Birthdays, Holidays, and House Repairs! Oh my!

Hi Friends!

My weekend has been pretty great! I have about a million things to do this week, but I wanted to put up a blog post before going to bed.

Russ and I both turned 32 last week! Russ is almost exactly 24 hours older than me and it is so fun to share birthday celebrations with him. Well, I say celebrations, but really we didn't do much for our birthdays this year.

We ended up being very practical with our gifts.

We bought a new kitchen faucet. Our old one had given us problems since the day we moved in. It leaked around the top. It leaked around the bottom. Russ was constantly having to repair it. So this week we finally picked out a new faucet and Russ installed it. We love it! I'm so glad we finally replaced it! I purposely chose a tall one so my stockpot could fit under it.

We also decided to buy a new vacuum. I know, I know...we're living on the birthday edge. Our current vacuum is several years old and losing it's suction. It just really needed to go. I ordered this one from Amazon. It is a Bissell and it had 4 1/2 stars from over 1,500 reviews. I am so excited to get it!

Friday evening, I decided to trim Chloe Jo's hair. It was getting to be a mess. I had been planning on taking her to get it trimmed, but I hate paying $20 for a child's hair cut so I just did it myself. She was so funny afterwards. She kept running her hands through it and telling me that she loves it. It's not perfect, but I'm really not that worried about it since she likes it so much.

On Saturday morning we just hung out around the house for a while. It was the perfect way to spend my birthday morning. By the way, did I mention that we had to take the back off of Chloe Jo's carseat? Girl child is getting so tall. She was actually big enough (by height and weight) to take the back off in April, but I wanted to keep it on as long as possible. Well, the 3 inches she grew this summer made taking the back off a necessity. She loves just using the booster!

I love my little family!

 Chloe Jo was sorely disappointed that we did not have any birthday cake so we decided to make cookies. I had 2 chocolate bunnies left over from Easter that hadn't been open. I put them through the food processor and used them as the chocolate chips in the cookies.

Chloe Jo loves helping me in the kitchen!

The cookies ended up looking less like chocolate chip cookies and more like oatmeal since I didn't use real chocolate chips. They tasted delicious, though!

 We ended up taking some of the cookies to a friend's house that evening.

My parents came down Saturday evening to spend the holiday with us, also. They arrived late so Chloe Jo had to go to bed soon after since we go to Bible class and worship services on Sunday. Sunday evening, our congregation had an ice cream social. Yum! We had 3 flavors of homemade ice cream, a ton of toppings, cookies and brownies. I took more of the chocolate bunny cookies we made on Saturday. My recipe made about 3 dozen so I was trying to get rid of them left and right!

Monday was spent hanging out with family at our house. My sister and her family came over and we let the kiddos play in the pool. My dad, Bro-in-law and Russ did some home repairs. We had found some dry rot on our siding so they had to rip out the siding, some of the board underneath and replace it all. We desperately need to repaint our house, but we just don't have the funds right now. Our plan is to do it in the summer. I'm going to try to do some touch ups around the house this week to hold us over until we can do the whole thing.

While Russ was waiting for caulking to dry so he could paint, he repaired part of our fence. We had a couple of slats that were broken on the bottom. Luckily, the homeowners before us left a nice pile of fence slats in the attic when they moved. Yay for repairs that don't cost anything!

While the guys worked outside, Mom and Chloe Jo did a few crafts. I had found 3 craft kits and a puzzle at the Dollar Tree last week so we got those out. Chloe Jo loves crafts! Girl after my own heart, I tell ya!

She loved her new jewelry! The multi-colored bracelet has sand in it. I may go get a few more of those. It was Chloe Jo's favorite thing we did today.

Tomorrow, Chloe Jo goes back to school and I have some shopping I need to get done. I have a few orders for the shop that need to be completed this week. Our 10th anniversary is on Thursday and we are wanting to go to The Melting Pot, but we aren't sure what we are going to do with CJ since my sister and her family are going to be out of town. Then we have a town event to go to on Saturday. I'm kind of tired just thinking about how busy we are going to be over the next few days.

I don't know what the weather is doing everywhere, but we are in the midst of severe thunderstorm warnings and a few tornado warnings (although our area has only gotten thunder and lightening so far). If you are in the area, be ready to hunker down.

Have a great week, friends!