Easter 2012

One of the things I love about my kids being so little is that when we have to improvise to celebrate holidays, they don't know the difference.  With Ryan having to work Saturday morning, that meant that the Easter Bunny couldn't come till later.  Then the weather was kind of nasty so he also had to hide everything in the house.  We decorated the eggs the night before with Nolan (Shelby went to sleep early) so we just had to distract the kids long enough for the Easter Bunny to put candy in the basket, hide them, and hide the eggs.

The Easter Bunny "made a messy" in our living room

Picking up the mess

Nolan definitely picked up more eggs than Shelby did

That is only because Shelby figured out
there were jelly beans in the eggs so
she took a few breaks to eat

Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Eggs

YUM!!!

Another one of Shelby's creative outfits
but at least it was all pink

Our eggs.  Originally we each did 4
but Nolan redid all of mine and Ryan's eggs

Looking for his basket

Found It!

Pretty happy about a basket of candy that is all his

Hmmmm....what to eat next.....

We got her to look at the camera!

Look!  More jelly beans!

Ryan's basket

My basket

Easter Outfits

Random Stuff

One of the many projects we wanted to get done this year was building a bed.  We used some of our tax return last year to get a nice, new, king size mattress.  This was great but we didn't have a frame for it.  We finally had some extra time at the beginning of this year to get it done so we just had to figure out what we wanted it to look like.  As we were looking through a bunch of different plans, I found a platform bead that had a headboard that I really liked.  I wasn't really a fan of the platform part of it so Ryan and Pat came up with the design for the rest of the bed.

The bed with the mattress in it
comes up to my belly button

Ryan and Pat did most of the construction in Pat's garage and then we brought it over to our house.  We put our mattress in Shelby's room for almost 2 weeks while we did some final sanding and then 2 coats of black stain.  The headboard is particularly glossy black.  I also have plenty of room for storage under the bed so I will eventually make custom curtains for around the bottom.  I also like that it matches the bedspread I made Ryan for Christmas.

In late April we had a crazy storm come through North Platte.  We had rain, hail, thunder, lightening, high winds, and at least 2 tornadoes that touched down outside of town by the interstate.  This was the first time that we've had hail during the day when Nolan was awake to see it and he thought it was pretty cool.  Some places got golf ball sized hail but the biggest we saw at our house was large marble sized.  After the storm passed we went to take a look outside and it almost looked like it had snowed.

Our front porch with all the hail in the yard

New pond under our swings

Our Garden Pond

Marble Sized Hail

Nolan collected several hands full
of hail to play with

Clouds moving off

Our neighbor around the corner's yard

Flooding on the street just south of us

 After the storm we realized that some water had gotten into the house through the window in our extra bedroom.  We found out that when they put in the storm windows they didn't put in any weep holes so the water would collect in the window and then rot out the wood.  This obviously led to us having a wet floor.  Most of the stuff in the room didn't get wet because it was in plastic containers or up off the floor.  However, I discovered that all the letters and cards that people had sent me over the years had been in a file folder on the floor and some of them were pretty wet.  I set up a clothesline through my house and dried them that way.  I think I filled the clothesline 4 times before I got everything dry.

Letters drying in the kitchen and into the dining room

Letters from dining room to living room

Living room to dining room on left and up the stair on the right

Up the stairs and into the master bedroom

In the master bedroom

  Fortunately everything dried fairly well and their were only one or two things that I can't completely read anymore.  As a result of the water damage we got a new window and new carpet in the extra bedroom.  It has since been converted into the guest room and library.

Entrance and bookshelves in library.
There is also a small bookshelf just to the left of the door.

Nolan relaxing on the guest bed

Pat and Bobbie gave us the bed so the bottom is a futon that can be pulled up into a little couch if we want. Nolan loves this room almost as much as I do.  I particularly enjoy sitting in the wing-back chair with just the lamp on and a good book to keep me company.  Nolan and Shelby both like to play on the top bunk and the fact that it has Cars bedding makes Nolan love it even more.  My only problem now is that I have a pile of books sitting on that granite coffee table and I'm all out of shelf space.  I'm gonna have to reorganize again or I might get a couple more bookends and leave them on the coffee table.

Anniversary #4 Christmas 2011 and New Years

We celebrated our 4th Anniversary last year.  We were able to go out on a date on the 21st which was nice.  We tried a new Chinese restaurant in town, which ended up not being great but we had to try eventually.  Then we went out to Cody Park and walked around the Winter Wonderland Display and drank hot chocolate.  It even snowed on us just a little bit.

The Christmas Season was a flurry of activity for us last year but I somehow managed to get all our Christmas shopping done early on.  That was nice since it left plenty of time for us to just enjoy the season.  The kids loved the Christmas tree and all the decorations and were pretty good about not taking all the ornaments off the tree.  Nolan also really enjoyed doing the advent calenders and would have done them all at once if we let him.  He particularly liked the family tree advent and would repeat all the names.  We also took the kids out to Cody Park and went on a wagon ride to look at the Winter Wonderland Display.  Then we got hot chocolate and cookies.

Nolan and Shelby in their Christmas clothes

 This Christmas we decided to add a new tradition for our family, although it is not a new one for the Lowe family.  Ryan's family didn't have a lot of traditions so we use a lot of Lowe traditions.  This year we decided that we would put together all the fixings for a nice Christmas dinner and then anonymously leave it on someones porch.  We asked the Bishop for the name of a family in the ward he thought could use it and then we had fun trying to sneak up to a trailer in a trailer park and get away clean.  Fortunately I have a lot of practice doing such things so we succeeded.  We also took part in a ward tradition they have here.  They  put up a Christmas tree with paper ornaments and on the back is written a child's gender, age, and what they need, i.e. a size 6 dress.  We took 3 this year and got some nice things for some kids who needed them.

Finally got them to smile
even if they weren't both looking at the camera

 With Christmas being on Sunday this year, we had to adjust the traditional Christmas morning schedule especially since my kids aren't yet old enough to get up at 3am to open presents.  We decided that it just wasn't going to be plausible to open presents before Sacrament meeting at 10am, so we decided to do Christmas afterwards.  It was pretty easy since the kids are still too young to know the difference as to whether Santa came in the middle of the night or the middle of the day.

Our Christmas Tree

 Right after church I took a couple of pictures of the kids (see above) since I knew as soon as they got into their presents and toys I wouldn't have another chance.  Ryan then took the kids downstairs and distracted them for about 10 minutes while Santa delivered the presents.

Santa Presents

Stocking hung by the staircase with care

 Both kids were able to figure out pretty quickly which presents under the tree were theirs and they liked what Santa left them.  They were also pretty excited about what they found in their stockings.

Shelby's 2nd baby
and one of my favorite pictures

Nolan's new pal Woody

 We kept the present opening moving pretty quick so the kids wouldn't get too bored waiting so it didn't take long to get all the presents opened.  Both kids got a pretty good haul.

Nolan's Haul

Shelby's Haul.  She was happy with what she got
but she really didn't want her picture taken.
It was about nap time.

Ryan's Haul

My Haul

 As soon as the presents were opened we let the kids dig a little deeper into their stockings were they of course found a pretty good stash of candy which had to be eaten.  Both kids just dug right in.  I'm not sure they ate anything really healthy until supper at Pat and Bobbie's house, but hey, that's what Christmas is for right?!

Shelby stripped down for candy eating

 We went out to Pat and Bobbies for the rest of the day and for Christmas Supper.

This year we had a rather quite New Year.  We were invited to a big party out at the Odle's home since our friends Adam and Brooke Odle were out here visiting their family for the holidays.  We thought about going but decided we just didn't want to deal with all the noise and people this year so we stayed home and had chili and cinnamon roles and watched movies and ate crackers and cheese and drank more "beer" (soda) than we probably really should have.  I think all in all we tend to prefer a quieter New Years celebration.  It seems a lot less stressful than going out to parties and having to deal with grouchy, tired children.

Shelby Turns 1

We have decided that with Shelby's birthday falling in December right in the middle of all of our Christmas stuff, that it is going to be very important to keep her birthday as separate from Christmas as possible and that includes in the blog.  I figure if we keep it separate, then she won't grow up feeling like she got jipped.  So for at least one day, we take a break from all things Christmas and focus just on Shelby.

Since it was her first birthday, we went ahead and invited grandma and grandpa Johnston to come.  They had been in Lincoln for Nolan's 1st birthday so we figured it was fair.  For Shelby's cake we did Nighttime Bear with marshmallows for his cloud and smarties for his pillow.

Shelby's Cake

Shelby was still young enough that she had no idea what to do with the lit candle on her cake but Nolan did so he took care of it for her.

Blowing out the candle

 Shelby didn't have a problem figuring out how to open presents.  She got that figured out quick and was just ripping into them.

Opening her first present

Already trying to put her dress on

Next present and she's already forgotten about the first

Nolan showing Shelby's new church shoes

Shelby's bows.  This was the present from Nolan
so he felt the need to help open it

Shelby's 1st Baby

It must be instinct because she already has the motherly quality

Once she opened the baby she didn't care about her other presents

New tights

All in all I think Shelby had a fun first birthday.  The funny part was that she only wanted to eat the ice cream so I don't know if she ate any cake at all at least not until the next day.