Lots of house pictures

The house without bushes in the front....Steve was busy today.

Laundry room pic 1
Laundry room pic 2

Downstairs bedroom

Basement workshop....later will be a bedroom.

Basement bathroom....needs gutted.

Downstairs Family Room

Stairwell. Don't you love how the carpet and wallpaper match :)

Living Room looking down the hallways. We've kept the carpet foam down so we don't damage the hardwood floors while we paint/move things around/tear out etc...but you can see down the hallway how pretty the floors are.


Secret storage room #1

Safe in the secret storage room. The previous owner stopped by today and visited with Steve and said the safe had was there when they moved in in the 80's and he was never able to get it open either....this should be interesting.

Secret Storage room #2...trying to get the doors off so we can open up the space.

Main bathroom....very pink indeed.

Master 3/4 bath.....lovin' the blue.

Isak's room. The only room with a white door in the house....very strange.

Living Room Fireplace

Our great backyard.

Master bedroom. Steve is going to remove the built in cabinets...that will open it up a lot.

Kitchen...the z-brick will be painted cream.

My new kitchen.....needs a little sprucing up.

That is basically every room in our house except for the small guest room upstairs. We'll post pictures here in a couple weeks when we are doing our small renovations before we move in. I'm excited to meet with someone on Monday who is going to help me with paint colors. I attempted to figure it out on my own and ended up getting a little overwhelmed so I called in the experts....probably better for me in the long run .

Steve and I closed on our house this morning. I took a quick picture this afternoon while we were there making a check list of what we needed to do. I'll add some before pictures later this weekend so you can see what it looks like before we do some fixes before we move in.

We plan on pulling on the trees in the front and redoing the landscaping. You are welcome to visit as now we have a great guest room!

Long Overdue Update

Hi Everyone,
This blog update is long overdue. I haven't been very good about getting on and updating pictures and stories. So I will have to summarize and try to catch up from where I left off.
So many new and exciting things have been going on around our house. Isak has learned how to climb very well. He climbs over the couch, likes to go head first off the couch, can climb up into his high chair, on to the coffee table, into the toy box...you get the idea. I've said with every month...boy this is sure a fun age...I hope he stays here for a while. But each new month brings a new adventure and I am really enjoying watching him learn and grow.

Yesterday, Grandma Howe sent him a new Silent Night book the plays Silent Night and the lights around baby Jesus twinkle. He LOVED it. He sat and played the book all day! He even took and nap with it and was holding it when he woke up this morning. This morning he was walking around with it while it was playing and he started trying to sing Silent Night. It was really cute.

Isak is talking more and more every day and developing the desire to try mom and dad quite a bit. His mischevious little smile is hard to get upset at though. He runs all over the house and loves to play tag. Steve and I have taken him to visit the playground at the mall a couple of times now and he never wants to play, but he does LOVE the fish. He about goes into convulsions before we even get to the door because he knows the fish are inside. I may have to put a fish tank in our house somewhere!

This Thanksgiving, Steve and I spent the afternoon with Steve's parents in Manhattan. They are in the process of adding onto their new home so we are so very excited for them. Isak had a great time eating the wonderful Thanksgiving dinner that Roxana made. I think he had 3 or 4 servings of everything before we had gotten through one.

Some exciting news from the Howe household is that soon we will have a new house! We close on our house this Friday. Steve and I are very excited to have a place to call our own. The house is in a great neighborhood with a wonderfully large backyard. Isak will have his own room, plus room to spread out all the toys and books. Steve and I plan on remodeling portions of our house over the years as the house is dated to the 1960's. If you love z-brick in kitchens, you can have your fix in our house :) I'm especially fond of the pink and blue bathrooms...complete with pink and blue toilets. I didn't know they made those but after some research, you can get toilets in a lot of different colors.

Our holiday season will be spent, painting, cleaning and decorating. We are really excited to get in and get to work. We spent a majority of our Thanksgiving holiday packing up our house so at least we have a lot of that done.

Below are some updated pictures of Isak. At his last appt. he was 33 inches tall and 27 lbs. Still in the 90th percentile. I didn't realize how tall he was until he was around some other children at church. He is almost as big as some of the 2 year olds. Someday he'll be able to clean all of those high cabinets for mom :)

After 3 1/2 years of living in the same place, only 2 weeks before moving, vandals hit our area of town. 2 kids decided it would be fun to go around town and shoot BB guns/air guns at people's car windows and homes. They apprehended the two kids but this was the damage left behind on my car. So a Monday morning that was going great, turned into a long day. Steve came home and took care of a lot of the details in getting car fixed. It was just annoying to get it all done. I've put a picture below of the damage done. Luckily, the place the fixed the window had it done within a day, so that was great. We now have two vehicles again.

Livin' in a box.....

Watching' my favorite show...without moving.

Mash potato mouth #1


Mash potato mouth take 2

My GQ pose

Balancing act...or learning by osmosis.

Silent Night Book

Thanks for the book grandma!

Climbing on the coffee table.

Have a wonderful week and hopefully I'll be able to update a little better over the holidays.

Say Cheese!

Overnight Isak seems to grow and change. He woke up earlier this week with what seemed to be a new smile. He presses his lips together and the raises the sides of his mouth up. I could sit and watch it all day and he knows how to use this smile to his advantage as well :)

Just wanted to post some new pictures of little/big man. I bought him his first pair of tennis shoes this weekend....size 7! I shed a little tear in Target. I tried on the fives and his toes wouldn't even go in, so I thought maybe a 6...maybe 6 1/2...nope....a 7! He looks like such the little boy now when he wears them. He's not quite used to the hard sole yet as I've had him in moccasin type shoes (Robeez and Pedipods are awesome)...but he still runs pretty quick.

Right now, Isak is asleep holding his book, cuddled with his bear and blanket. I think he has a book in his hand everytime he takes a nap/goes to bed. Below is our little reader with his new crafty little smile.

(Picture Note: Dad helped to eat the wings pictured....but Isak sure did like them. Isak and dad love game night dinners when mom is working :) )

(Polly Wanna Cracker.....I gotta tell you, I love this hat....it is too cute)

(The new adorable smile)

(ha - cha........Isak's new game of trying to get you to make the same face)

Happy Halloween and more!

Isak seems to be changing over night at times. He is growing and learning so fast that I can hardley keep up. Below are our updates of pictures...there are quite a few as I am not too good at keeping up with the blog.


We've discovered that Sonic has a fun little playyard. Isak loves corndogs...and the play cars. He gets a little upset when they don't work as they should but loves to stay in and ride. This was his first time in the car. Watch out drivers!







Isaks new favorite thing to do is to crawl and look underneath things. He likes to throw his toys underneath and then tries to find them. This time, he decided to crawl through the coffee table. It was pretty cute and he was pretty proud of himself for finding the way through.





When you ask Isak "Where is Isak" he will cover his ears and he thinks that you can't see him. It is pretty hilarious. Here he is playing along with mom. He didn't think I could see him sitting there. When he puts his hands down, he laughs quite a bit thinking that he fooled you.

(getting too big too fast)

For Halloween, I handed out over 2000 pieces of candy at our downtown BooRama. Isak dressed up as a Pirate. We didn't really do any trick or treating with him as he really doesn't get any candy, but he had fun trying his first sucker. Steve said that he was drooling so much from it that his entire shirt was drenched.

Steve and Isak were downtowing strolling around in the wagon. The pirate hat is pretty cute...it didn't stay on very long but was adorable none the less. After the downtown event, we went to a friends house for some chili and conversation. They live on a street that is packed with trick or treaters all evening. Isak had fun running up and down the sidewalks. He was so excited and hyper. He finally crashed around 7:30 while hanging out in the sling.

(I know he will look back at this and think....seriously mom....a pirate.....what were you thinking)

Steve and I took Isak to a Pumpkin Patch just south of town earlier in October to play and pick out some pumpkins. He loved pushing the wagon around and running through all of the pumpkins. It was such a beautiful day. We will definetely have to go back next year!

(Isak found the perfect pumpkin....it was just a little heavy)

Isak was enthralled with the ducks at the pumpking patch. He loves ducks and kept running over to them saying duddy (aka ducky). He stood there for about 5 minutes and just watched them.


We hope this finds you all doing well. Hopefully I can be a little better about updating the site. Have a wonderful week.

New pictures!

Here is even more pictures from this weekend!

Group meltdown before nap time

Isak the mathematician at the park

Hugs by Lukas

Swinging at the park....again!

Thought of the day!

Just wanted to pass this fun little 3 minute clip along to you!

http://www.ajoymovie.com/?SRC=POIJOY&utm_source=Walk+the+Talk+Master+List&utm_campaign=ac5db8c9a4-POI_10_14_08&utm_medium=email

Have a great day!

Updates

Hi Everyone,

So I thought updating this blog would be a lot easier for me to do, but it's just been a little crazy this fall with only more craziness to ensue. In other words, a lot of updates are needed.

The city of Salina celebrated it's 150th birthday in September. My dancers danced in parade and we had such a great time. We had about 40 dancers all dancing to "some day's you gotta dance" by the Dixie Chicks and the crowd loved it. The girls looked great and my husband had a great truck loaned to us. You can't really see it in the picture but it was a brand new 2009 Ford F-150. I was a little sad when we had to give it back because it had so much room inside, but didn't want the 10 miles per gallon fuel bill.

Isak has just been growing so fast over the past couple weeks. His new favorite word is what. He has discovered that if the wagon is behind the couch, he can climb up on the wagon and climb up over the top of the couch to crash on the other side. He loves to climb and to try to see what he can get up on. That is not necessarily a good thing.

(Isak reading his menu at the restaurant)

(mmm...styrafoam)

Isak has spent the last couple of weeks not feeling so well. He's working on cutting some teeth and it's been about 6 weeks now and they still haven't come through. On top of that, allergy season has been in full swing. He's finally starting sleeping more through the night so that has been great as Steve and I really hadn't slept a full night since the beginning of August.

We traveled to Manhattan last week to visit Matt and Julie and the boys who came down from Nebraska. We went over for the afternoon and we all took the boys to the new park at City Park. It was an awesome park....there were just a lot of children at the park on it's grand opening day. The boys had a great time but all were a little tired after the trek. You can see from the group picture that it was nap time.

Isak's love for books continues to grow. He is constantly reading and sitting on top of his pile of books. He now will turn to the pages when you ask him where things are and will point at the animals and sometimes I hear him reading to himself in the corner. It is too cute.

(Isak swinging at the park earlier this summer)

(Reading with dad before naptime)

(First time down the slide by myself!)