I won!!

YAY! I never win ANYTHING.

But I won that contest I posted about last week.

It's a "Tot Tote" from Tweetie Pie Baby.
http://www.tweetiepiebaby.com/content-product_info/product_id-1864/hands_free_unique_fitted_tot_tote_carrier.html

SO COOL! :)

I can't wait to get it! I get to specify my color/design, and I think I'm going to pick the same design as shown in the photo on the Tweetie Pie website.

I'm so excited. :)

Owen's Morning At the Pumpkin Patch

Today Owen's preschool went to the high school FFA sponsored pumpkin patch! Of course I went along to take pictures! They got to pet the animals (which Owen was too afraid of!), pick out a pumpkin, and play games (which Owen was too shy at first but soon warmed up!).

It was lots of fun, and I know Owen enjoyed himself even though he was pretty shy. However, I think Owen has a whole different side to him at school then I thought he did! He's a goofy guy at home, but that's in the comfort of his home and usually when we go anywhere else he's really shy. However a couple high schoolers came up to me and told me how much of a silly guy Owen is. Then I asked his teacher if he's shy in class and she said noooooooo not at all. Uh oh! I hope he's not getting into trouble by being the class clown! haha
I told them that it's only natural that he'd be a goof ball, since he was born on April Fools day and all!

Family Photos!

Two posts in one night...phew I'm on a roll.

I wanted to post a special thanks to our friend Joy who took our family photos last weekend. They turned out great!
She has her photography site linked on her blog, which is public, so I assume I can link to it from here as well.

For family and friends who want to see our photos, or request one for Christmas - here they are!
http://albums.phanfare.com/4944566/2886904

Thanks Joy!

~Bethany

The Boys' soccer photos

I finally got both boys' soccer photos back! yay!

I thought they turned out pretty cute, although I liked the pictures from the first year Alex did soccer better. They took the pictures actually outside in front of a real field and grass with those. These ones were all done in front of backdrops.

Here they are!

Can I just say how glad I am that soccer season is done with, for now! I needed a break! :)

Fun new blogging site with GIVEAWAYS!

I discovered this fun blogging site called "The Secret is in the Sauce". (see my new little graphic on the side bar?)
http://thesecretisinthesauce.blogspot.com
It's dedicated to blogs everywhere and generating traffic to your blog and comments as well.

It's very cool. :)

They also have awesome giveaways, like, all of the time. Here is the link to today's contest:
http://thesecretisinthesauce.blogspot.com/2008/10/saturday-spotlight_17.html

Today's contest giveaway is a baby sling, or a "Tot Tote" from their featured blog of the day:
http://www.tweetiepiebaby.com/
Very cute site, very cute baby/kid things. Go check it out!

I never win anything, but I'd love to at least try to win this! I love slings. I'm addicted to them. haha

~Bethany

The "B" Family Extreme Home Makeover - Dining Room

I realized I hadn't put pictures up yet of our finished dining room with the new flooring! So I took some quickly today, just ignore the stacks of boxes of flooring in front of the fireplace in the background.
I also don't have any before pictures, or I didn't feel like searching through all my pictures again for a suitable before picture. haha
Also, Owen came home from preschool today with a super cute fireman's hat. His class took a field trip to the fire station today! So I couldn't resist pictures of it, and I even got Lady in on the action too!


~Bethany

Still Sick....

I don't have any trophy/pizza party pictures up yet because well Alex ended up getting sick after all and had to miss his last soccer game and trophy party.
I felt horrible about it, but he crashed on his bed after school that day so I didn't feel right about waking him up to go play in a soccer game AND he had a fever. I couldn't take him to the soccer game or the pizza party around all those other kids when he had a fever...besides the fact that he was miserable and not feeling well at all.

So we do have Alex's trophy (thanks Sarah!) but I haven't gotten pictures yet of Alex and Brayden posing with their trophies and medals. I will when Alex is feeling better.

Today is his day two of missing school, and if this is anything like his brothers' cold/flu then he has another 2-3 days to go. Uggh!

That also means he's missing his first day of German language club today! Shoot!

On another note, we're getting back Brayden's soccer pictures this evening so I should have those scanned and posted tonight or tomorrow here on the blog! He's getting his school pictures today as well (another thing Alex is missing) however since a friend of ours (thanks Joy!) is taking our family pictures this weekend hopefully, we'll have some family pictures (finally!) and more to share with everyone soon.

Think get well thoughts for us!!

~Bethany

Soccer, Sickness, and Home Remodel Updates

Wow I'm sure glad soccer season is almost over!

Brayden had his last game last week. I of course forgot the camera to take pictures at his trophy party though. aaack! I plan to take a picture of him with his trophy later this week though.

Alex had the "Apple Cup" soccer tournament this weekend and they did very well! No losses, just one tie. He got a blue ribbon medal. I'm not sure if that means they placed first in their age division or if all teams got one?
His last game is today (Tuesday) and his trophy party is tonight. I'll have both Alex and Brayden pose with their trophies and medals for my next blog entry.

The floors are also coming along. Yay! Billy now has the dining room done. All that is left is the two bedrooms, the master bedroom (which is the boys' bedroom) and the guest room/office. With as much as he's been getting done, I think he can get one room done a weekend. So just a couple more weeks until we're done!
My front porch is taken over with a saw, carpet, and lots of boxes of flooring right now so we can't even use our front door! I'll be happy when that mess is all cleaned up too!
Now I've just been getting used to cleaning wood floors. Boy does it get messy fast! I think it doesn't help that I don't have a good sweeping system in place yet. My little old broom doesn't work so well. I'm thinking I need an electronic sweeper for quick crumb messes that pop up everywhere. :)

We're also all getting over some kind of bug. Billy and Owen haven't got sick yet. Which is odd because Billy always gets whatever is going around, and usually worse then the others!
So far in the children, Brayden and Billy Jr, it manifests as fevers...for five days. Uggh Not really any other symptoms except maybe some cold-like symptoms such as runny nose/cough although Brayden just had the fevers and was achy and miserable looking. He missed four days of school. uggh Baby Billy is just now over his five days of fevers but has a horrid runny goobery nose right now. Just thought I'd share that. haha Alex is starting to get it now too! He's looking pretty miserable and had a low grade fever of 100.8 last night while he was sleeping. His temperature during the day is in the low 99's....so not officially a fever, but a little high? Unless that's his normal body temp? I hope he doesn't get sick! He has a lot going on! His trophy party being tonight, and on Thursday he has his first day of German language club that he was so excited to sign up for!
As for me, I didn't get the fevers thankfully (fevers in pregnancy is not a good thing), however I got a horrid cough that I think almost turned into something like bronchitis. It was horrible. I think I had a sinus infection at first, the pain in my face was awful but then it went away and my cough went almost away. Almost two weeks later though it was back, the cough, with a vengeance. uggh I'm just now starting to get over my cough again. Here's to hoping it doesn't come back again in another week!

So that's about all that's been going on here lately! I hope things start getting back to "normal" once these colds go away, and soccer season ends, and the floors are done. Yay!

I can't believe it's halfway through October already...where has the time gone?!

~Bethany

The "B" Family Extreme Home Makeover - Phase One

Well we've started! Yay!
It seems like we've been talking about these changes for years now and it was never going to get done.

However we finally found our flooring and Billy started laying the new wood laminate flooring this last weekend. It takes a lot more work then we thought!
Over the weekend he got almost all of the living room done...just about 3' left.

We still have the dining room and two bedrooms to do (the master bedroom which is the three oldest boys' bedroom, and the "guest" bedroom/office).

Here are the before and after pictures...and I apologize for my before pictures! I didn't take any before we tore up the carpet, so I had to piece together some old photos I had on hand that showed the living carpet the way it was. If you can't tell from the pictures, it was supposed to be a white carpet, but it's at least 25 years old and has been through several families. So it was more like a gray-white with black spots/stains here and there. aaaack I'm SOOOOOO glad to be rid of it!

I'll post the other rooms as we finish them.Phase two will be painting those horrid fake wood paneling walls you see in the background. We chose to do our flooring before painting the walls because the floor was priority as far as how badly it was needed. I couldn't live another year on those carpets! Uggh
So Phase two will probably be next summer's project. :)

~Bethany

Before:After:Before:After:Before:After:

Falling Behind...

Where did time go?

Anyway, I have some soccer pictures of Brayden finally that I thought I had already put on the page, apparently not though!

He loves soccer and is doing really good. He usually gets a goal per game, lately TWO goals a game!
However he's really sick right now so he's missed a practice and his last game. :( He only has two games left for the season!

Alex is loving soccer too and doing good. He made his first ever in-game goal also! YAY!

We'll be doing soccer again for Brayden and Alex this spring. I'm not sure about Owen yet, not sure I can handle THREE in soccer!

Let's see any other new news....
Well Billy has started classes so we're back to crazy hectic evenings Mon-Thursdays although his schedule is a lot better this year.

Owen also started Preschool (his 2nd year in preschool) but I forgot to put up his back to school picture! So here it is....I'm halfway through my pregnancy now, yay! The tests and ultrasounds are all coming back totally normal! So it looks like a healthy baby.....surprise. haha On Christmas I'll do a post on the big gender surprise reveal!Also we're another step closer to getting our horrible carpet all torn out and new wood laminate flooring put in. We have the flooring picked out, the money for it, just have to pay for it and order it....and then install it. *sigh*

BUT I'll be posting before and after pix as we go through the process. We're doing almost the entire main floor with the laminate flooring...the living room, dining room, and bedrooms. We're not doing the kitchen or laundry room/bathrooms. We'll just leave the linoleum in tact, it's in good shape. And then later we'll look into tile for those areas with most likely heavy water spillage. ;)

And finally, my birthday is coming up, October 6th. *sigh* 27 seems SO old to me! WHERE does time go?!

That's about it! I hope next I post is with pictures of our new floor!