Another year of VBS has come and gone

What a great week we've had at Concordia! VBS is always the reason why I don't post much in June. I've been working, working, working! This was the easiest year I've had so far. It was my 9th VBS to lead and each year gets better and better. I'm so thankful for all the wonderful volunteers. We had over 600 volunteers and over 1300 kids registered. WOW!

Check out our highlight video!!!

28 weeks (Memorial Day weekend)

I've been so bad about taking belly shots but here's one recent one. I'm 28 weeks here and I'm in a bar. Nathan really is enjoying his resident designated driver!

Welcome to the neighborhood, Hamanns!

Today some of our best friends closed on a house right in our neighborhood! Joy and Brad live just around the corner. 2/10 of a mile, to be exact. Tonight Nathan and I walked over so we could take pictures of Brad carrying Joy over the threshold of their new home. First we had a little dinner and then moved on to a very important task. Selecting paint colors. It only took 1 repeat visit to Home Depot before Joy found the right color. Tomorrow we're watching Jayla for them while they paint the family room. It's so nice to have close friends so close by. We're excited for our baby to have a little friend just down the street to play with.


These pictures are from a Concordia birthday bash last weekend for a bunch of May birthdays. We had a great night out at Dolce.

Cars

Here's a post I'd like to dedicate to my brother in law, Daniel. He's the biggest car lover I know. Nathan's a close second. They both grew up with a solid education under the hood. They are both very talented in the mechanical department thanks to their dad, grandpa and uncle. You might have come across Daniel's blog a time or two while looking at mine. If this is the case, you already know he's quite the car buff. Well, here are a few car related experiences I've encountered lately...

Nathan and I are off on Mondays and we usually have lunch with Daniel and their mom and Larry. Monday before last it was just the 3 of us. Daniel was short on time so we decided to meet him for lunch. On our way we ran out of gas. Gosh- when's the last time that happened to me? College, maybe? I didn't even look at the gas warning but I had been out of town all weekend while Nathan had my car. I won't throw him under the bus though. He was working on my car while I was gone serving on the team for our Mother's Day STARS Women's retreat at church. I got back from the retreat on Mother's Day and we went to church and then headed straight over to my mom's for Mother's Day and her birthday. Gas was low but we had enough. Well we had enough until lunch time on Monday. We left the house and started sputtering right when we turned on to 281. We were able to coast into a shopping center where we called Daniel to our rescue. Thanks, Big B!

Here's something I enjoy while out shopping....

We saw this car in Fredericksburg. There were a TON of hot rods. They were all there for the hot rod convention. It's a '48 Chevy.

This car, also a Chevy, was in Fredericksburg at a dealership. It's brand new and made Nathan's head turn! He needs a new car desperately but I think he's got a peculiar extreme attachment to his '85 Fiero. It's a two seater. Hmmmm....2 seater plus new baby don't add up quite right in my head. He's been looking around but I think it will take a small miracle for him to part with it and get something that's more family friendly.

A Change of Scenery

Nathan and I were supposed to take a little vacation to Cancun but with all the swine flu hype and drug traffic drama AND me being pregnant, we decided it wasn't worth it. Mexico could wait for another time.

We went to Frederickburg instead. It wasn't Mexico but it was a nice, relaxing and romantic weekend with my sweet husband! We had a great time. We stayed at The Legacy Inn.
It was our first time to stay in a B&B and we loved it. The Legacy Inn is a four bedroom house with a loft. The Loft is where we stayed and it is the entire upstairs of this house. It was off of Main St. in Fredericksburg on Austin St in a nice little neighborhood. Here's the view from the upstairs front door of the loft.
The trees and flowers surrounding the house were beautiful. It was a two story house and we were the only guests. Since we were in the loft, we didn't have access to the rest of the house but we didn't need anything more.

We had a nice living room...
A gorgeous bedroom with a heavenly king size bed. The night tables were granite topped and so were the bedposts.
Our breakfast was delivered to the loft at 9:15am and it was hot and delicous!
That breakfast was actually breakfast #2.

Daniel told us about Dietz Bakery and how good it was. He told us to go early because they open at 8am and are usually sold out by 8:30. He was right! We got up early and were in line at 7:50. We had about 10 people in front of us. When the doors open we were able to smell the yummy goodness baking inside! Ahhhhh....I just love, love, love bread and all baked goodies! If you're in Fredericksburg you MUST pay an early visit to Dietz bakery. You won't be sorry.

Here's the early morning line....

We went to see ROCKBOX THEATER on Friday night- a show our mom's would absolutely love! It's very family friendly. A little on the hokey side but overall it was entertaining. I had a very annoying lady sitting next to me. She was overly eager to whoop and hollar. I'm glad she liked it, and all but come on! I don't know why it annoyed me so bad but it did. We also went to Wildseed Farms and the weather was perfect. The fields of flowers are amazing and we enjoyed our walk through the farm.

What a great weekend!

Green Thumbs

Today we spent the day outdoors and it was just what I needed! We've been wanting to work in the yard for quite some time but with the April I had that was impossible. I just finished a busy weekend of confirmation celebrations....confirming 71 young people on Saturday followed by celebrations and recognition services. This morning, I s-l-o-w-e-d things down a bit....we slept in and made a yummy breakfast of eggs, oatmeal, strawberries and bananas. After breakfast we went to Home Depot for some gardening replenishment needs. We bought some retaining wall bricks, some dirt and some tall, metal poles for Nathan's weather station. That project will be next Monday.

A long, long time ago our friend Brian gave us a sago palm he didn't want. He doesn't like sago palms and we love them! We weren't sure where we wanted to plant it so we decided to stick it in an oak barrel. It's been on our front porch for over a year and hasn't died. We finally decided it was time to get it in the ground. The fact that I'm 6 months pregnant, I didn't get to help much with the transplanting. The palm is BIG, pokey and awkward! Poor Nathan, I think he pulled his back. We (he) got it in the ground and watered it and then decided it might look really nice with a border around it and maybe some flowers.

Here's Nathan leveling the bricks. He did such a great job!


Once that project was done we tackled planting some seeds that hopefully will do well around our mailbox. It's a packet designed specifically for climbing up light posts or mail boxes. There are 4 different kinds of seed and supposedly they will bloom all year long...one for each season.
Here's the before...
Here's the after picture of planting the seeds.
We'll let you know if our flowery vines grow. It's dark because I forgot to take the after pic until just now!

After we finished the mailbox project we had just one more gardening project for the day. We needed to dig up our flower bed on the front porch. It's filled with white rocks over some black gardening cloth. We've cluttered this space with lots and lots of different potted plants and I have not been impressed with the look of it.
See what I mean? So much potential! We just worked on the half closest to the shade and planted a beautiful wisteria. We're going to guide it up a cable and across the front of our house and hopefully it will meet and intertwine with another wisteria we planted on the other side of the front porch. Here's our work in progress below.

Now, go get your hands dirty!

Too Many Choices

I've been looking at nursery ideas on line and I'm so overwhelmed. For quite some time I've been thinking about a more modern, sophisticated looking nursery. Maybe a black and white theme. I could accent with a fun color and make it look really cool. I think my crib color choice is white which is wierd because all the furniture in my house is dark wood. I've loved it forever but for my baby's room I think I want a delicate, softer look.

This is the crib I really like. Well, the one I like the best today, anyway......

Here are some bedding options I'm considering. First, the black and white. I like this because it looks chic and classy. They say that black and white is very stimulating for babies so that's also a good reason. I don't like the bed skirt very much in the second photo. I wish the stripes were thicker. The bumper is cute even though I won't use it.

Next, is a ocean/scuba theme. Nathan and I love the beach and we love diving! This would be kind of cute for our future scuba baby.....
Keeping with an under water theme, here's a cute Turtle bedding set...... This next one is an elephant theme. I love elephants!!! Even though it looks more baby-ish, it IS for a baby room and this little baby is only going to be this little once. I will always have time for modern and sophisticated later. What are your thoughts?
Keep in mind, we're not finding out if baby carmines is a he or a she. I love making things more difficult than they have to be. Really though, this is one of the surprises I knew I'd always want to have in life. I wouldn't trade it for anything even though I'm driving my mother crazy! That's alwasy fun, huh?