A previous picture of the neighbors house. No more bright blue.
Back to real life- kind of
by nathanWe’re home all day today! The kids have been playing with their things like they are brand new! I guess that’s what happens when you leave for 4 days. The toys seem special again. We’re almost back to normal. We’re missing Nathan tonight. So, it’s not completely normal. He is in Iowa for a work conference.
The kids have been great. We bought a sprinkler today and played in the water this afternoon while watering the grass. I think Audrey enjoyed it the most. Ethan was wishing he had a water gun! He’s more into shooting people with water than playing in the water.
One more exciting thing about today was that I decided to see what I could do to cut our electric bill. Everything in our house, except our stove, runs on electric and we don’t have the most efficient vent system for cooling the house. This means that we have pretty large electric bills in the summer. The rest of the year isn’t really low, but not as bad. So, I decided I would line dry the clothes!
Now, I just need to finish my research on the best way to hang the clothes to avoid wrinkles. This is the first thing I’ve read. I guess I have a lot to learn about hanging out clothes.
P.S. Anyone notice anything different about the neighbor’s house?
Our 4th of July Holiday
by nathanWe headed to Chetek, WI, for an Independence Day celebration with Nana and Grandpa Fritz. We arrived on Thursday afternoon. Nathan didn’t remember what time he had said we were arriving so we took Nana by surprise when we showed up. To give her a little more time, we went for a walk to a park at one of the schools and followed that with a trip to DQ. We went back to the house by way of the Martin’s and stopped and talked with them for a while. We did a pretty good job of ruining the kid’s appetites for every supper…. oh well. We’ll just say that’s what we do on “vacation”. That evening we went to the “farm”.
Surveying the land
At the bottom of the hill, behind where the house will be.
This was a typical picture from the weekend. Audrey is trying to catch up with Ethan!
“You been farming long?”
Friday brough the excited of the big parade. Chetek takes their parade very seriously and we missed out on a good seat by not getting our lawn chairs set up two days in advance. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but we would have had to be set up pretty early for a front row seat. Audrey was too tired to stay up passed naptime, but we had fun at the park before Audrey and Mom napped and Ethan and Daddy enjoyed the parade. I think Ethan thought it was cool that Nana was in the parade!
Nana waves from the cart
Chetek marching band.
Audrey enjoys some refreshment before taking a nap. Doesn’t she look sylish?
We finished the day with a trip to Sidewinders for ice cream. The kids were too tired to stay up for fireworks so we tucked the kids in and watched the fireworks from the room. It was a great view since we were so close to the lake. Other highlights of our time in Chetek included playing with the toy truck (Audrey wanted it so badly she literally tossed Ethan out of the way to get to it), story time with Nana, fighting off bad guys in the back yard and exploring secret passageways.
The future of the Fritz family singers is in good hands
Look, they are sharing the car! The most exciting toy ever created.
Nana read a book at Ethan’s request.
You might not notice them, but there are a lot of bad guys in this yard. Ethan is taking care of them.
Ice cream from Sidewinders. A great way to enjoy a hot afternoon!
Motherhood- Expectations vs. Reality
by nathanIt all started before I got pregnant.
I thought that being pregnant would be fun and that I had visions of myself in cute maternity clothes and the only extra weight on me would be baby weight. I was going to look like this.
When I was pregnant. I didn’t look like that. I looked like this.
Not only did I not just gain weight in my belly, but I seemed to have put a lot of it on my backside. That last picture was taken less than a week before I had Audrey. I was 36w, 1d.
And then in all my dreams about bringing my baby home for the first time, I never imagined this.
One of the biggest things I’ve experienced is that parenting brings out the best and worst in me. It’s not like any stressor that I’ve encountered. In the beginning, I kept thinking that life was going to go back to normal sometime and I’d be able to get my act together. But kids don’t go away for a long time! It’s taken me three years to wrap my brain aroun the idea that I have a new “normal” now.
So much about parenting is looking forward to the next milestone- sleeping through the night, crawling, walking, eating on their own, potty training. . . It’s easy to wish away the moment you’re in right now- time never moves so slowly as when you’re listening to a crying baby or whining toddler! I’ve been looking back at some pictures of my “reality” and thinking about how much better it has been than I ever imagined. That makes up for not having the pregnancy or delivery I dreamed about! And since I’m taking a walk down memory lane, how ’bout some old pictures? These aren’t all related, but I thought they would be fun to throw in.
Mom holding Brian. He was born at 29 weeks.
Nana holding Ethan when he was 3 months old. His first trip to Chetek.
Me and Brian in “Dad’s chair”
Proof that you can learn anything on the internet
by nathanA link on how to find my soul mate showed up on my igoogle page today. If you haven’t met your soul mate, it may just be that you haven’t read the “how-to” article yet. Here it is.
