Hofmann Family Time

On Sunday, we celebrated Kaity's 10th birthday party.  It's hard to believe that Kaity is 10 already!  You see, on our first date, Lance was a proud new uncle.  He pulled out Kaity's birth picture.  Kaity and her picture were only a few months old.  I guess that means that Lance and I have now been together for close to 10 years!!!!!

 

Anyway, Kaity had a birthday party with all the family on Sunday after her birthday.  My girls had a very good time!  As always, it was nice to get together with family.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the birthday girl.

 

I did, however, force ask Lance to get a picture of his parents with at least Jenna for Jenna's "house" project for school.  One of the October homework projects was to put pictures of your family inside the house and take it to pre-school to tell your friends.  I printed off some of our family pictures from our trip to Portrait Innovations, a picture of my parents with the three kids, but I didn't have one of Stanley and Janet together (outside of the Hofmann Christmas picture).  So we resolved that problem at Kaity's party.

I know Toby is not in the picture, but at the moment, that was asking a bit much!  I will have to post a picture of the house completed when it comes home from pre-school.

Toby 3 months

I took Toby's three month photos with Boomer. 

 As you can see, he has really started smiling and has found his hands!

 We tried to tak a few outside, but the sun was really bright and no one wanted to cooperate.  These are the best ones I got.

 I love how he is checking out the tractor int the pose below.  I thought the corn and mostly green graass made a pretty backdrop. 

My favorite 3 month picture is this one, which was taken with the iPhone.

Back at it!

If you cannot tell by my lack of blogging I am back to work. It has been an adjustment for both Toby and mommy.  Toby started his first day of daycare September 30.  I was supposed to have a doctor's appointment to have some skin tags removed, so I sent him to daycare with intentions of cleaning house and visiting the doctor. This also allowed me the flexibility to go to daycare at any point if need be.  You see, he had only ever had one bottle in his life and had never before been around that many kids.

Well, he did great on his first day.  They were impressed at how happy and content he was.  My appointment, however, got cancelled because the doctor was sick. 

October 1, I went back to work. I was greeted with doughnuts from one of my co-workers and flowers from my boss.

It has taken a little while to find a new schedule and a new norm, but we are getting there!

Decorating the new space

Last year this time we had torn the back porch off the house, torn down the garage and were working on putting a basement onto the house to start the addition!  What a difference a year makes! 

I have finally started to do some things on the inside to make our new space feel more like a home.  After we had family pictures done, I went an bought frames to hang on the wall.  Lance helped me hang a curtain rod over the picture window and I put a couple pictures on the the living room walls. 

The picture below is the west wall of our living room.  On the left/south side of the room we have our laundry/mud/shoe room which is the garage access.

On the east living room wall, near the kitchen, I have hung three frames.  These are enterchangable art frames that can hang either horizontal or vertical, depending on the art on display.  It is my hopes to keep these in season with different hand and foot print art from my Pinterest inspriation.  The current photos are the beginnings of the foot print ghosts for Halloween.

In the laundry room, I had Lance hang a coat rack at waist height.  Each kid gets 2 sets of hooks.  The hope is this is where backpacks, coats, and shoes land to make the morning rush a little easier. 

New Kids Furniture

While I was off work, I notice something.  The kids always laid on the floor to color and crayons/markers were always on the floor.  I was always nervous that a marker was going to stain the carpet or crayons were going to get embedded in the carpet.  So I found this table and chair set.  It is a nice finish and matches the furniture in our living room.  The kids LOVE having it upstairs!  Now I rarely find a marker or crayon on the floor!

Along with the table, I purchased a matching book shelf.  The kids have lots of books, but are only allowed to "play" with the carboard books.  Well the toy box had quite a loot of books, so we decided get the book shelf as well.  It's funny how much more they look at/play with books, now that they are more assessable.  It is also interesting how I traded crayons/markers for books scattered around the room!

 

While I was doing my online shopping, I also ordered Toby a floor gym/mat for tummy time (we had borrowed Carla's before).  It is funny, now when I lay him out for tummy time it is usually a few minutes and he decides it's nap time.  When he lays on his back he enjoys kicking/tugging at the toys on the cross brackets. 

Momma and the kids are all enjoying their new furniture/toys!