Hints of spring

I am going to apologize in advance- I found the Retro Camera app for my Droid and got a bit carried away.  I love the look of these pictures though, and I didn't have to do anything but point and shoot! No further editing needed! 

The very full creek is running under our driveway once again after a quiet winter.

A pair of geese enjoying the open water. (Look closely!)

The seeds are here!

Monday with the kids

I feel so fortunate to have many Mondays off of work.  It's pretty great to have an extra day off while most people are back to the grind, and I enjoy my time with the kids so much.

Yesterday, we took our two outdoor cats, Sunny and Rosie, to the vet to be "fixed."  It seems that we may have missed the boat with Rosie, so kittens may be in our future.  We will keep you posted!

Dane wondered why our male cat needed to be "fixed" since only girl cats have kitties. I told him it was so he didn't make any girl cats have kitties. His response: "What?!? You mean he's got MAGIC in him?!?"

Rosie rode nicely on Dane's lap in the car.

We went to the cafe next to the vet's office and shared a couple of caramel rolls.

 When we got home, we played outside for a while.  This large puddle had frozen nicely overnight, so the kids decided to give the skates a try.

We also spent a lot of time playing with Dane's expanding train set.

Dane turns 5!

I can't believe I have been a Mommy for 5 years now!  Here are some pictures from Dane's robot-themed party this year.

The invitation

A cake based on this picture I found online.

Some of our "robot snacks."

Party favors

Coloring robots

Our goofy 5-year-old!

All the Anderson cousins.  It's such a privelege to be close enough to celebrate with family after living so far away!

No girlfriends!

Snowboard from Daddy and Mommy

Zach read Dane his cards.

Ellie read a few too.

Now it's time to clean the playroom to make room for all the fun new toys he got!!

Bowtie

Boots and flip flops

Baby Olive and Nora

Ending another season

With higher temps this week, the snow is disappearing from the slopes of our local ski area.  We may attempt one last outing tomorrow if time permits.

 The Cannonball was Dane's favorite run this season because it had a big jump at the bottom.  It was so big that 50% of the time he would actually not make it all the way to the top of the jump and instead would end up sliding backwards down it.  That didn't stop him from trying!

At the top of the Cannonball run was this large "cannonball" which was covered in snow by the end of the season.

This shows a bit of Nora's progress on the skis this season. Pardon the rough video as I was running backward down the hill in my snowboard boots.

Just in the nick of time...

Happy St. Patty's Day!



This Old House Tour- Main Floor

For those of you who have wanted to see some of the inside of our home, here it finally is.  Almost 1 year ago, Grandpa and Grandma moved into their new house, and we moved our things into this house.  We have made quite a few changes but still have many that we hope to make in the future.  Our house has 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms (after we added one upstairs last winter).  Part of it is over 100 years old and used to be a log cabin.  It is old, a bit uneven, and very loved!

This is our entryway/laundry room. I wish that we had a more formal entrance, but this is certainly practical.

The old bench was a school desk at the old Nora Township School down the road.  It works wonderfully for the baskets that hold all our hats and mittens and hides all our boots and shoes nicely below.

Our big old farm kitchen.  Grandpa and Grandma remodeled it about 6 years ago.  Until then, it didn't even have a dishwasher. We spend lots of time in this room!



Looking from the kitchen into the dining room.  You might notice that the door frame between the two rooms is very wide.  That is because the wall between the rooms is an old log wall from the original house.



This old kitchen cupboard came from my grandparents when they moved off their farm last spring.  It also holds many old kitchen utensils from them.  The little electric "fireplace" helps keep the kitchen warm when the winds blow.  The big sliding door to the deck lets in lots of nice light, but it gets a bit drafty in the winter.

The dining room looking into the living room.  This flowered carpet needs to be gone as soon as possible, but we haven't tackled the flooring in this house yet.  The old sewing machine came from the family that lived here before Mike's parents bought the place. Apparently it was in the house when that family bought it back in the 1950's.

Our computer hutch that looks like a pretty china cabinet when the doors are closed.

Off the dining room, there is this uninsulated front porch.  In the winter, it makes a great walk-in freezer! On my to-do list is making curtains to replace the unsightly blinds hanging from these windows.

Our recently painted living room.

Pretty old piano from my grandparents.

The main floor bathroom. We recently had all the trim boards (window, door and floor) replaced with these old trim boards Mike's dad salvaged from the house Mike and his dad grew up in before they tore it down a few years ago.  I think this trim gives it so much character, plus it has some sentimental value.

As a side note, if I may pat my own back, I sewed this curtain as well as the ones in the living room in the last 2 weeks.  I don't do much sewing, but I really like to make my own curtains so I can get exactly what I want.

The guest bedroom.  The old desk is from Mike's grandma, and the chair (and the matching one in the front porch) are from my grandparents' old house.

I'm rather slow at putting things up on the walls in this room.  It has been painted for almost 10 months now.  Note the floral carpet here as well that needs to go!

So that's the downstairs for now.  Our next big project is to redo the walls in the stairway.  Currently, they have at least 7 layers of wallpaper on them.  Stripping them would be nearly impossible, so we are looking at other options.  There are 3 bedrooms, a bathroom, and an old attic converted to a playroom/guest room up there.  All bedrooms have wallpaper that needs to come down and painting to be done.  The stairs have the same lovely floral carpet that must go, and Nora's room has some even more interesting carpet with a large pink tropical floral/fern pattern. (We call it her casino carpet!)  I wouldn't count on that update for another year, but here's hoping it might be sooner!

Hopefully the last big storm of the season...

Are you sick of seeing pictures of the snow?  Me too.  Yesterday was almost 40 degrees and we could see the snow piles shrinking.  Then a storm set in last night and lasted well into this afternoon. We didn't get much new snow, but it all blew around like crazy.

Mike standing on what should be our driveway.

Another big drift across the driveway.

Looks like we better get the snowblower out.