Visiting with Good Friends

Last night Nick and I had the chance to catch up with old friends, Brea and Ryan Harms. They were in Illinois for a relative's wedding and snuck over to Champaign to buy all of the Chief-ware they could since it's no longer allowed to used in anything promoting the University of Illinois. So, we met up in Mattoon for supper.

For those of you who don't know, Brea was my intern many moons ago one summer at John Deere. It was through her and her husband Ryan that Nick and I, as Nick and Ryan were frat brothers in college at Illinois. They also had their little guy Carter with them, who bore the slow service at the restaurant much better than I did!!

PS - Brea is also an avid reader of all of the Rankin Girls' blogs!

Women of Faith

Angie and I both needed a weekend away...her from three young boys and me from the daily grind....so, last weekend we headed to St. Louis for the Women of Faith conference. She had gone last year, but it was the first time for me. It was neat hearing Sheila Walsh and Marilyn Meberg talk, but my absolute favorite was Anita Renfroe, the Christian comedian. I had to buy her DVD with the "Mom Song" on it, which is 2 minutes and 55 seconds of every saying that moms use (think "make your bed, because I said so, get off the phone, etc.) set to Williams Overture. We had tears rolling down our cheeks. We had a great time!




Meeting up with Erin for supper one night.

Father's Day Weekend

This weekend Karen and I and our families met Dad in Springfield for lunch and a trip to the new Lincoln museum. It was a lot of fun, and here are a few of the pix!



Dad and the girls next to Lincoln's childhood cabin at the museum.



Ella is pretty proud of her band.



Emma really wanted her picture taken with Lincoln's family.



Anna dressed up in "Martha's Attic"...the kids play area.



Emma looks like a "Little House on the Prairie" girl.



Ella in an apron in the old-fashioned kitchen.



Grandma Rankin with the girls.



Karen with her girls.



Nick and Dad waiting for us girls to come out of "Martha's Attic."

Outside of the House....

Well, I spoke to Kori this afternoon and this is kind of how the conversation went....

Kelly: Kim requested pictures of the outside of the house on the blog.
Kori: Yeah, I saw that.
Kelly: I was hoping that no one would want to see the outside of the house and would be happy with the pix from the inside.
Kori: It's not that your house is bad, Kelly.
Kelly: I know it's just, well....
Kori: Dated?
Kelly: Yes, Brady Bunch'ish.

So, here are the pictures of the outside, but please imagine it with the new windows that will go in later this fall, new siding (taking votes here...either tan with black shutters or a muted olive green with black shutters), and new landscaping!






Please note that these pictures are from before we bought it...I haven't really taken any since, but besides the weeds getting cleaned up and many of the bushes being torn out, it's pretty much the same!

The kitchen is in....most of it.

First, let me say that I starting feeling a little guilty about getting so anxious and grumpy about not having a kitchen. We get so used to these comforts...like running water...and then I remembered that I had it better than 90% of the world and I started feeling a little guilty. So, now that I've confessed to the guilt, I do have to say that I am glad to have the kitchen back. Here are some of the pix from yesterday and today.





While unpacking, Nick came across this gift from his brother and sister-in-law. It came with a grilling kit that they gave him for Christmas. So, he modeled some of his favorite kitchen features for you....the microwave, the sink, and the best one being the running water, which we finally got today!

More pix

So, most of our cabinets were installed today and the countertop, but since they're 95% done, I thought I would just wait to post the pictures once it's completed. Otherwise, here are a few from the weekend.

We kept the mattress and box springs from one of the spare bedrooms in storage. Before we brought them into the house, they were laying up against the truck. One blew over, and this is the way I found it....our lazy dogs taking an afternoon nap in the sun.




Nick putting together the very last ceiling fan. Can you tell he's not happy about having to put one more fan together!

Pictures of the house...finally....I'm sorry!

OK, here are pictures of the house post-remodeling. There will be more coming later, but I thought I would get these out there this evening yet!

Living Room_Before




Living Room After




Dining Room. By the way, this light was one of my favorite buys....$35 on Ebay!



Grandma, do you recognize this picture? It's my favorite...the one you got me for Christmas several years ago. I like how it represents Noah's Ark as dark and stormy vs all light and cheery.



Kitchen before





Kitchen eating area...cabinets area to follow later this week!




Mudroom before:



Mudroom after. By the way, Nick and I are pretty proud of our tiling job in this room....it took us forever though...we were up til midnight the night we did it! Also, one of my favorite things we've done is to put this huge closet pantry in place of those little cabinet pantries!





Foyer Before



Foyer and hall after

Computer Problems....Again.

Well, I'm not sure I made the right decision in getting an Apple computer. This is the third problem we've had in as many months; so, while I did take pictures last weekend, I couldn't upload them to the site. When I sat down to post them to the blog on Sunday, I got a blinking question mark on my display and that's it. So, I called Apple, determined that there was an issue I couldn't fix at home, and so my computer's spent the last week in Texas getting fixed....although my husband is impressed by the fact that Apple's support team is based in the US instead of India.

I finally got my computer back today; however, they had to reformat the computer...so, I lost all pictures, files, etc. from the last three months. Thankfully, I had burned most of them to a disk and sent them to Kim; so, if there's one you need, drop her an email. I also lost the pictures I took last week of the house, but I will take new ones this weekend, and provided my computer is working with me, will get them posted!

On the brighter side: MY CABINETS ARE SUPPOSED TO BEGIN BEING INSTALLED ON MONDAY! YEAH!

Will get something posted soon!

Kelly