Dress up time!

One of the first nights in our new house, Ellie stayed over night. We spent some time in Lowe's and Target and the girls were so well behaved that they got to pick out a toy. They picked out dress-up clothes and had fun playing for hours when we got home. They love to pose!

Lilah painting

Lilah wanted to help paint my bedroom. She started painting the wall nicely, but then quickly became bored and started painting pictures on the wall. I eventually had to paint over her beautiful pictures. She didn't understand why I needed to paint over her pictures at first, but then I think she realized that all the walls needed to match.

Into the new house!

Here are a few shots of the new house. We are so thankful to be out of the apartment and into our own space again. We feel like the fire will soon be behind us and we can really begin to move forward. It was a long process to get here - as many of you are aware, the mortgage industry is really tight right now. We are blessed to have supportive family, friends and community. We have not has any water in the basement (while our neighbors across the street are not as fortunate), but we figure we are not due for a home disaster again for some time. We hope to see many of you here this summer!

Back of the house - view of the deck and some of the back yard. Behind us is the city park and two softball fields. There are games every night throughout the summer. We really enjoy sitting on the deck or in the 3 season porch watching the girls play and teaching Lilah about the game. She will start t-ball in July so we are trying to give her a little bit of a head start - you know us and our competative spirit :).




This is the family room (you will see many boxes and stuff that still needs to find a place) and a small view of the porch. We will enjoy fires this winter.

This is the kitchen. Since the house is multilevel, this view is from the family room. You have to go up 4 steps to get from the family room to the kitchen.


This is Lilah's room. It was painted like this when we moved in. She really loves it! She also has a play room which helps keep the mess a little contained - we can at least shut the door!

This is our bedroom. I painted this when we moved in. I do enjoy painting. I also did the family room, half bathroom, and entry way. There wasn't too much painting to do, but it was nice to put our color preferences in a few key places in the house.

Midnight & Sydney

Midnight, the cat, has decided that he wants to live in Barbieland. Lilah has a little Barbie house and whenever it is on the floor, he is lounging in it. Lilah gets annoyed that her Barbies have to walk around the cat.




The picture below is a rare shot of Sydney and Midnight relaxing together. Could it be possible that Sydney has finally calmed down in her old age?

Easter Time!

The kids had the chance to meet the Easter Bunny a couple weeks before Easter. The Easter egg hunt was, of course, inside this year. That didn't stop the kids from gathering eggs, playing games, and having fun.


This picture is from Easter morning. The Easter bunny brought Lilah some ears to wear during the day. She didn't get to wear them to church, but did sport the ears at grandma Barb's house later that day.


Lilah and Ellie spent the day chasing Tyler (Nicki's cousin who is 12) in their beutiful spring dresses. I think they both ended up with holes in their tights and Ellie ended up on the roof of the barn at one point of the day. They have such a great time together!

A New Home

THANK YOU again to everyone who has supported and prayed for us over the past several months. Your support has allowed us to begin putting our household back together.

It's been nearly two months since our last post, and now we finally have news good enough to share with everyone. We have a new house and will take possession on May 15th. We are SOOO excited! There is also other fabulous news that allowed us to make the decision to buy a home in Roland - I accepted a school psychologist position with Heartland AEA 11 beginning in August. Finally I will have a regular salary again! This will be my internship year and I still have a BIG project left to finish before I am awarded the degree of PhD, but most of the major hurdles are behind me. Below are a few pictures of the house - we will get better pictures posted once we move. We have several projects in mind for this place and maybe we will even stay for a few years :).

The hotel was fun, but...

Tomorrow will mark three weeks since the fire. Time has gone by so quickly! I am amazed by the progress we have made in that short amount of time. I have to send out a huge thanks to our families for their help in the clean-up and moving procss. Also, thank you to our church members who brought meals night after night while we were in the hotel. Last, but certainly not least, to all of you who have given so much to help us put our life back together. We hope that we can pay it forward to others in need.

We are in our new apartment now and have settled in over the week. Lilah and I are sleeping in the same room and Nate is out on the couch. This is typical behavior for him, but he is not quite sure about the new couch. Of course, we had broken in the old couch over 10 years so it was nicely molded to his body. He will have to work on the new one. Lilah is adjusting nicely to our new arrangements; however, she is missing the swimming pool (see pictures and video below). Her swimsuit actually survived the fire! She is glad to have Sydney and Midnight back with us, and I think they are happy to be with her too. The animals are thankful to the Faubus family for the excellent care and attention they received!

We are all back to our full schedules - me in Minneapolis once a week and all over cental Iowa the other days, Nate working his way to the national tournament, and Lilah having fun each day with her friends and teachers at school. We continue to give thanks for our blessings and look forward to the fun of setting up a household again. Stay tuned...