enjoyed the sandy beach and liked to walk out into the lake until the water was at her knees, then she'd turn around. She's definitely at a busy age, there isn't much sitting/relaxing when she's awake...but we managed.

So now it's already August, and it's time to think about school supplies and new tennis shoes. Usually, I'm a little sad when summer's ending. However, this year, I have more to look forward to in the winter than the usual Christmas holiday. I so hope to be in our new house by Christmas time; that would be the best gift ever! Alright, I'll leave you with some pictures from the lake...

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I'm writing this from the passenger seat on the way to Okoboji. Eve is finally sleeping, now that we're almost there, so I have a minute of peace and quiet. It feels like I haven't updated the blog for long time, so I might as well. This summer has been busy. I have been extremely busy with website work, which never seems to come at the right time. Having the kids home during the summer leaves little  or no time to get anything done. I think we're all looking forward to the first day of school. 

We signed a contract with a builder on July 13th, so we should be in our new house by Jan 13th at the latest. We're definitely hoping for a month sooner than that. 

Well we're here now for the next 5 days so hopefully we have some nice weather! Later.. 

So I was hoping by this time we'd be looking at a partial house on our lot, but sadly there isn't even a hole. We have been working the last month on getting a two story plan together and trying to get bids to take to the bank so they know how much this thing is going to cost. Well, every bid (once we finally got them) came in WAY high and we're realizing that subs don't want to work with Joe Schmoe building one house. They are all too busy with the builders that keep them busy all year.

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So, with a heaping dose of reality, we have decided to scale back and have someone else build us another ranch. We've decided that Bugbee Homes seems to be the most legit builder that we've talked to. He seems like an honest, good guy...unlike most of the others. We're meeting with him again tomorrow night to look over plans and hopefully get things rolling. He says that he writes his contracts for six months, but most of the time they take about five months. If they are able to get moving on it in the next couple weeks, we're hoping to be in by Christmas. 

My parents have been spectacular for the last month and I just hope they can put up with us for another five or six. Eve is 18 months old now and, like clockwork, has started throwing baby tantrums. I say baby tantrums because they are nothing compared to a three or four year old's tantrums. At least with Eve, I can leave her be and she'll forget what she was crying about a minute later. She's been getting four new teeth in, so she's been crabby and restless. She also seems to have hurt her right foot and has been walking on the outside of it for the last day or so. I guess I'll have to take her in to get that checked out if she keeps it up. What's weird is that she doesn't complain if I push on it and bend it all around. There is a tiny speck that could be a splinter or something, so that might be the cause. I tried to remove it, but it's so tiny that I can't get a handle on it. I just know that if I bring her in, they'll probably want to do an x-ray, and a thousand dollars later, we'll see that it was nothing. Oh well, that's how it goes...

Alright, I'd better get back to the grindstone. I have so much website work that I'm finding it hard to keep up this summer. The kids are going to bed later and later, which leaves me less and less time to work on stuff. I guess that's a good problem to have, but I like to feel like I'm caught up. 

This summer called for some fresh new 'do's, so Ivy, Ada and I got our hairs cut this afternoon. After looking at the before pictures, it makes me miss the girls' long hair. But it was so unmanageable, especially in the summer, that I'm sure I won't miss it for long.

I've been super sick of my long hair for a while now, so I'm very glad to get rid of the length. I'm sure I will be annoyed that I can't pull it back completely, but maybe this will force me to DO SOMETHING with it...I doubt it though. I've been talking to my stylist about how to make the most of my naturally frizzy hair, so she tried curling it today. I couldn't wait to get home to straighten it.

Eric had the week off so we decided to take the kids to Adventureland in Des Moines for a couple days. My cousin Emily got us some discounted tickets so we picked them up at her house on the way. The weather was cool and cloudy on Thursday so we went to Adventureland instead of the water park like we had orginally planned. The older girls loved every minute of it, Eve wasn't crazy about the rides, she laid her head down in our laps, but she just chilled in the stroller for most of the day. I always knew that Ivy was kind of a daredevil when it came to riding the big rides, but Ada totally surprised me. She rode the Tornado and upside-down, loopty loop Dragon rollercoasters. She was so excited to be big enough that I think she forgot to ask what they were all about, and I didn't really tell her. As we were headed up the first hill on the Tornado, I started to feel guilty, she had no idea what she was in for. At the bottom of that hill, I think she wanted to cry, but I just kept saying "isn't this fun?! this is awesome!" and she halfway agreed at the time. When we got off the ride, she had a skip in her step and said she loved it. 

That night we stayed at the hotel next to the park and went swimming most of the night which was fun too. The next day we spent at Adventure Bay water park and it was a perfect day for it. The sun was shining but it wasn't too hot. Eve had fun splashing on the splash ground and the older kids loved the slides and other fun stuff there. I was a fan of the lazy river, imagine that. I took Eve along several laps around it. By about 2:00, Ada was ready to leave, but the rest of us weren't. I think she was just tired from the day before because she laid down on the lounge chair and fell asleep right there in the sun. I put some towels up so she didn't get too hot/sunburnt, and she slept for about 45 minutes until we got ready to leave. 

The only negative thing about the trip was that the water park didn't have a separate entrance, so we had to walk through the entire amusement park to get to it. It wasn't so bad in the morning, but after a day in the sun, carrying wet towels and tired kids, that was a long haul. Oh well, it's all part of the experience I suppose..

Sorry to get your hopes up, but this isn't a post about emergency health care supplies. Valerie and I went to see some Swedish singer-songwriter sisters (say that 5 times fast) play at the Waiting Room in Omaha last night, and they call themselves First Aid Kit. In a word, they were mesmerizing. At times I found myself gawking, in awe, at their talent. Tickets were like 18 bucks and that was the best $18 I've spent in a long time. As per usual, I managed to stand behind a swaying, inebriated Amazon woman, so my view was obstructed unless I swayed along. Oh well, it wasn't hard to sway along to these ladies...

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