last weekend and today...

today we went to the pool. our, or rather my, first swimming experience of the summer. we had a lot of fun. there is a big pool and slide for the older kids and a little play area for the little ones. we went with some friends from our congregation. mckinlee had fun with her friend...
and even more fun with her friend's little sister! she followed her around and was so sweet to look out for her, take her down the baby slide and hold her whenever she could!

you can't tell from the picture, but i am so burned :( the tops of my feet are bright red and i'm putting aloe vera gel on every few minutes! ouch~

q was so tired after all the fun, she fell asleep in mckinlee's arms. it was so sweet and mckinlee felt so grown-up to get the baby to sleep! (she's practicing to be a good big cousin :)

last weekend we had such a nice time at a welcome home party for mom and les at aaron and peggy's beautiful river side home. several people were out on the dock fishing and it looked so peaceful and pretty!

mckinlee and brooke had a great time playing and eating. i love these huge wedges of watermelon--so summery!

how sweet is this? mama jeanne and grandaddy taking it easy in the rocking chairs right before we left.

i rarely have any pictures of myself. so i made sure to get some with my mom...

and my grandma~2 beautiful and sweet women!

the band was playing up on the patio. i happened to look up and see mom and les dancing across the yard. it was so cute. they looked so happy and i was happy to see them.

i have a lot of pictures to post of various things. i will try to do more tomorrow.

bathrooms

it's friday...you know what that means...kelly's tour of homes. it's bathrooms this week.

this is our master bath. when we moved in it was painted a pinky-peachy beige that clashed with everything. chris painted it a really nice cream and we like it much better. we've got a white-cream-beige-taupe thing going on with dark brown accents.

i've had those pictures forever and want to change that up, but don't know what to do yet. we also used to put the towels we use over the side of the bathtub, but i got tired of that and now we just hang them on the towel rack. not too pretty, but useful!

this view is standing in my closet and looking out.

this shower...i could write a very long un-interesting book on the problems we've had with it. we've lived here not even 2 years and it has been rebuilt for us 3 times (with the previous owners i think it was redone once) anyway, this is the latest version and this tile seems to blend with the rest of the bathroom. (just to clarify--this was not done for cosmetic purposes, but because of water leaks)

doesn't that tub look inviting? i think i've only taken a bath once, maybe twice. i'm just not a bath person, but i'm going to try to become one. i'm going to get a pretty basket, fill it with bath stuff and put it on the edge of the tub. maybe that will make me want to take a bath!

here's the water closet. chris repainted this too. i love the chocolate brown color!

this is the half bath downstairs. it's a deep maroon-red color that doesn't really go with anything else. i had originally wanted to repaint it a chocolate brown too, but now i'm thinking a pretty green would be good. we'll see about that. for now this is it.

this is the entry to mckinlee's bathroom. i love her bathroom--it always looks so cheerful!

to the right of the shower is a another vanity. it's a jack and jill bathroom, but the room it's attached to is a junk room at the moment (until we decide what to do with it!) so i won't show that to you!

here's the guest bathroom

i bought all these little metal buckets at target and i use them for everything. this one sits on the edge of the tub filled with shells.

the other one sits on the counter filled with toiletries for guests. i'm always so excited when i see that guests actually use the stuff in there!

this is the other half of the jack and jill bath of the guest room. it doesn't really go with anything and we keep an ironing board on the door, so we want to do something with this sometime too!

thanks for looking at our bathrooms!

a scrappy kind of day

i got this magazine at joann's the other day and it has inspired me to really start scrapbooking more. i've been in such a rut--overwhelmed with supplies, too many pictures, etc. anyway, this magazine has some really cute layouts and all of them take less than 1 hour to do. if you can find this magazine, i recommend you get it (if you have a coupon--i wouldn't pay 14.99 for it!)
these pages were all based on layouts from the magazine and didn't take long at all. it took me longer to pick out all my papers and embellishments than it did to make the pages!

the first one is pictures from vacation last year. it just so happened that another sister from our congregation and her family were in florida the same time we were. we went to dinner at this place that was a replica of an old treasure ship. pretty cool!
another one from last summer's vacation. i love the colors in this one. (i would so love to be there right now!)

one of mckinlee when she was losing teeth--i just love those gap-toothed smiles!

that's all for now~hopefully there will be some more tomorrow!

just some random pictures

nothing too exciting to blog about. mckinlee is in waco visiting the grandmas--i will go on friday, so that will be a fun weekend. i've done a lot around the house today...laundry, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms and dusting. now i'm going to reward myself and scrapbook for a little while! here are some pictures i've meant to post but didn't.
here's mckinlee's teacher this year--Miss Texada. she is the sweetest thing and mckinlee is going to miss her!
here's mck's 3rd grade teacher. we absolutely loved Mrs. Henderson! she is moving to a different school and we are so sad :(

some of mck's classmates at their end of school party.

we decided to have part of our family worship night outside last week. we studied our watchtower lesson until it got too dark--it was a nice change!

i made these stuffed peppers for dinner the other night and they were pretty good (if you like that sort of thing!)

not a great picture but i was trying to get a self portrait of how swollen and bruised my face was after my dentist visit the other day. my cheek was so swollen chris thought i had something stuck in it! even today it is so bruised (a nice celery green and butter yellow color) i think the dentist hit a blood vessel when she was numbing me! not a pretty site!

a nice shot of my pretty petunias

that's all i've got for now. if i get any scrapbooking done, i'll post pictures tomorrow!

the office (not to be confused with nbc's version)

welcome to chris' office. it's friday--next stop on kelly's tour of homes: offices!

this is looking into the office from the dining room. the huge leaf we got at pier 1 (i think) and it fits perfectly!

most of the wall decor came from hobby lobby. the green banker's lamp was a graduation gift to him from my family before we were even dating!

i love this little corner in his office. the chair was one of the first pieces of furniture he bought when he left home. i think we got the lamp at hobby lobby.

he loves motorcyles and old memorabilia (is that spelled right?) some of the things on his lateral file were his grandfather's (like that old cheese box that his grandfather made into a little tackle box--isn't that cool?) and the license plate that has his initials on it

we loved this clock since it looked old even though it isn't. we got it at world market.

another old looking thing...but it's not. it's a radio we bought at hobby lobby!

that's part of his 15th year anniversary gift (the golf clubs, not the chair!!) the chair we bought at sam's years ago.

both sides of his desk have these cool lighted shelves where he displays more antique pieces and motorcycle stuff!

thanks for looking! stop by kelly's korner for more office ideas!

last day of school

ever since mckinlee was in kinder or 1st grade we have taken pictures of her wearing the same thing on the first day of school and the last day of school. it's such a neat way to see how much she has changed. so here she is in august 2008 on the first day:

and here she is today june 2009 on the last day:

she looked at the pictures and said, "i don't look very good in the morning!" that's ok--none of us do! SUMMER is officially here!!!!! i am so ready~