A couple of weeks ago my cousin Beka, her husband Bill and their daughter Anika came for a visit.  Hailey was so excited that Anika was coming that she could hardly wait for her to get here!  I think they came for the 4 hottest days we have had all summer.  It was hot but we had fun anyways!

Here are some pictures of the fun we had together:

We started out at the zoo.  Brooke and Hailey enjoyed petting a goat.

The goats were a little bit pushy about getting their food so Hailey wasn’t able to feed them because they kept trying to jump on her.  The goats loved Rich!

Anika and Hailey heading off together.

Rich, Hailey and Brooke pose for a picture.

Rich, Hailey, Bill and Anika on the slides.

Anika and Hailey also spent some time swimming in my parents’ pool.  Afterwards they had a snack and drew with chalk on the patio.

Another day they played in the sprinkler over at our house.  It took them a few minutes to decide whether or not they liked the sprinkler.  As you can see Hailey decided she loved it.

Anika and Hailey playing in the sprinkler.

My dad had to go out and buy the girls a little wading pool to play in- and they loved it!

We had lots of fun together.  When Beka and I were younger we spent lots of time together and I have lots of fun memories from our times together.  I hope that Hailey and Anika will be able to make lots of happy memories together too!

There are a few of you who keep asking to see pictures of our new house, so I am finally getting around to posting some for you.  I am also including a few before pictures of some of the rooms we made changes in.  We have only been here for a few weeks so there are still a lot of things left to be done.

This picture of Hailey shows our house in the background.  I feel a little funny about posting a picture of the front of our house for the whole world wide web to see, so this is just a peek.  If you want to see a picture where you can really see the front, send me an email and I’ll send you a picture.

This is the entry.

The living room- with Hailey bouncing through the room.

The kitchen.

More kitchen.

This is the dining room before.

This is the dining room after my dad and Rich took the carpet out and sanded and finished the hardwood floor.

This is our bedroom before.

And this is our bedroom after Rich and my dad did the hardwood floors in here too.  We haven’t hung up anything yet in our room.

Hailey’s bedroom (The dresser all the way on the left will not be staying there.  It’s just there until we get around to moving it to its new location.)

Hailey’s playroom

This is a hallway downstairs- it leads to a bathroom and the garage.

This is Brooke’s room before- I didn’t get a very good picture of it- but it had blue carpet and wood paneling.

This is Brooke’s room after she painted it and Rich did the floors.

This is the family room.

So there you have it.  There’s a few more rooms- bathrooms, laundry room and Rich’s work area that I didn’t include pictures of.  But, for the most part you have just had the official tour of our new house.

The last couple of weeks have been soooo busy!  We have been working on getting stuff done at our new house so we can get all moved in.  Then last week Rich and I went on a much needed getaway for our 9th anniversary.  We got back from our getaway on Wednesday afternoon and then left Thursday morning for a family vacation to visit my brothers and sister-in-law.  We just got back from there last night and now we are finally moving into our new house.

Anyhoo- here are some pictures from the getaway that Rich and I took.

Me and Rich posing next to the lake.

We went on a dinner cruise- it was so much fun!  We had yummy food and great entertainment.  We loved it!

After we finished dinner we went up to one of the top decks and enjoyed the view.

We also spent another day at a Six Flags park, but neither of us wanted to carry a camera all day, so I don’t have any pictures of that.  Most of the day at Six Flags I kept thinking about much Hailey would have loved what we were doing and seeing.  It was nice to get away but I just missed her soooo much! Our last day we spent going shopping, which was nice and relaxing without a 2 year old.  We had so much fun together and it was so nice to get away!  I’m so thankful my parents were able to watch Hailey so that we could go away and have such a nice time together.

July 15th, 2000