Red, White and Blue

I am sitting here, Tuesday morning, losing track of time. What day is it? Can it possibly be July 6th already? Is half of the summer gone already? Am I 24 weeks pregnant? And to top it all off, the kids are still sleeping and it is 8 o’clock in the morning already. Usually they are up and at’em at 7/ 7:30 and we have eaten our bowls of cereal already. But I think everyone is recovering from our travels. We spent the Holiday weekend driving up to Fargo, North Dakota to visit old friends. The Dawson’s lived here in our hometown with their 6 kids 2 years ago and left to move to Fargo with a new job. Bill and Julie are good friends who we could count on if we ever needed someone to watch our dog (dodger became fast friends with their big black lab shadow) or someone to check our basement for flooding, or a couple to play a game of pinochle with. Bill and Nate worked at the same job as both welding engineers. Our other similarity was that we were all die hard BUCKEYE fans. Both Bill and Nate graduated from Ohio State in welding engineering. We have kept in touch over the last two years, Nate and Bill play X Box occasionally getting online and chatting back and forth and of course the Christmas card that sums up what the Dawson’s 6 wonderful kids were up to.

Nate and I have discussed visiting them up in North Dakota before and talked about going up on Memorial Day this year or Labor Day… and decided better now than never. So I did my wonderful packing job and we headed out on Friday afternoon. It didn’t take the kids 15 minutes to fall asleep and enjoy the whizzing by of cars as Mommy and Daddy drove to the sound of talk radio. Saturday morning we arrived in Casselton, North Dakota to the Dawson’s house (we stayed overnight in a hotel on Friday since we weren’t in a hurry and we took our time). It didn’t take long for the Schulte kids and the Dawson kids to get to know each other. The Dawson kid’s ages range from Junior in High School to almost two years old. Julie didn’t even seemed to be phased with having 5 more mouths to feed. (I was shocked to learn that they go through 10 gallons of milk a week in their family!! I guess that what you need for 5 growing boys!) Within minutes of arriving all the kids were having Nerf wars in the basement (I think the fathers may have been involved as well!!) That afternoon we headed to the Red River Zoo in Fargo. It is a small zoo but perfect to let the kids run and explore. They saw gray wolves, red pandas, prairie dogs, and hissing cockroaches… YUCK! This peacock came right up to our group! We were feeding the ducks at the time. The kids even got close enough to have the peacock eat out of their hands. Bill started it by coaxing the peacock even closer!

The petting zoo was a hit! I found myself again scouring my purse for quarters for pet food.

G was seeing eye to eye with this little goat.

The highlight I think was the merry-go-round. It was picture perfect seeing the huge smiles on their faces as they each picked which pony they wanted to ride.

The kids also got their first bounce on a trampoline.... daddy liked it too!!

That night we set off fireworks. Now in North Dakota you can buy the really big fireworks to do at home… so needless to say we had quite the show!!

The sparklers were a big hit!! The kids played with those for hours... we went through alot of boxes of sparklers!

R loved the "little stars" that glittered in the light!

Sunday we invited the Dawson’s over to our Hotel which included a waterpark. The kids splashed and swam until their legs wouldn’t move no more. Daddy went down the curvy slide numerous times with each of the kids, but after the second time X was doing it by himself.

After swimming I took the kids up to the room to get naps. Mommy and all three kids got some much needed rest so we could last through the late night firework display in town later that night.

Yesterday morning we headed home. We got the car packed up and gassed up and ready to go!! We made it home last night with plenty of time for the kids to run around upstairs and mommy to get all the clothes out of the luggage and into the washer.

Now I sit here this morning in complete quiet and am relieved we have a week to stay at home and not go anywhere!! It makes mommy and kids very happy! The only bad thing is that it is raining this morning so I guess we will have to get some much needed errands done like stocking the fridge with groceries once again. (God bless us that we don’t have to buy 10 gallons of milk a week for our family!! )

My Happy Place

Day 19: A talent of yours --

Okay I really don't know if I have talent. I suppose if you call being a klutz and running into walls and doors with grace as a talent? well i guess if I had to say that I have any talent it would be that i am creative. I like to create things whether it be a decoration for the house --an old glass bottle, some glue, and some scrapbook paper (think Martha Stewart on Gilligan's island) OR creating a fun game for the kids to play to occupy a little time (making magic wands or snowmen out of marshmallows, icing, licorice, and sticks). Now many know I am not good at math (that is an understatement) but i can decorate and build things with the best of them.

Today is Day 20 of my little experiment to see if I can blog faithfully for a full month. Some days are easy to write down what is in my head and put it on paper, and most days it helped to have an outlet to talk to(I use that term loosely since this is a one way conversation). Having the blog makes me think I am not just talking to kids all day in kid talk and hearing the words over and over "but why mom?" or "what is that?" or my favorite "mom, guess what.....followed by a 1/2 hour recount of what went on in the loft."

So blogging is an outlet, my time to get away into a virtual world. My other favorite thing to do to "get away" is to go into my dungeon downstairs and scrapbook. Here are pictures of my dungeon. All my scrapbooking stuff moved downstairs after the "office" became the girl's room. I didn't use it for awhile... but since the beginning of the year I have really been able to go down once in awhile and work on a few pages. This is my ribbon collection! I love ribbon and love to have it organized by color!!

I am pushed downstairs into the dungeon with concrete floors, so I always slip on my slippers before going down there or my feet will be freezing when I crawl into bed at night.

This is my work space. It is in process of getting organized and there are piles of stuff to go all over the house... but you get the picture.

Day 20: A hobby of yours -- SCRAPBOOKING
It is a happy day when Nate comes home from work and says "why don't you go downstairs and I will watch the kids and you can do some scrapbooking." In my head those same words mean go take a vacation to a beach and drink a glass of wine and put your feet up! I really mean it, I love scrapbooking that much. Right now I am working on 6 projects. I am working on a 12 x 12 scrapbook for each of the kids for their first year with us. The albums are SO thick with pages of first Christmas, first vacation, all the fun things we have done, visiting with family... i could go on and on. I have gotten the furthest on X's scrapbook. It has been fun to do pages with more boyish colors and schemes.

The kids first sibling picture taken before they came into our hearts. I love this photo!!

R's book has come along way too. I kind of flip flop between the two on which ever I am in the mood for. G's book hasn't even been started.

Our little ballerinas

I love scrapbooking and it is my "happy" place to be creative. I am a much happier mommy, and wife when I get to scrapbook. Can't wait to get home and scrapbook 4th of July pictures with fireworks and the kids smiles. Makes me giddy!!!!

Nose, Ears, Mouth... Who knows??

Curious to see who the baby is going to look like? I wonder that constantly. If the baby is going to have Nate's nose, my hair, Nate's eyesight (it runs in the family), or look like either one of us. One never knows what the baby is going to look like until they are here. I am still curious though. Especially since this weekend Nate stumbled upon photo albums at my mom's and got to see my baby pictures. I warned him our child could have my crazy hair!! We have both seen each other's baby pictures, but it was fun to pull out those old photos and see what we looked like back then. The kids didn't know what to think..... the little girl in the photos looked nothing like mommy!

Look how young my mom and dad were!! It is hard to believe that someday my kids will say that about us! I was mom and dad's forth child and this baby will be our forth child too!!

Here is the CRAZY hair. So as I slowly begun to get my hair, it stuck straight up! Mom would wash my hair and it would be flat and then as it dried it stuck up. I hope our child is not blessed with my CRAZY hair!

The blanket that is behind me in this picture I found this weekend while cleaning. I have been heavily cleaning the house since I have had energy and have been in the mood to make room for one more mouth to feed in the house. I found lots of baby stuff i didn't even know we had like this baby blanket that was tucked up in a closet. I also found a baby quilt that I had started cross-stitching when we first we trying to get pregnant years ago. I pulled it out of the basket way behind a stack of old towels. I am shocked that it is almost done! So my goal is to finish this blanket on vacation in Tennessee sitting on the deck soaking up rays! A wonderful gift to my little one.
Here is my hair side profile! Look at that lift! People would die for that volume now!!! :-)
By the time I turned one, my hair had grown in enough that it was so thick it layed flat finally.
Dennis -- i just had to post this picture of you and me since I can see SO much of you in Jacob! WOW~ he sure is a Blankemeyer through and through!

I also found Nate's old baby book that I made for him. Here Nate is on his baptism day. While cleaning I also happened across a box with his baptismal gown in it(which i didn't know we had). YEAH!! It will be perfect for our little daughter.

I can only hope our child sleeps well! I couldn't be blessed more that our other three sleep excellent. From the beginning they slept well and still take a good 1 1/2 nap every day. Now the secret will be to have them all sleeping at the same time?? wishful thinking!!! Here is Nate with his brothers. I love looking at old family pictures and seeing how everyone has grown up. (I think Uncle Neil has had his mischieviousness from birth, just look at his grin!) So who knows what this little combination of Nate and I's is going to look like... but it will be fun when she is finally here to see!!

An art piece that inspires

Day 17 -- An art piece (painting, sculpture, drawing)

I love art. I love photography, painting, anything that a person has created by his/her hands is amazing to me. I have always loved Monet and his paintings. His watercolors just make me want to jump into his paintings and sit in the meadow and or stroll across the bridge. They are happy paintings and not dark and ominous.

I can just see myself sitting underneath the umbrella writing in my journal in a quiet meadow... the kids would be playing quietly in the grass (yeah, right!). It is so serene!!

Lovely paintings... beautiful!

Everything to Me

Day 16: A song that makes you cry

This is an easy question to answer, any Mark Schultz song!! Mark Schultz sings songs like you are reading a story. I love every one of his songs like "letters from war", "He's my son", and my alltime favorite "Everything to Me". This song is dedicated to Mark's birthmother who gave him up for adoption when he was a baby. It is all about walking by him on the street and would she know that she was his son. Would she be proud of the man he is today? I think about our children's birth family alot as well. We still are in contact with the kid's aunts but their birth mother passed away when G was born. I know when the kids grow up they will have questions about their birth mom and who she was. We have some pictures (thanks SO much Vicki) that I have put together in a scrapbook (one scrapbook for each kid so they can have it their whole life), but I hope they will be able to look at our family and their birth family and be happy. I only hope they feel that we tried to give them all the love we could and I hope that is enough. Listen to the words of the song ..... CAUTION you might need tissues!! ;-)