The Beast, Our Trampoline!

As you can tell the kids do really enjoy our little investment!

Our 15 ft trampoline, we are waiting for our playground mulch to arrive! Mario got tired of moving it to mow so this was his idea. Lay more weed control fabric and we are going to put edging around it. Whatever keeps the peace in our home, right. I can't wait until we get our new gutters next week and we finish painting the back of our house! We spend a lot of time at our home so we want to make it an enjoyable place for the family!

Back of our house

"After"

"In Process"

Our latest project has consisted of painting the back of our house this nice deep gray color. I forgot to shoot a pic of the before here but I think it would have just scared you! We had a ground cover growing in this flower bed that literally took flight and was covering our air conditioning unit! So after we killed it bought a few new plants and transplanted some of our great hostas we are ready to lay down the black weed control fabric so hopefully we will never see the ground cover again!

Mowing Buddies!

Ethan loves to get his lawn mower and mow when ever Mario mows! Looks like the boys got the job done!

Our flower beds!.

Our urns on our front porch have finally taken off! We always have good luck with the Silver Falls and Sweet Potato vines in them.

Our Japanese grasses are huge and to think we trimmed them down to the ground last winter!

Our new Hemlock seems to love the new location in our front flower bed, it has grown a lot this year!

Our flower beds are finally filling in after a cooler than normal and very rainy spring!

Ethan's favorite super hero!

A month ago I talked about Mario's Grandma Mary Lee passing away. Well today I regret to say that this morning Mario's Grandpa Joe passed away. He had a stroke last week and unfortunately his body just couldn't recover. This past month had been very hard on him because of the loss of his beloved wife, Mary Lee. He missed her so much and today they have been reunited. It is sad to see him go but I know they are together again with God. Amy

My latest craft project!

I bought these neat flower alphabet wall cards from Land of Nod and hung them in our sunroom/playroom on ribbon that I tied to these sunflower hooks I bought at a local shop. I had tried double sided tape but after a few fell I decided clothes pins were my best option. I stained the clothes pins in a walnut stain and then hot glued this neat paper on them just to give the clothes pins a different look. The kids agree they make learning the alphabet just a little more fun! I really like Land of Nod's room decor, they have a lot of really affordable stuff!

Our Amana Colonies Fun!

We have lived in Iowa for around 3 years and I had heard that the Amana Colonies was definitly worth the drive for the antique shops and food. Emma and I really liked the Red Geranium Shop. Emma is pictured by the sign. It is a fun whimsical shop with lots of neat iron accents for inside or outside your home, neat outdoor flags, candles, etc.! And of course lots of red Geraniums!

We also stopped by the Village Store Fudge Factory for the sweet tooth in us, very good! And pictured here Ethan in front of the old Warping Wheel. We went right before the flood. So I hope the buildings were not damaged by the flood. We had a good time with some friends from our church!

For a good cause!

A few weeks ago we helped our church by handing out these packages with a Bible and info to some of the surrounding neighborhoods; the kids really thought it was fun! We just put them on porches for about an hour and it was a neat experience to share with the kids and a great workout for Mario and me! Although I think Emma had more people comment on her new cool sunglasses!

Emma on her bike!

We have been so busy painting the back of our house, a deep gray, that it is so nice to just take a step back from that project and enjoy the kids! Anything to keep our minds off the devastation from our Cedar River flooding last week. We were very fortunate that our home was not flooded. But it is so hard to see all the devastation in our city. We live just a few miles from where the river flooded so it is very close to home for us. We were outside Sat. evening and we could smell the sour water when the wind would hit in a certain direction. I can't even imagine the sadness the homeowners must feel. But there were very few people that were hurt which is just amazing and everything that was destroyed can and will be rebuilt. We had a very wet and snowy winter as you can see on our blog so all the rain we have had over the last few weeks just had no place to go. The historical Paramount Theater where Emma had her dance recital was flooded. I have a pic on the blog of her standing in front of it. The good news is that neighbors are helping neighbors and this disaster has brought our community closer.

We have also been working on landscaping our back yard which is turning out to be a bigger and more expensive project than we expected. We bought the kids a 15 ft trampoline and they love it. Of course we had to get the enclosure with it but it has turned out to be a great investment! The kids seem to be in bed early these days...