July 2014

Vance and I had been SHARING a dresser for the past five years. This is a first world problem! So we bought a dresser from IKEA, assembled it, and then Vance stained and varnished it. Actually, Vance did it all! Now we don't have to share any longer. Wahoo. It is nice to have extra space:)

We went to Omaha for the Fourth of July and spent a few days there. This picture, I believe, was taken at a rest stop. Lincoln loved climbing that tree. Just like his Uncle Joe! My brother has always loved climbing trees. He doesn't seem to be afraid of heights, or at least not when he is climbing trees. Even as a very young child, my brother Joe would climb much higher than most adults comfortably would!

Lauren, Lincoln, Miles, Preston, Avely, Brynn, Kayla, Miles, and Ellie. Jeremy and Janessa and their kids (Kayla, Avely, and Preston) came down to Omaha as well to visit Scott, Rachel and their family. This morning we went to this park. I remember it being about 80 degrees and windy. I remember Kayla saying, "Oooh, it's cold..." Their family had just moved from Miami, Florida to the Minneapolis area. So even in Omaha's 80 degrees, it seemed chilly:)

We also enjoyed a day at the Omaha Zoo. 

Scott and Rachel had a great slip n slide in their backyard. The kids loved it. Lincoln was really hesitant to go down on it. He watched the other kids for a long time, and then got the courage up to go down. Then he went head first on his belly. So proud.

My Lauren..... I loved that orangey-pink outfit on her. She was still one then and it looked so cute.

Trips can be so fun, and so tiring.

Lauren clearly wasn't happy about the kiss. But how sweet?!

Last summer's HUGE project was fixing our deck, and quite a bit of landscaping, adding bushes, flowers, etc. When this picture was taken, we had started working on the deck. There was a huge hole in the deck when we bought this home that we didn't fix last summer. The previous owners had a hot tub, and took it with them when the left. So Vance figured how to make supports underneath the deck. His mechanical engineering degrees really come in handy around here! Some of the spindles on the deck were painted white. We took each one out, and sanded them ALL!! It was a huge and tedious project. But I'm glad we did it and I don't think we'll have to do it again. Just the restaining every couple of years. Now we have a beautiful, large deck and we are so excited to use it this coming summer.

One thing we love to do is go on walks, runs, bike rides on the trails right next to our home. We are so blessed to have such close access to well maintained trails that never end.