Homeowners!

Below is a famous family picture of Marcus's great-grandfather, William Helstrom and his wife Marie and three of their eight children, one of whom would be Marcus's grandmother (not pictured). His great-grandfather built this house in 1914 (though other family records indicate it was earlier). His great-aunt, one of the kids in this picture, lived in it until this past summer when she and her husband moved into a nursing home.

...and here we are in front of it after yesterday's closing! We are very excited and it was very hard to lock the door and leave. :( I absolutely love my life up here in Deerfield, but being in our new home certainly made me want to stay.


Marcus's sister Missy and I started peeling the wallpaper. Just a bit, to see how easy or difficult it would be. Our nieces joined in and we got pretty far in a short amount of time! Who'd have thought it would be MORE pink underneath!!? Our niece Maddy was very confused as to why we would ever want to change it. ;) She kept saying, "This is going to my room!"


Thanks, Missy! Anytime you want to come over and keep peeling...your parents have keys! :)

Wednesday was AWFUL and GREAT all at once.

Work was bad. BAD. The kids are going crazy and I am running out of patience. I am on "E" in my patience tank. I need a break from them.

After school, my friend and colleague went over to Starbucks and brought me back a Frapuccino to help cheer me up. :) It did!

Then, I went to go teach two horn lessons. After that I went over to my friend Erica's church (I was in the neighborhood for a horn lesson anyway) for the Cubbies Awards Night in which her kids participated. They were so cute. Way to go, guys! I don't think I could even memorize that many verses.

After that, Erica took us all out for Frostys at Wendy's. YUM! What a special treat. I also had a model try on the dresses I made. Kayleigh is a natural model, it was hilarious. She put them on and instantly started posing for the camera. They were both too big on her, but I let her keep one of them...

Since I'm posting from work and don't have my pics on this computer, I'm using one of Erica's pics. Well, why am I giving her credit? I took the picture! ...but with her awesome camera. :)

Monday!

Wow! What a Monday! I wish all Mondays were so good!

It was 3:30 at work and I looked around and saw that my job was done. Everything for the next day was ready. All the papers were graded. Odd.

I leisurely stopped by Target on my way home and since there was no traffic so early on, I was home by 4:15. 

Over the weekend I finished all of my homework for grad school and am done for the semester. 

What does a busy bee like me do with herself at 4:15 with no homework to do and no papers to grade?

Well! Let me tell you! I got all caught up with my VBS prep-work (I was a little backlogged). 

I practiced my horn. 

I made dinner. 

I went to the gym. 

I made a dress!

Now that's what I call a good Monday. :)

Blue polka dots with a white glittery sash...

The pictures make it look bigger than it is. Maybe a size 3? 4? And it's not so satiny-shiny...I admit my camera is not the best. :)

Antsy for the house

I'm getting excited about the house. We close April 27th. Only God knows when we'll actually get to live in it, but that's alright. I'm really trying to pray for peace and rest and not stress out about when we'll move. I'm so happy where we are and I absolutely love my job and don't want to leave. BUT, I love the house, too... :)

Next weekend when we actually purchase it, I'll post some pics, but for now, here is a room in the house that just makes me smile...

Pink radiator.
Purple carpet.
Pink trim.
Lovely wallpaper.
What more could a girl ask for? Hmm...maybe that her husband would sleep with her in this room?

Okay, so the house needs some work...

Who wants to come to Moline to help peel wallpaper?? :)

Easter Weekend

We had a fun, but very busy Easter weekend. Easter is always our "no travel" holiday. We like to have one holiday that doesn't require going back and forth between families. Plus, I always play in the Easter concert at church, so therefore I can't travel. :)

SO, in order to make life for my sister a little easier, my parents decided to come to Chicago and spend Easter with my sister's in-laws. Conveniently, we invited ourselves along! :)

My parents came up Saturday and we we got a little softball practice in.

It was cold out! Can you tell!!?

I hate wearing black on Easter, but I had to for the concert. Here we are at my sister's in-laws. They are so great! We've loved getting to know them and they've somewhat become our second set of in-laws...but locally! :)



LOL Dan's bro fell asleep amidst the chaos. Apparently this is a typical thing. haha.


Dan and Marcus wanted to take a picture while shaking their heads. Cute, boys.

After stuffing ourselves with gobs of delicious food, we came back to our apartment, got comfy, and lounged around. :)
HAPPY EASTER, everyone. It was a great weekend.

A Good Friday

Today was Good Friday. And it was very good. In honor of our Lord sacrificing himself on behalf of humanity, we are given this day to remember our Savior. Thank you, Jesus!

Since there was no school today, I tried to be productive. I knew I had lots I needed to do, but I also knew there was lots I wanted to do. Thankfully, I achieved both and had a very blessed, fun, relaxing, and productive day.

In the morning I met a friend for coffee. We got all caught up on our lives. I used to babysit for her when I was in college, and I'm grateful we've kept in touch over the years. It was great!

When I got home I looked through the scraps of material I got from freecycle and found these Christmas-y materials. It felt weird using them in April, but I had enough to make a little mini table runner. I think I would use it at Christmas time to put a centerpiece on or something.








After that, I attacked my research paper for my grad class. I got 3.5 pages done! I'm almost halfway done and I feel great about it.

So, since I felt so great about it, I began making a dress for a little girl. I don't know who it will be for because I don't know who it will fit! It looks like it would maybe fit a 3 or 4 year old, but it's hard to say. Anyway, this was just done with some freecycle fabric as well and I just wanted to practice using a pattern and messing around with adding details. I must say I copied the idea of sewing on the little flowers from a blog I constantly check: whatever. So, thank you, Meg, even though I've never met you, your work inspired me to get a sewing machine and see what creativity comes out! I've also spent hours looking at hand-made clothes on Etsy. Both sites are quite inspiring!





Thanks to the freecyclers who gave me the fabric (and sewing machine!) and thanks to the other creative sewers who gave me ideas!

First dibs gets the dress. Like I said, I don't know the size...but it certainly doesn't fit me. And I must say, it's not bad for my first try. I mean, if I had a daughter, I'd let her wear it in public!

I want my cake and I'll eat it too!

Monday night was supposed to be the Sox opener. We had a party planned with our pals, Ovi and Esti. Due to the snow in Chicago, the game was postponed. The party, however, wasn't. But, we decided that as true fans, it's okay if the game was delayed. We'll wait for you, Sox. Tuesday they played and won! They're playing right now...it's on the TV behind me, but it's not looking good for tonight. :( Oh well. 

Here is the angel food cake we ate at the party:

If any of you remember some of my past posts about Marcus rescuing some perfectly good cake from Deerfield's Bakery before it gets thrown out, then you won't be surprised that he brought this home yesterday. Apparently there were 3 or 4 cakes being dumped that customers never came to pick up. The guys at Marcus's work said they'd take them off the bakery's hands. Marcus got this one:

I don't know who Ansel is, but I'm glad his/her birthday occurred minus this cake. We ate some tonight as our celebration cake....we got the mortgage!!! :) The bank approved our loan!! :)

Now all we need is a job for me... :) Everything is still up in the air. As I keep telling people, it is 50/50. If I get a job, we'll go. If I don't, we'll stay...for another year. :)

Disclaimer:

By the time I finished typing this post, the Sox lost. :(

Saturday Fun

We had such an action packed weekend! Which you can probably tell by how much I'm posting lately! :)

Saturday was sooooooo good. We slept in until 11:15! We walked up to our fave place for brunch. We came back and Marcus worked in his shop and I sewed ALL afternoon...literally, until like 5:30.

Below are pictures of my accomplishment! I'm so excited. I love it! I made it from fabric I got from freecycle. I don't think the previous person used the two fabrics together, but I did! I'm taking orders! You are all getting this item for your birthday from now on, lol. Just kidding.

I'm proud of myself and thankful that Marcus pushed me on when I was getting frustrated. :)

Later that night, Marcus and his band had a show at a local coffee shop. They really did so great. And SURPRISE! His sisters, bro-in-law and nieces came!

At the end of the show, there was "one more song"....Zach, the lead singer, had written a song for his girlfriend and proposed at the end of it. Here is a pic of him after she said yes. So exciting! I knew about it ahead of time, so that was especially fun, lol. Congrats to Zach and Kaelee!!

This my 100th Post!

Last night we had a fun time with my sis and her hubby. Britt and Dan came over for some ice cream and games and we all had a blast! 

We had some Thin  Mint ice cream- complete with a thin mint on top!

We played some Scattergories...

Notice the lovely pose Marcus is making. He was being offended because we were all cracking up at something he said:

The letter was B and for "things found in a desk" he wrote BRUSH. For "something you wear" he wrote BRA. We were cracking up saying, "You wrote that there is a brush in your desk and that you wear a bra!?!?!?" 

He responded with, "I DO NOT have a desk!"

HAHAHA...there was no denial of the brush or the bra. We found it hilarious, but he was embarrassed. Too funny.

Dan is not much of a gamer, but he participated AND enjoyed himself with this one!

Sorry Britt, I CANNOT figure out how to get this pic right side up. Just tilt your head, folks. :)

I was posing for this one, but still, I had loads of fun.

On an unrelated topic, as of Thursday, my ankles were feeling tons better! I was no longer limping and was actually starting to see my little bony ankles through my skin since the swelling was down! Praise God! My two weeks of not working out is over, so this morning Marcus and I decided to enjoy the weather and walk up to our fave local restaurant, Rhapsody Cafe, for some yummy breakfast. Walking there and back was fine!! About 10 minutes after we got home and I was sitting down reading, lo and behold my ankles suddenly started throbbing. I guess going for a run is still out of the picture for awhile. :( So, I dealt with the pain and we went outside to play some catch...warming up for softball season, which is right around the corner! Hooray!