Sunday, July 26, 2009

Our Trip

After much contemplating, I decided to make the trip, by myself with the kids, to MN. It wasn't until the morning that we were to leave that I decided to go, so once Nathan left for work in the morning, I went right to packing-packing-and more packing.

The 9-1/2 hour trip went amazingly well!!! We stopped only twice to feed the baby and potty breaks for everyone else. My kids did wonderful! For the first 3-1/2 hours before we stopped for the first time, they just read books and were content with just sitting there. After we stopped, I put in a movie in my laptop and they watched that for awhile. (I rigged my computer speakers up in the back of the van so the sound came from there and Tiernan could control it while I listened to a book on tape in the front...good idea, huh?!).

Another thing that I did and would suggest any parent do that has a long car ride with little kids, is to stock up with toys out of people's "free" box at garage sales!!! Ya know those boxes with all these misc toys from happy meals and stuff that people won't buy but everyone wants to get ride of? Well, they work out great to keep kids occupied in the car!! (One lady at a garage sale had a whole little box full of these kinds of toys and she looked at me very strange and hesitiated a little when I asked her if I could take the whole box :) Isn't the free box to get rid of though?? I think she was just taken back since most people don't want the whole free box....but to me it was a gold mine!!) Don't let them see them until they are in the car and they will have something to do for a long time!! I just kept mine in a box in the closet and before we left, I seperated the toys into 3 gallon size ziploc bags and gave each kid a bag when they needed something to do (surprisingly though, I didn't give them the bags until we were about an hour from home on the way back!! That's how good they were!!

I was ready to get out of the van when we arrived at G & G Legatts, but that I think was more because we ffollowed a tornado into town for the last hour or so of the drive. We kept hearing on the radio that we were in a tornado warnings and that they were touchdowns of the tornado only about 10 mins ahead of where we were driving. The roads were wet when we were driving but we only got a few sprinkles for a minute or so....so I was so thankful we weren't ahead of schedule or we would have had to take shelter!

The first couple days were just spent visiting with friends and family. Friday evening I took the kids to a grad party for a friend of mine's son who graduated from home school. It was so fun to see friends that I haven't seen for 2 years!! A lot of them met Ariella and Brayan for the first time!

Then on Saturday we were able to go to Nathan's sister's wedding! We welcomed Phil Falcon into the crazy Legatt family with a small ceremony and reception. Since my parents offered to watch my youngest boys, all I took with me to the wedding was Tiernan and Ariella. WOW was that different!! I felt "free"!! :) At the reception, Tiernan had so much fun playing with his cousins and Ariella was content as usual, that I felt like I was having a night out with friends or something! It was very relaxing....so thanks mom and dad!! (Pics of the wedding on the next post :)

The only thing that I would have changed about the trip (if I could have!) would be the weather!! It was FREEZING in St Cloud! It was only in the 50s when we were there and since it was almost 90 here when we left, I brought sundresses for Ariella and shorts for the boys! I thankfully packed one pair of jeans for each of the boys and they wore them every single day! I had to go to the store to get Ari a pair of pants to go under her dresses. Oh well....it was warm when we got back to NE!)


Leavin' the driveway-headed for MN!

I made Tiernan do jumping jacks on the way their at the gas stations :)




Nasty clouds in MN



Isn't that a beautiful sky line right above the trees??




Ariella talkin with Gpa Legatt



Tiernan loved playing 'hockey' with Gpa Ron's old metal game


Pretty girl


Don't ask.....


My absolute most dearest friend Laura!

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

4 Months

Happy 4 Month Birthday to my sweet, amazing daughter!! (Who, by the way, rolled from her back to her tummy last night-twice-....the night before she turned 4 months!!...where does the time go?!)

Ariella, you truly are such a blessing!!












Leah's Visit

**We currently don't have the internet (something must be wrong with the wireless connection we were using that wasn't ours :) I'm hoping it will be better soon, but if not, we will have to order it ourselves. For now, I'm sitting in my van at the library. If only we were a house or two closer to the library and I could pick up their signal from my house! I lose the signal right as I'm turning into my driveway...shucks! Anyway, I'll try to post often since I have a ton of stuff to write about, but I will have to do it when I have time to get out of my crazy house.)
My sister arrived last Saturday and left on the next Tuesday. During the time that she was here, we just hung out with our kids, went to the park, and debated back and forth as to whether or not I was traveling back with her to MN when she went. Here are a few pics from her/their visit!!
Faith and the guitar.....oh she sang some hilarious impromtu songs for us!! One was titled "What you do when you don't have a job"...haha!!!...and the other one she called "I can do everything...all at one time". So funny!! Good thing I got it on video tape!










According to these two "They are getting married". Ahem.







Ariella wasn't as excited about the 50 cent blue hair extensions Leah found at the dollar store as Faith was :)





Friday, July 17, 2009

Geo Cache

So what have we been up to? Well, the better question is what haven't we been up to?

My parents came to visit us last Thursday and the coordinated the trip with my sister so they could be at my place the same time as Leah and her kids so they could take Abi back to MN with them and let her spend a few days with G and G without anyone else! So they arrived at our place on Thursday night. It was a little different having them visit us with no moving planned!! Usually when they visit us, it's because we are moving to our next location but this time they were able to relax and just spend time with us and the kids!!

Mom and I went garage saleing on Friday and got some sweet stuff! I can't believe I haven't taken a picture of it yet, but I'm sure I will... We got a huge little tikes playground thing that most people would keep outside....well....we have it inside. :) It has 2 slides, a tunnel to crawl through and a little playhouse on the one side. We also got a bunch of games and school stuff so I was totally excited!! Had mom and dad not been there, I wouldn't have been able to get that since we needed to take all the seats out of their van to get it home. Anyway....so besides the garage sale, we basically just hung out for a few days before my sister and her family came on Saturday.

But before my sister came, Dad and I went "geo cache-ing" (not sure if that's a word...). It where people with a GPS can find "treasures" that other people place. For example, if I was signed up with the geo-cache website, I could place a little container (empty peanut butter jar, tupperware container, box, etc) with some small trinkets in it (nothing of value) and a little notepad so people can sign it, into the box. Then I'd go to the website and place the coordinates of where it was located and have people find it! You can remove stuff from the box if you want, but you have to replace it with something of equal value. Some people place a disposable camera in there for people to take a pic of themselves with and then the person who 'owns' the cache will develop the pics and put them on the web. So anyway, it's just something fun to do and people all over the world do it. I guess there's over 800,000 caches worldwide.

So when we checked to see if there were some in Seward NE, I was surprised to find several within a few miles! We found the first one fairly easy. It was in a city park, in the surrounding trees, in a hole in a tree at ground level. It was an old ammunition box with some kids toys in it. The next one was not so easy. It was called a "nano" cache, meaning that it was very small. We went to where the coordinates were, in another city park, but could not find it. We looked in the flowers, by the trees, under bricks and no cache. But now that I know where the coordinates are, I'll have to take Nathan there sometime and look a little harder :)

Mom and Dad stayed until Sunday so Abi could have some time to play with my kids before she had to leave. And boy did they play!! Complete craziness in our house for awhile with 7 childen 7 and under. But it wasn't too much different than the usually craziness in my house, just a few extra little bodies :)
Next time I'll post about Leah's visit....

And since I don't have time to tell it now....stay tuned for the story of our great adventure after Leah left!! I'll give you a hint of what it's about....it has to do with me, the kids, our van, over 9 hours, and 425 miles :)

At the next park, walking towards the coordinates.....

Since Dad didn't have his GPS with (it was in his truck), we had to walk around with his laptop and his gps thing that he keeps in the van. It's supposed to sit on your dash and it has wires and stuff coming out of it, so needless to say, it looked kinda funny with us walking around with that stuff :)

"Is it in here??" Looking for the nano cache we never did find...

Sunday, July 12, 2009

I Think We Might Have.....

........ a finger sucker............









Dontcha think??
Ariella has been preferring her two middle fingers when she's wanting something to chew on or suck on and she doesn't have a nuk available...which, by the way, she only starting taking about last week or so. Before that, she wanted nothing to do with it! She only wanted mama. She doesn't have a nuk a lot though since I prefer to nurse her, but it comes in handy in the car or at night after she's done nursing and wants to go to sleep. None of the boys sucked on their fingers or thumb, they all preferred their nuk so this is something new to us! We think it's cute though...how she finds those two fingers often now :)

P.S. Check out those gorgeous BIG blue eyes this pretty girl has!! Where does she get those?! :)

Monday, July 6, 2009

Hackers

This is just a super quick post to say SORRY to anyone who's email address was in my contact list and who got the junk email from "Me". It really wasn't me who sent it out and I don't know how people hack in to someones acct and gets their contact list, but they did and have sent emails out 3-4 times now as if I was sending them. I deleted everyone in my address book so I hope this solves the problem and you no longer get any junk mail coming from my email address. Thanks & sorry.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

4th of July!

You ready for a post with a WHOLE LOT of pictures?!?

Good, cause that's what you're gettin'!!!!

As some of you may have heard, Seward is THE place to be for the 4th of July! Everywhere you see the words Seward Nebraska, the words "4th of July city" aren't too far away. Since we've moved here, I couldn't tell you how many times people asked us if we were going to be around on the 4th b/c we wouldn't want to miss all the excitement. We made sure we'd be around and since Nathan got Friday, Saturday & Sunday off this past weekend, it made for a great time! To add to the fun, Nathan's parents drove from St Cloud to be here over the 4th and experience "Nebraska's 4th of July City!" I am just SO extremely glad that we live right in town and could walk anywhere from our house b/c parking and cars were nuts! We offered for some friends to park by our garage b/c there wasn't a single spot to park in town, it was crazy!

First things first. The absolute best part of the weekend was having all the household help of my mother-in-law! As many of you know, Mary is a "do it and get it done" kind of person so when something needs gettin' done, she does it! While she was here, she made most of the meals (they even brought some fish that they caught and we (she) fried fish!!), she cleaned my kitchen floor (a couple times), she did all the dishes, and she did all my laundry: washed, dried, folded, and put in the correct rooms! Wowzers! Thank you Mary!! I SO appreciate it!!


Mary even cleaned under my stove.....yes, under.

Wipin' down the floor

See those eggs on the griddle? Those are eggs that I didn't make! Ha!


(Okay, just realized that this picture wasn't from the weekend but of last Wednesday...oh well, it's cute so I'll leave it! :)


One of the big highlights was seeing The Wissmann Family Singers do their performance at the bandshell. They are a christian homeschooling family with 13 children and they all play instruments and all sing and they travel around the country doing performances together. (They are from Seward) They have a folksy/blue grass sound to their music and sing a lot of original songs, along with gospel and hymns. It was so neat to see them live!!
They also followed their performance on Friday evening with a musical that they created all by themselves. They titled it "Foundations of Freedoms" and it was about the founding fathers of our country and was based on all actual events and facts and quotes. It was incredible! They made all their costumes themselves and if would have seen all of the costumes and all the detail, you would be amazed!! What a blessing it was to hear the truth about our nation being found on a strong Christian belief.
I talked with the mom and dad of the Wissman family during the parade on the 4th. I introduced myself and we chatted about a half hour. She invited Nathan and I and our family to their church by Omaha so this morning we went to their small church in Millard NE. It was fun to meet some new people!
Few of the 'older' kids with their Dad on the right in the back


Some of the family, along with a few of the younger ones




It started to rain (pour!) right before the musical started. They prayed that the rain would stop and it did!! Today (at their church) we learned that the guy that was watching the radar said a big band was headed right for Seward and at the last minute, it went around Seward and then back on it's path again! Thank the Lord for answered prayer!! The pic is of some ladies wiping down the wet stage.


During the musical


"It's my FIRST 4th of July!....Do ya like my little pony on the top of my head?"


This is what usually happens when I try to take their picture.....


There's the whole clan!
On Saturday, Tiernan, Tom (Nathan's dad) and I went to the air show at the airport! It was so fun! That's always my favorite! I can never understand how the pilot remains in control of the plane when they are flipping all over the place!! The craziest thing to me is when the plane goes end over end! Yes, tail over nose and again. It's nuts! It was a lot of fun and Tiernan couldn't believe they could fly airplanes upside down!

This was a guy flying a plane who landed it on TOP of the Suburban below it. The suburban went 60 mph down the runway, the plane caught it and landed on it. It was sweet! They said that they don't know any other pilot in the world that is willing to try such a thing. After they came in the the crowd applauded, they went back out on the runway and he took off from the top of the suburban too!! 8 ft of runway! They called it the "Midwest's smallest airport"



We watched a lot of pole vaulting competitions. This guy obviously didn't make it over!
The parade started at 4pm and the boys were so excited to get some candy!! There were a lot of cars but only one band! Oh well, it was still a good time. And not too hot either! It was only about 70 and cloudy!


Brayan was content in his stroller


So was Ariella


Mary walking to the rides before the fireworks. It was misting out and heaven forbid she'd mess up her hair!!

We headed over to the carnival (which wasn't even a block from our house!) It was on the next street over! The boys went on the little rollercoaster first. Tiernan LOVED it but Caedmon hung on for dear life! I don't think he knew what it was going to do. He didn't cry or anything but we couldn't get him to crack a smile for nothing! I wish I could have got a picture of his face but they were moving too fast that I couldn't. Oh, it was so funny though :) They went on a couple more rides and then Nathan suggested we should go on one!! So Tom and Mary watched the kids while Nathan and I climbed up on the Octopus and prayed for God to protect us while this rickety old carnival ride spun us around and around and up and down! It was so fun (when I wasn't focused on my babies who wouldn't remember me if I died on this ride!) It's been a LONG time since I went on a ride (due to the face of me being pregnant almost every year!)

Getting off the ride


On the carosel


On the train

After the rides, we walked down to the elementary school to see the fireworks. They were going on in the park, but since we had already walked a couple miles to get here, we didn't feel like walking any further. We set out our blankets and waited until 10pm for them to start. The laws here are a little different than MN, fireworks--even the BIG ones--are legal and pretty much anyone who is anyone has them going off on the 4th.

The boys were SO tired! Caedmon wanted to just go home and go to bed. They were goofing off at one point and Nathan tried to threaten Caedmon by saying sternly "Do you want to sit down and watch the fireworks or go home and go to bed?!" He looks at him and says "Go home." Well, that didn't work out as planned!


Yep, that's Tom sittin' in the stroller...better than the ground!


Sweet girl all snuggled on mommy's lap


Ooooooooo, Aaaahhh!


The walk back from the fireworks was horrible!!! I mean, the weather was cool and all the kids were excellent (the two middle boys in the stroller, Ariella in the ergo on me, and Tiernan walking....he walked the WHOLE way!!) But I was SOOOOO sick of walking!! It was 11pm and we were walking 2 miles back to our place...ugh. It was exhausting! Even Tiernan admitted he was tired and that never happens!! But all in all, it was a fun filled weekend with so much to do, we didn't even see it all!!!