Our Sweet Little House Guest!

Last week, we got to keep our little 5 month old niece, Leah, for 2 days. We all had a ball! She is so happy and easy to please. The kids loved trying to make her smile and giggle and she was well entertained during her visit. As soon as she'd make a discontent sound, there was a child by her side trying to make her happy again. It was cute, and they all did really good with her and she wasn't complaining about all the attention either! I'm afraid she might become quite spoiled if she hung around for too long. We just love babies!

Friday night the older kids had a lock-in at church, so we just had Chloe and Leah to contend with. We went outside in the cooler evening hours and Leah enjoyed being strolled around by her big cousin. I don't even want to venture to guess how many miles my almost 12 year old stroller has rolled.
It has taken me a bit to blog this week. If it hasn't been one thing, it has been another. I was sick with a stomach virus over the weekend, and it ended with a migraine headache. It was a useless weekend of me laying around in bed feeling miserable. Sunday, I went to do this blog and my SD card in my camera said it needed to be formatted. Well, that is never good!!! Formatting equals erasing everything! I have no idea what happened. So, my heart kind of plummeted to my toes when I realized ALL my vacation photos were also on this SD card. I treasure the pictures I take!

Jamie and I started doing some research and found a program to download to retrieve the pictures from a damaged SD card. $29.95 later, we have our pictures (all 400 of them!!!). Lesson learned....save your darn pictures to the external hard drive as soon as you walk in the door from the vacation no matter how sleepy you are!!! I guess it gives me an excuse to get a camera card with more memory though:-) Scary!

In other blog worthy news, our house painting/flooring is COMPLETE and I continually feel humbled and blessed to be in this home of ours. I love it! It may not be much to most people, but it is a dream come true for us. Love! I'll post pictures of the final room next time. It is just the laundry room, so not exciting, but we tried to make it cute anyways by adding some personal touches.

I've also been a cooking fiend. I'm doing make-ahead freezer meals with a TON of cooking. This should save me some time, money, and dishes in the evenings and when Jamie needs to grab a bite for lunch/dinner for work. Yay! I've gotten the kids involved too, so it has been kind of fun too. My kids are eager to learn cooking skills and I'm eager to teach them so I can have some extra hands around here. I'm anxious to see how this will stretch our budget.