oh brother

my little 13 year old brother Jacob is here for a visit. how long? well... we don't know. so far though it has been fun. we go to the pool lots and we started watching through all the Harry Potters and then i will take him to see the last one. after that i don't really have any plans, but its summertime, you don't need plans.

 fighting in the pool

 it looks like they are playing nice, but i just told them to smile real fast for me :)

 Jacob getting ready to launch me

laundry day

today is laundry day. mountains of laundry buried our bedroom and after tripping in the dark for a few days i decided i should get that under control. so, since we are the only apartment of the sioux city Satton group without a washer and dryer, i hauled... actually Kyle hauled the giant laundry bag and overflowing laundry basket to the car and then up the stairs to Shannon and Brenan's apartment, where i will be serving my time today. since laundry doesn't take my full attention i decided i should update our lives.

we had an excellent 4th of July full of playing at the pool, delicious bar-b-que, slip 'n slide, and fireworks (of course).

we also went to Omaha last saturday. while the boys were in there meeting and out working hard, the wives went to the zoo. then we all met up and went to the water park and ended the day with dinner at buffalo wild wings.

yay for laundry day and getting things done! this is our happy life and we are glad to be living it.

we drank the great lakes

"we drank the great lakes like cold lemonade and both got stomach aches sprawled out in the shade..."

some of my favorite lyrics of Owl City's song "Hot Air Balloon"

mainly because it reminds me of Michigan and thats where we went for vacation last weekend. i finally got to see most of my family that i haven't seen since over a year ago when we got married. I love them so much and being in Michigan felt just right... so much i love... except for the one I love the most... is from my life there. the beach, the sand, the humid summer air, the sunsets, the lush green trees that wrap around everything, and most of all my family.

This is where I'm from... happiness

The sad thing is that this may have been the last trip like this because it is all falling apart and my dad and susan will probably eventually move and then that will be it.

Before we left for our adventure, this is what we were doing...

In case you don't know what "this" is... it is flood prep. church was canceled and we spent memorial weekend helping people build these sand bag walls around their houses so they wouldn't flood. it was a lot of work, but we had fun doing it.

aaand i finally pulled out my paints and got messy with finger painting again! 

25... he's a 2 boxer now!

My honey love is 25... which now means he needs 2 boxes of candles! Which we did not realize so I just "spelled out" 25.  I made fajitas and delicious homemade guacamole to go inside.

Caleb came over, of course, for dinner and the brothers "bonded" while i straightened up.

then everyone else came over for FHE (which we have on sunday because life is busy here in SD/IA/NE, also why we celebrated his birthday 4 days late) and swimming and brownies and ice-cream.

 phil + becca, shannon + brenan, jordan, richard, noah, and caleb.

 becca + phil

 miranda + kasey

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KYLE! I LOVE YOU... even if you are getting to be an old man ;)

make a wish...

moving

well... in case you didn't know, we moved. just for the summer to sioux city, Iowa... we technically live in North Sioux City, South Dakota though and our closest Wal-Mart (10 minutes) is in Nebraska. its been fun getting moved in, but journey didn't start off so well. this is how we thought we were going across the country... (minus the tow truck)

this is how we actually went across the country...

What happened? well... a blowout 20 minutes into our trip causing us to need a tow (hence the tow truck) and two new tires *ka-ching* luckily though, we have tow insurance. we make it safely down to Utah where we go to work on getting and trailer hitch put on the car so we can get a trailer and after getting the run around from Uhaul and paying an overnight fee for the hitch then finding out the largest manufacturer of hitches was right there in salt lake and could have taken 15 minutes to go pick one up ourselves and Uhaul not being able to work with our schedual we found a nice place with fantastic customer service at The Trailer Source. they took us in, got us what we needed, let us use his truck, and they even stayed way late to get it on that night! they went above and beyond to help us out and i am so grateful to them. Uhaul... the opposite. so we finally got on the road and made it to Sioux City!