Garage Sale!

I know that I told you in my last post that we had a garage sale last week. Well my neighbors Kara and Jason had a garage sale that weekend. Well I found a lot of treasures at their sale! Look at this cute Vera Bradley bag that I got for $5!

I'm so excited that I can use it for a diaper bag. There are three wholes for three sippies!

Kara has cute style and I found this shirt for 50 cents! I just love the color!

Kara has made this wreath that matches perfectly on my blue door. She has one on her door that I just love!

She also made this fall wreath!

Kara used to work at a movie store so she was selling a bunch of Disney movies for $1. I bought a few more than these, but we have been watching Disney movies a lot. The kids haven't seen most of them before.

Then they were selling a box of Christmas lights. You can always use these. So I know that I had a garage sale to get rid of things and then I found more things to add to my collection. Kara must have thought it was so funny how I kept coming back for more things. I might have been their best customer! Thanks Kara!

This Week and Last Week At A Glance

Swim lessons started last week. Here are all the kids together on the first day and then they test them and put them in three different level groups.

Avielle and Anderson are really enjoying them!

The 2nd lesson Avi and Anderson were put in the same class with their buddy Bella.

Here is Ellie and Chevy watching the kids

On Thursday and Friday we had the garage sale. My parent's watched Ellie and Avi on Thursday for the day and then my sister took Avi and Anderson to the Jelly Belly Factory for the morning on Friday. They always enjoy hanging with their Auntie Jamie!

Here are Anderson and Bella enjoying their time cooling off during the garage sale.

Here is all the lovely stuff!

This is me, Barclay, and Kelli enjoying our time at the garage sale! Kelli took the picture. She has talent!

Good News!

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers for my sister and brother-in-law. Their meeting with the birth parents went really well. My sister described them as very young and they had a lot of fun talking with them. The birth father has already signed his rights off and the birth mother sounds like this is her best decision to give the baby a better home.
My sister told them that they would keep the name Caden that the birth parents chose for the baby and the birth mother cried, because she thought that was so special. After their meeting together the counselor talked with the birth parents about how it went and they asked about my sister and brother-in-law's tattoos. It turns out the birth parents both thought the tattoos were really cool. Go figure!
One more thing, the birth parents are not a couple that is together, so they chose Jamie and Chris separately out of all those books. Isn't that neat that they were both their #1 choice.
Well I will let you know when little Caden is born. It is any day now!

PRAYER!

I'm asking for prayer for my sister and brother-in-law. They have been trying to become parent's for the last two years. They have gone through a lot! They received a call on Friday from their agency saying that they have been chosen by a birth family to have their child. The child is due Aug. 3rd! They are meeting with the birth parent's today at 1:00. Could you please pray that both groups would have a peace about the adoption? I'm so excited for them and little Caden. I will give more detail later, but right now I'm asking for your prayers for both Jamie, Chris, Caden, and the birth family!

Garden

Here is my garden! I have learned a lot so far and have enjoyed each day going to see what is growing. I made a mistake and put pumpkins in my garden. I guess I wasn't thinking about how big pumpkins get and how they need a lot of room. As you can see from the picture the pumpkins are getting out of hand and are climbing up the fence and out of the gate. It's is so funny when you plant your garden the plants are so small and then they just get so big!!!!

Green Peppers

Zucchini

Pumpkin

Tomatoes

Reunion and 65th Anniversary

This past weekend we had the Lewis family reunion and my grandparent's 65th Wedding Anniversary. Lets just say it was an extremely busy weekend! I will post more pictures of the reunion. Our friend Vince took on the difficult task to take family pictures of everyone. I'll post those later.

Here is Avielle with Grammie or as she calls her GG. GG called the other day and asked if Avielle could come over and make an ice cream cake. Avi just loves spending time with her GG.

Here are the first cousins from the family reunion and parents.

These pictures are all from the Anniversary party. My mom and aunt always throw such beautiful parties, so I thought I would show how they decorated and the yummy food.

These bags were given to the guests. Inside them were a loaf of zucchini bread and homemade strawberry jam.

Look at these beautiful colors of vintage tomatoes.

I just love the fruit bouquet!

They had many trays of different cheese with labels that were ceramic. I thought that was a really neat touch.

This is the yummy fruit parfait

I love the colors that summer gives us!

Sweet Surprise!

Look at my new SHOES!

I got these beauties from a close friend named Kelli.

A few weeks ago I got a call from my friend telling me she had a surprise for me. I didn't know what it could possible be and then she told me that she had a gift certificate waiting for me at Runner's Edge in Libertyville. She told me to go get fitted for new running shoes.

I just couldn't believe the kindness and thoughtfulness that she had shown me. For months I have been talking about getting new running shoes. The ones I had were Nike Shocks which are not good for long distances and they were over two years old. If you are a regular runner you are only supposed to run in your shoes for 6 months. Yes, I ran a half marathon in these Shocks and I was still running in them!

I had such a fun experience at Runner's Edge. They told me to walk on a treadmill and then they studied my walk. The salesman told me I have a slight over pro-nation. Then he checked my shoes size, which is important after having two children! Do you know your feet can grow with pregnancy? Okay maybe not grow, but with the weight change you experience your feet could flatten out. I used to be a 7 1/2 and now I'm a normal size 8. I remember I had such a beautiful arch in my foot, but it seemed to flatten after each pregnancy!
So thank you to my sweet friend for such a special gift that I will always remember! I so cherish our friendship!

New Decorations!

The kids decided to make some new changes in our house. They decided to make our living room tent central! As you can see there is a girl tent and a boy tent. For the afternoon Anderson and Avi had some make believe friends that they called their girlfriends and boyfriends. They each served a meal to them and then they would disappear and they would go find them.

I'm just envisioning what life will be like when they are in high school together and I can just picture Anderson asking Avi, what girlfriend did you invite over for dinner? I can also see Avielle asking, "Anderson can you and your cute friend take us to the mall?" This will all be interesting as I did not grow up with a brother, but only sisters.

Lets just say it is good that I have a lot of time to cover them in prayer!

4th of July

We spent the 4th of July in Michigan with both my parents and Chevy's parents. As most of you know they both have a cottage on the same lake and it is so much fun to spend time with everyone. On Saturday, we went to the Quincy Town parade.


Of coarse we ended up with three bags of candy.

On Saturday night we went with my parents to a town fair. We ate lots of sugary food and watched the fireworks. Ellie stayed home with Nana and Grandpa. Lets just say there were some interesting people at the fair, but we had a lot of fun rocking to the band!

Avi went on the tube with Grandpa and Daddy! During the day on Sunday we spent a lot of time at the sand bar playing volleyball. Ellie actually took a nap on the boat with my mom and my mother-in-law watched Avi and Anderson as we played with the grown-ups!

Avi with Auntie Rachelle

Ellie's favorite thing to do throw rocks!

Man it is so hard to get a good picture of all three of them! I just love these dresses! My mom got them at Cracker Barrel! I must say they have a cute line of dresses right now!

A family picture, which is very rare!

My husband and I!

It was one of my favorite 4th of July holidays! We had so much fun with family and seeing fireworks in the boat over the lake! Chevy and I are so blessed to have great parents and grandparents for our children.