Before and After

For the last 3 weeks I have been working on Jonas' new room, while Joe has been working nights. I had some help from a dear friend with painting the walls. I rolled and she cut in. I hate cutting in. Then I moved on to re-doing some hand-me-down pieces of furniture I inherited over the years. They didn't match and I decided I wanted to go with a navy blue look on the furniture. I love distressed pieces and since the furniture already had age to it and it is now in a child's room, you might as well distress it! Its going to get banged up some anyway. :-) The headboard is now finished, so I thought I'd debut my masterpiece! Haha-I am no professional by any means, but I do enjoy these projects.

One of the first things we did was filled in this design with wood putty to make it "smooth". However it still has some distress to it, but you can no longer see the design. Its a nice flat surface now.

I painted tan underneath the navy. So when I sanded the edges the tan would show through. (The flash from the camera makes things look brighter than they are.)

One of my other dear friends, who shares a lot of the same tastes as me, suggested painting Jonas' name or monogram on the headboard. I LOVED the idea and thought about it some more. I purchased wood letters from H*bby L*bby and painted them red and distressed them a little. They are temporarily stuck on the headboard so I can stare at it for a few days to decide if I should permanently put them there!

What do you think? I'm open to opinions! Monogram or no monogram? (the letters would stay the monogram, we won't paint directly on the headboard because it now has a finish on it that wouldn't allow the paint to work)

I am now working on the dresser. I hope to have it finished by the weekend. I will post pictures of it when I'm done. :-)

An evening at the park

The other night Joe and his dad went to a baseball game together. Ma Barker came over and we took Jonas to the park, where we met Aunt Kim, Uncle Joel and Miss Lexi. The weather was great but the bees were out in swarms. I had never seen anything like it at this park. We played where we could and surprisingly never heard kids crying from getting stung, and we didn't get stung. It was hard acting like the bees weren't there!

Weird swing eh?

Jonas in the Choo choo!

Cheese Mom! Now can I please get down?

Lexi loves swinging!

Sucking on a Cherrio!

Fight?

No, Joe didn't get a shiner from a criminal or me. :-) He was stung by a bee last week while working in the yard. He was near an old tree stump that bees now call home. He only got stung once but had an allergic reaction. This is the second time he has been stung by a bee in the last couple years and both times the swelling has been horrible. He worked at the hospital on his side job the night he got stung. A doctor confirmed the allergic reaction and Ben*dryl helped him the next few days. He is back to normal now. :-)

Happy 8th Anniversary!

2001-Joe's graduation from the police academy

Joe and I have been married 8 years today! I can hardly believe it. We have been together for 12 years which is even more amazing! I'm so thankful for Joe. The Lord brought the right man into my life to complete me. I thank the Lord for the strong relationship and the open communication we have about everything. He is the most honest man I know and he will tell you like it is. There is no fluff. :-) Some would say I'm the same way. At times that can make for two very strong willed people having a disagreement! :-) But, we strive to do whats right and we have come to understand humbleness to keep our marriage strong. As I tear up writing this, I'm in awe of the blessings in our marriage. We have a beautiful little boy, that WE produced. He is part of our DNA! Wow! What a miracle that is. And now, we are eager to meet our Miss Ivy. She is going to amaze us as well when she enters this world. We are blessed beyond belief. Joe is a father that I never imagined. He impresses me daily as he deals with our little man. He is a rebuke to me many times. I'm so thankful he strives to do whats right and wants to lead by a godly example to our children.

I love you honey. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you.

New Milestones

My Boys

I've been told 3 times in the last week that Jonas is looking more and more like Joe. What do you think?

Jonas' new trick

We've been finding our 2 year old to be quite hilarious lately. He is talking so much and learning new things. He is climbing quite a bit and I'm waiting to find him climbing out of his crib. It hasn't happened yet. We are getting his new bedroom painted and put together. I hope to be able to move him to his big boy bed this weekend. We'll see!

One milestone I was hoping to graduate from is his egg allergy. We discovered it at 13 months when he broke out in hives and started vomiting after eating an egg for the 5th time. I had introduced eggs to him at 12 months and in a 2 week period I had given him 5 eggs. He had no sign of allergy until that 5th one. I was told that children outgrow the allergy 85% of the time by age two. Most the time the allergy is caused by a protein build up in their system. They don't have enough enzymes to break it down, therefore their body rejects it by hives and in severe cases an anaphylactic attack. So, for the last year we have avoided giving him any food that has egg as an ingredient. My grocery shopping trips became a little longer as I had to read labels on everything. A month ago I started testing the waters by giving him certain things with egg in it like breads, pastas etc...so far no reaction. I didn't want to test just an egg at home. His last reaction was far too scary to go through it again. Instead, we waited till yesterday to go for his re-testing at 2 years old. I felt sure he would be negative, but he showed a positive allergy to it again. The doctors recommendation is to still prevent all eggs including traces of it in any food item. This will hopefully give him a better chance to grow out of the allergy by not compromising his system with it at all. They will retest him at age 3. I feel for those families who deal with worse allergies or multiple food allergies. Its hard to live "normal" and not dwell on the inconvenience. I pray our little guy is "normal" at age 3. :-)

Birthdays!

My sweet dad turned 60 this year on June 22nd! My mom held a party at her house. It was so nice to have Andrea and Kris here to help celebrate his milestone. The weather had been quite hot. Thankfully the night of his party it became a little overcast with a breeze and it cooled down a little.

My dad loves to hunt. My mom found someone to make a cake with a deer head on it! It looked great!

Family picture, minus Joe. He had left to go to work at this point.

Joe's birthday is the 17th and Jonas' is July 3rd. We decided to combine their birhdays since all the family was in town and available. Here are some pictures form their party at our house. Jonas turned 2!!

Daddy helping Jonas open presents

A card from grandma and grandpa that played the B*ckyardigans song. He was so excited!

Joe with his new iced tea maker and the Sp*rts Illustrated Sta*nly Cup edition.

So behind, where to begin??

I can't believe my last post was in May! This has been a busy summer with lots of activities going on so I could post many things! For those of you who are family and like to catch up on pictures etc...I will try to make several posts.

First I'll start by saying I am 27 weeks pregnant now. It has gone by pretty fast lately. WAIT! I don't think I ever posted this....ITS A GIRL!! We had our ultrasound on June 16th. My sister was in town and was able to be there with us. That was special to both of us. I may have posted before that Joe and I both hoped for another boy. However, we feel truly blessed to even bring another child into this world and we are getting more excited about our little girl. Yes, I have been buying clothes! I started the week we found out. We had gone away for the weekend to the coast and hit some outlets. I bought several things but didn't spend more than $2.99 on one item of clothing! Everyone was having great sales!
We just recently decided on a name. She will be Ivy Louise Barker. Louise is a family name. She was my great Aunt, my grandmother's sister.

Its scary to think I had Jonas at 34 weeks and anything could happen this time around too. There is still a lot to be done! I thought Jonas would be moved to his new room by now, but we just bought paint yesterday to start decorating it. I didn't want to move him in and then move him out because of paint smell/construction. So, hopefully we can attack the project tomorrow. Joe is on the night shift and while he is gone at night I'm dying to be painting! I have two pieces of furniture to paint for Jonas' room. It will be a several step process for both pieces and I'd like to get started. I really enjoy painting furntiure and I haven't done any crafty projects in a while so I have an itch I suppose! :-)

Ok, so I'm off to explore some pictures and try to decide what to post next!