Remembering.......

Last year around this time, our family was blessed with a vacation to Colorado. This was the first time that I've ever been to this miraculous place- that I can remember. I was in awe of the Lord's mighty hand in creation the entire time.

Nothing speaks more clearly to me of the Lord's power, might, and awesomeness than mountains. It is a visual picture to me of His majesty. If you have ever been to Colorado, then you know that mountains are all over the place.





We went to beautiful towns like Durango, Silverton, and Telluride. Another neat thing about the trip was seeing these amazing little towns in the midst of these mountains. It was like something out of a movie. I have to admit, I was a bit jealous of these people living in the middle of mountains.





By the end of it all, Uncle Durward, Aunt Debbie, Jason, and I were all ready to move up there. And then one thought crossed our minds when reality set in..........winter.

We were there in October and it was already getting very chilly. Snow was on the ground in most of the places we visited. Kaylyn got to experience snow for the first time.



By far, Telluride was the most amazing places that we visited. It has been rumored as one of the top secret places that celebs like to vacation and Oprah even has a house here. This town was breathtaking!



I was shocked at the culture in Colorado. In Texas, everything is bigger! Right? Well this is not the case in Colorado. It seems like they have portion control down. The quantity of food that they give you is just enough to get full off of.

While we were at one restaurant, Jason ordered the chicken fried steak. He asked the waitress if it was a good size piece of meat. Gotta love him- a true Texan! The waitress told him that it was 'pretty big' which pacified my husband and he went along with his order. But, when the plate arrived, we all had a good laugh. The CFS was about the size of a cheeseburger at Mc Donald's.

There are also several restaurants to choose from that are organic and healthy. The price weren't that bad either. This might be why I didn't see very many people in Colorado that were overweight.

If you ever get a chance to experience Colorado in October (or at all), I highly recommend it. We will be going back some day!

I was newly pregnant with Laney Rae and Kaylyn was 2. Our family hasn't been on too many vacations and this has to be one of my most favorite vacations ever! Partly because it was our family's first real vacation, and the other part was because I was in the middle of the mountains for the first time.

It was truly amazing. There is nothing like getting away and enjoying creation with the most precious people in your life. Vacation.......sigh. Oh, how I love vacation.

Home Stretch

We are on the home stretch in the remodeling process.

This week they made great strides in getting the exterior completely finished, painted, and a new deck on the side of the house. The outside looks brand new. I had no idea that a new coat of paint with different colors and some things here and there would make it look this good.





On the interior, the kitchen and bathrooms received cabinets! Woooohoooo! Now you can really see things taking shape.

We went with shaker style cabinets in the kitchen to achieve the farmhouse feel. There is also an island in the kitchen (black thing in the center). We are painting the cabinets white so that is why these are unfinished.







In the bathrooms, we went with a thicker shaker-type cabinet. Ours has a laundry hamper at the bottom of it which I'm very excited about.





The girl's cabinets has some apothocary drawers in the upper cabinet to organize bows and hair dillies. You can never have too much storage in a girl's bathroom. The drawers under the sinks slide out and are step stools which will make my life much easier! When the girls no longer need stools, they flip around and will serve as regular drawers.





We are thrilled with how the cabinets turned out!

The side of the house has a new deck that will get lots of use. The slab that is just in front of the deck will be painted with hop scotches, four square, and roads, and have a picket fence around it for the girls to have another play area outside.





They should be done with everything in a little less than two weeks. We can't wait! I doing a jig right now in my computer chair!

Attention all Shutterbugs!

Does this face look a little too familiar?

I know that some of you out there LOVE taking pictures. My sweet friend and creative mentor, Shauna Maness, is offering courses while she is in town from Germany this fall. This is a really great opportunity to learn some things about taking better pictures.

However, this class is not for pros. There will one offered at a later date.

I have a post about this up on my PHOTO BLOG.

Crazy Chickens and More Cows

We have quite the collection of chickens out here on the farm. They come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and hairstyles.

What do you get when you cross a chicken, fraggle rock, and Cruella Deville?

Afrotastic! She sure is a feisty one. This chick is my absolute favorite.

Having a variety of chickens makes for colorful eggs. We don't just have white eggs, or brown eggs, or green eggs (Yes, Dr. Suess is right! There are actually green eggs).

Here are some other interesting birds we have around here.

On another note, we got more cows today! Jason is working on writing up the specifics for why we are doing what we are doing. I just get to take pictures of them and look at how pretty they are. These are really good-looking cows.

Farmhouse Facelift, Part II

It is hard to believe that we've been in the process of remodeling for almost exactly 3 months. We started the second week of July.

A lot of the nuts and bolts of the house needed to be redone, rewired, and repaired. The lack of updates was primarily because there wasn't a lot that could be visibly seen that was being done like new wiring, new plumbing, and CHA.

When everything is said and done, the house will pretty much be a brand new house within its cute farmhouse shell. We kept the original wood ceiling and doors.

And although this is taking a lot longer than we anticipated, we are already thrilled with the way things look. You can see in some of the pictures of the exterior the new color that we chose.

The front porch still needs some repairs and some paint.

On the inside, we are waiting on cabinets, flooring, and all of the finishing touches (light fixtures and plumbing fixtures). We don't have an exact move in date, but we are thinking that by the end of October (THIS MONTH!!!!) we should be in our home. It all depends on how fast we get our cabinets and how fast they get the bathrooms and kitchen completed after

Here is how the house looked last week.

Blogging Made Simple

I love reading blogs.

I love reading about my favorite people along with their thoughts, experiences, creativity, humor, insight, and wisdom. So I find myself at least once a day clicking on 'My Peeps' links to read the latest in your lives.

Before I click on your page I get excited wondering if there is anything new, exciting, thought-provoking, or random in your life. When I discover that you have updated your blog with a new post I almost do a cheer followed by a cartwheel! It is really that exciting for me.

What can I say? I have to gift of being a relational person. I love people!

To simplify my blogging, I've decided to subscribe to a blog tracker that will let me know when you have updated your blogs. This will not only save me LOTS OF TIME, it will save me LOTS OF HEARTACHE. What I don't know won't heart me. Hello, non-updaters! But, I can still cheer for those of you who post new things.

I'm really excited about this. I invented this in my head and thought that it would be awesome to be able to keep up with your favorite blogs without having to click on them everyday!

If you are interested, go to TECHNORATI to do the same.

There may be others out there, but this is the one that I came across first.

Chickens Don't Smile

I don't know if you knew this about Kaylyn, but she has the BIGGEST imagination. She is always pretending something. On a normal day in the Kramer home, she assigns us characters for the day. And we have to refer to each other as these characters until she either forgets or decides she wants to be something else.

Her most popular characters of choice are:

Reese and Mrs. Ashley (she is Reese, I'm Ms. Ashley)
Dawn and Mrs. Melodi
Hayden and Honey
Wendy and Peter Pan
Lady Girl and Checker (this last one is referring to a customer and a checker outer at the store...ha!)

I love her mind. Sometimes I have to pray really really hard that I can just understand where her mind goes throughout the day.

The other day I was in the kitchen washing dishes. I kept hearing Kaylyn cluck like a chicken. It went on for a little while before I went to visit the blonde little hen.

I went into the bathroom and found this.

She was sitting in our laundry basket clucking away and waving her.

I asked her what she was doing and she said,"Sorry mom, chickens don't talk."

"Oh, you are a chicken. Do you have some eggs under there that you are sitting on?" I said.

The little blonde chicken proceeded to nod her head because apparently chickens CAN nod. They just can't talk. I asked her if she could get out of the nest for just a second so I could take pictures of her first batch of eggs.

So, she showed me this.

Hair bows! I started clapping and laughing as any enthusiastic mother would. I thought she would pretend she had invisible eggs, but she actually had 'eggs'. What good would it be to pretend you were a chicken without pretend eggs?

Then, I asked her if she could smile and take a picture and she informs me,"Mommy, chickens don't smile."

So, she did this!

I love her little imagination. You just never know what kind of an adventure you will find yourself on!

Laney Rae is 6 months!

Our precious baby is 6 months old! I can't believe it. I think I said that when she turned 5 months old. I couldn't believe Laney Rae was 5 months old already.

Wow! You would think that I would know by now that children grow up in what seems like overnight. I guess what makes it even more apparent this time around is that I now have two precious ones and I can still see the 'baby' that Kaylyn used to be now that Laney Rae is here. Although, they will always be my babies.

Laney Rae has the cutest two front teeth on the bottom. She smiles all of the time so we get to see them quite frequently. Her voice is scratchy. I think it is adorable.

She LOVES to eat. This is new to us as parents. But, when I sit her in the bouncy seat (the feeding chair) she starts convulsing and giggling. Hilarious!

When most people see her, the first thing they say is,"Would you look at those legs?" I love that she has cute little baby rolls.

She hasn't mastered sitting up on her own yet. And crawling looks a little bit like a seal chained to a tree not making any progression forward. But, she is trying.

At least 10 times a day Jason and I have this conversation. One of us is holding her and the other is looking at her and the one looking at her will say,"She is so cute." And the other with say,"I know. She is the cutest thing." And then we just smile and nod.

Kaylyn is into 'babysitting' Laney Rae! I will go outside to water the plants or go into another room. And Kaylyn will ask if she can 'babysit' Laney Rae. Yesterday she asked me if I could leave and go to the store so she could babysit for me.

Laney Rae and I are usually up in the morning before Kaylyn wakes up. When Kaylyn gets out of bed she runs into wherever we are and right up to Laney Rae to kiss her and snuggle. It is precious.

One word sums her up.....sweet!