One year already!!!

It has been one year since we moved into our new house. Wow did time fly. One year ago on Saturday we signed all the paper work and started moving in. We are so happy in this house. The neighborhood is wonderful and the house itself is awesome -- we couldn't ask for a better set up. I think that was the best birthday present ever. We bought this house and stayed for the first night on my birthday :-)

A very productive weekend

Wow!!! We had a great weekend. The basement has been offically framed :-) Yes we have a bedroom, a playroom, a bathroom, a family room, and some storage! There are a few things left to be framed, but over all I can visualize what it will look like finished! We are very excited. We had amazing help this weekend and we can't thank them enough. Joe, Mark, uncle Dane, Cory, and Rob did an amazing job! Thanks to all of you for everything you did this weekend.

I on the other hand said I would stay away from helping out in the basement and that is what I did. On Friday I took the kids to Monkey Joe's -- it is an inflatable air place in Appleton. The kids had so much fun. They ran and jumped until they were sweating and beat red in the face. They had an awesome time. I will update pictures later.

I also started a project on my own last week.....I started painting my kitchen. I finally figured out what color I wanted and bought the paint on Tuesday. I painted a little each day and finished it yesterday. I love it. It adds a splash of color and makes the kitchen feel comforting. The color I went with is a green/blue -- it is hard to explain. I will also update a picture later so you can all see the color I chose. The color of the kitchen is almost the same color as the font color I am using on this blog update!!

Our dog, Papi went to the Wagg Inn, a doggie hotel, Friday and Saturday. This was the first time he spent the night without us at our own house. I picked him up on Saturday and he was pretty quiet. When he got out of the car he started limping -- Joe was pretty nervous. Well he didn't move all evening. He layed in the garage and on the porch the entire evening. Which is absolutely abnormal for this dog. I brought him inside and put him on his blanket and looked at his paws, well they were raw and bleeding. At the hotel they have this room full of gravel (very fine gravel). They let the dogs run around in there and play. His paws are not used to that and so it cut up his feet and that is why he was limping. Ever time he would sit down in front of us he would hold out his paw, like he was telling us to look at it, I felt so bad for him. Needless to say he hasn't moved since Saturday. He will barely walk at all. We have to force him outside to go to the bathroom. He won't eat or drink -- he has had two bowls of water since I picked him up. I am going to call the vet today to see what to do. He keeps licking his paws so they are not getting any better. I hope he gets better soon. He just isn't himself :-( That was the only downer of the weekend.

Have a great week everyone!! Check back for updated pictures later.

WOW!!!

St. Patrick's Day is always fun. It is a special day because that is the day Cameron and I left the hospital after he was born. So I always recognize it as a very memorable day. So this year we made green pancakes -- the kids thought they were so good.

This is a green pancake the kids had for dinner on

St. Patrick's Day along with their green milk.

The fantastic five Shovald's!

The cake -- it is an ice cream cake and yes they messed up his name!!

Cameron, Duke, and Sophia being silly!

Cameron and his grandpa aka as his buddy :)

Holy cow does time fly!! I have some updates to report. Here we are almost a week has passed since Cameron's 10th birthday. I was going to update the morning of his birthday, but instead I felt the need to clean up the Atlantic Ocean that Papi left on the kitchen floor. Joe gave him a big bowl of water before bed and he released it on the kitchen floor early that morning (he was whining but I thought he was just ready for someone to play -- boy was I wrong. So my plans of updating were not going to happen.

So anyway......Cameron's birthday went great. We went out to eat at Old Chicago (his choice), and we loved it. The food was great :) When dinner was over the employees brought Cameron a chocolate chip cookie with a candle on it and they had the entire restaurant sing to him. I managed to get some of it on my camera -- I didn't realize what they were going to do until they started singing so I missed the beginning. He was very excited and took it pretty well. He had his little grin on his face -- it was so cute!!! I still can't believe he is 10 years old. He now has to remember to write two numbers for his age!!

Happy 10th Birthday Cameron!!

Just Around the Corner for Boys........

That is what the title read on a note Cameron brought home yesterday from school. Okay so anyone who has been reading my posts about Cameron turning 10 knows how not excited I am. Well this only made it worse!! Yes that is right, he will be having the talk at school. The name of the video is Just Around the Corner for Boys. The letter was informing us parents about what will be going on and then telling us we can preview the video first before we join our child for the video. I can't believe he is old enough to get this lesson. I don't know that I am ready for him to go through this. But, I better get my game on because he will ask many questions -- why?? because I have told him forever if he hears something that he doesn't understand or know what it is (from friends, at school, or wherever) to ask us and we will tell him. This is something I knew he would have to do, but now --- holy crap!

Aaahhhh.....

Yes that is a sigh of relief that the snow may go away soon!!! Why you might ask??? Well it is 7:30 p.m. and the sun went down not that long ago. We had another awful snow storm yesterday and today the sun was shining and the snow was MELTING quite quickly :-) We are sooo ready for summer -- or spring for that matter!!!!

Well we are down to 5 days until Cameron hits the big 10. Each and every day he reminds me how old he is. I don't want to believe it, but it is inevitable!

And so the count down is on.....

Well things have been pretty uneventful around here. Cameron finished his first season of indoor baseball on Tuesday. They finished 8 -0, they played really well. Next week they will start another indoor season, but this time they are playing in a 12 and under league (this last one was a 10 and under league). It will be interesting... I just hope there are no 12 year olds throwing balls 60+ miles an hour at my kids head!

Sophia has been working hard at her ballet. Her recital is the weekend after Memorial Day. This is something we look forward to all year. This year we will run into something we knew eventually we would have to deal with, but not this soon. We have our first conflict...Cameron has a tournament in Kenosha the same weekend as Sophia's recital. The way we look at this is Sophia only performes one time every year and Cameron plays tons of baseball. So we are still trying to figure out what to do. We have an idea, but we have to see if it will work.

Duke is enjoying his creative class on Friday's. He also loves being in his pajamas 24 hours a day. He was very excited to learn that today was pajama day at Cameron's school so he figured he was able to stay in his pajamas as well. So the kids wore their pajamas all day!!

And so the count down is on.....Cameron will hit the double digits in exactly 9 days. I can't believe he is going to be 10 years old. It seemed like just yesterday we were figuring out how to tell our family that I was pregnant. At the time little did we know what our life would hold as a family :-) Cameron has been such an awesome big brother lately. Sophia and Duke can't wait for him to come home just to see him. He takes very good care of his younger brother and sister. It is crazy to think we will have a son who is 10............