Our House

The past few weeks have been busy. We bought our first house. We closed on the 27th of July. We spent that first week cleaning and moving stuff over. We are now mostly unpacked, still working on getting pictures up on the wall.

The house was built in the 1960s. It is a split level. There is a detached 2 car garage. We need to get the floor fixed before we can park our cars in there. It is being used for storage for empty boxes and our stuff that we will sell at a garage sale or give to a thrift store.

We are loving the house. It has three bedrooms and two bathrooms. There is a room in the basement that could be a forth bedroom if we put a door in and a closet. There is a laundry/storage/utility room. I love have a ROOM for laundry: to sort clothes and hang some to dry.

Now for pictures:

A big  deck (Rex loves it). We will eventually get patio furniture.Sorry this is sideways, I though I had turned it. But I love the window on the front door.The front door

The stairs from the front door.

Living room.

Dining room (book shelves are our pantry right now).

Kitchen

Love the wall oven.

Rex replaced the kitchen sink shortly after we moved in. He was just going to replace the garbage disposal, but we he went to remove the old one, he ended up taking out the whole sink. So we got a nonstainless steel sink! We also got a sprayer (the old sink didn’t have one). We put this sink in all by himself.

The hallway to the bedrooms upstairs.

Kathryn’s room.

The boys room.

There were some shelves left on the wall, great for decorating.

Master Bedroom.

Basement family/play room. Love the built in shelves and display cases. We filled those book shelves.

Back part of the family room, wood fireplace.

Storage under the stairs.

Laundry room.

Craft room.

Another picture of the laundry room, it is a long room.

Update on Kathryn

Kathryn is growing a lot. She has been rolling over, both ways, for the past month and half or two months. She is close to crawling now. She can push herself up on all fours but doesn’t know what to do after that yet. She wants to keep up with her brothers. Ian is a big helper with her. He loves holding and playing with her. He gives her hugs all the time.

Just this past Wednesday, I took her in for her four month check up (though she is five months, but it was the soonest they could get us in for a new patient appointment). She weighs 12 lbs and is 24 1/2 inches long. The doctor didn’t say anything about percentiles, but said she looked healthy. She also got shots and did pretty well. She didn’t even cry until she got the second shot and calmed down pretty quick.

At the same time Ian had his 5 year check up and got his kindergarten shots. He cried for awhile after, but he let the nurse give him the shots. He weighs 32 lbs and is 40 (if I remember right) inches tall.

We have tried giving Kathryn rice cereal a few times. She is excited to get the spoon in her mouth, but doesn’t get that it is food that she should swallow. She ends up spitting it out because she doesn’t know what to do with it.

She is a very happy baby and does not stay in one place long at all. She loves to have a toy to put in her mouth, in fact her foot can be found in her mouth a lot. She sleeps through the night almost all the time now, naps are another story though. I like getting a full nights sleep regularly (which hasn’t happened since before Ian was born). Jaiden has started waking up occasionally and crying for a drink of water.

Chicago- Museum of Science and Industry and Zoo

Friday morning, we woke up, ate, packed up and headed over to the Museum of Science and Industry. We waited outside for a little bit before it opened.

There was a whole line of geese crossing the parking lot to the lake.

The Museum of Science and Technology is huge. We entered in the part about space. There is a submarine on display there; Rex, Ian, Jaiden and Hayden were able to go in.

Rex, Ian and Jaiden were able to “drive” the Combine.

They had a pretty cool train exhibit.

We saw maybe a third of the Museum. You could spend several days there, but we wanted to be able to go to the Zoo before we headed home. It took us awhile to find the parking at the zoo, but we found it. The zoo is free, but parking is like $20. We saw several of the animals. The gorillas were fun to watch, it sure looked like they were cleaning up their enclosure or something. Several of them were picking up branches that had fallen. It started raining when we were there. It turned into pretty hard rain and a big thunderstorm. A lot of people were crowding into the gift shop. Rex’s mom was still in the car making phone cars, so we had her drive up to the entrance and we made a dash for the van. We were all soaked by the time we got to the car. Shortly after we got to the car, the rain let up. Kathryn loved being in the rain and getting wet. She was all smiles. I didn’t get any pictures of the zoo because the camera battery died. We headed home after the zoo.

Saturday morning, Rex’s grandparents stopped by on their way to Utah. Rex’s parents and Hayden left. We went to the Dubuque Arboretum with his grandparents. We also went to Crystal Lake Cave. That was pretty cool and cold. Kathryn got pretty cold. I didn’t think about it being underground and cold. There were some cool formations in there.

Chicago- Botanical Gardens and Planetarium

Rex’s parents and brother Hayden visited in July. We took a two day trip to Chicago. We left Thursday morning. We got to the Botanical Gardens around 10:30. They are big. We took a bus/tram ride around the gardens.

There was a cool butterfly garden. The boys kept wanting to touch the butterflies, but that wasn’t allowed.

The last part of the gardens we went through was the model train garden. It was so cool. There were model trains set up in gardens. The boys (Rex included) loved it. There was even Thomas, Percy, and James (though James was resting).

Kathryn finally decided to fall asleep.

We then headed to another part of Chicago and went to the Planetarium. We discovered that Chicago traffic is bad. We saw a couple shows at the Planetarium. I didn’t stay for all of the first one, Kathryn was tired and grumpy and I don’t think she liked the dark. She did okay in the second one, I just stood by the door and watched. They had some pretty cool exhibits. We even got to see the one that wasn’t opening to the general public until the next day.

We then headed to our hotel, the Hyatt Regency. We got a good deal on it. Our rooms were on the 8th floor and had huge windows (floor to ceiling). Ian and Jaiden were excited that our room was connected to Grandma, Grandpa and Hayden’s room. We went swimming. The water was cold. The boys did not want to go to bed. Grandpa stayed up in the room to keep an eye on Kathryn, who was sleeping.