{a special weekend}

last weekend was a very special weekend for us.  we were able to bless our little ikers and jake's brother, ben and his family, came out for the blessing.  i can't even tell you how excited we were to have them.  it had been a long time since we'd seen them and our kids don't really know their kids that well.  we had lots of catching up to do.

the kids weren't shy one bit.  they started off by watching a movie.  then they decided to act out the movie which led to the sofa cushions coming for the party to begin.

it was so fun to see the crazy rabe crew.  they kept jumping off the sofa singing, "i've gotta dream...." from the movie tangled.  

the next day we got ready for church to bless our beautiful baby boy.

notice the cute little pin that ike is wearing?  we invited our neighbors tim and melissa to come to the blessing and tim brought his Eisenhower election pin for ike to wear for his blessing.  tim collects campaign pins.  we thought it was pretty cool for our little buddy.

we "attempted" to get a family shot.  the boys weren't having it.

this is not the best picture of me but not many are these days.  i really wanted to get a picture of kendra and her sweet baby boy bennett.  he is so smiley.  love him.

then we decided to just get the kids.  i don't really know why we thought we could get them to all smile.  it was an impossible task.  here is a whole lot of pictures of us trying.

this is what you get when you ask them to smile for the camera.  totally forced smiles.  no good.

then things started getting goofy.  these kids crack me up!  the rest of the pictures were too funny for me to just pick one.  so feel free to skim through them.  there are tons.

who's kid is that there that tucks their shirt in to their undies?

i soooo love these kiddos.  

and don't even get me started on these two.  they were the cutest little buddies.

after all the picture fun we had a few friends over to celebrate the beautiful blessing that jake gave to ike.  i'm so lucky to have a worthy husband to give such a great blessing to my ikers.  

i didn't get a picture of the adults but jake snuck a picture of the kids watching a movie on our sad little computer in the cold unfinished basement. 

it was a short-lived trip for ben and his family.  they headed back home monday morning.  my kids were not happy about that.  but cute little sophie told them that we needed to come visit them in 5 days.  that seemed to do the trick for my kids.  little do they know that we won't be visiting in 5 days.

beautiful little sophie.  she is seriously the prettiest little girl.

ben and kendra's cute family.  minus the new little guy bennett in the car sleeping.  and i realized that i didn't even get a picture of the two new additions to our family.  ike and bennett are only two months apart.  i will have to get one of all the kids next time. 

before leaving i really wanted to get a good picture of ben and jake.  i mean, how often do we get to see them.  this is the look they gave me when i started taking pictures.

then they just started being weird.  if any of you know the rabe's you know they are so silly when they get together. 

before the cousins drove away sophie told us that we needed to run after her just like her mimi does when they leave.  my boys were all for it.  

it was such a short trip but was so much fun.  we really miss being close to family.  i can't wait to get together again.  thanks ben and kendra for taking the time to be at ike's special day.  you guys are the best and we just love your kids.  next time we will come visit you. 

{house update}

there have been some changes around the rabe household.  when we first moved in to this house jake desperately wanted to redo the main level bathroom.  i didn't think it was that bad but he insisted.  so back for his birthday i got him a wet saw so he could do the job.

here is what the bathroom looked like before.

as you can see we have some lovely colored tile with even better matching wallpaper.  it was beautiful sight every time i got ready.  don't you all want to blow dry your hair looking at those tubs on the wall?

the bathroom wasn't that bad but it was in need of an update.  so jake went to work banging and pulling and making one big mess.

can you believe all that tile?  and it wasn't even pulled down in the shower.  such a mess.

after jake got to the shower we found this old newspaper inside the walls.  it was dated tuesday, november 21, 1995!!!  what?  where in the world did this come from.  the only thing we can imagine was when they installed the closet they must have put it in the walls because there were no signs of messing up the tile.  

here is an idea of how many tools it takes to work on a bathroom.

after we got that whole mess gone jake went to work on the boarding to put the tile on.  we are going to subway tile the whole bathroom in bright white.  it is going to look amazing!

there was a lot of screwing that went in to this.  (ok, totally out of line but i had to.)  the entire bathroom is now covered.  including the floor.

as of now jake has put a slate tile on the floor. (which looks amazing!!!) and has tiled maybe 1/8 of the bathroom.  remember when he said this would only take a week?  that has been two weeks ago.  thank goodness we have another full bathroom in the house.  

while jake has been working tirelessly on the bathroom the crazies have been up to their own things.

ikers has been playing a whole bunch with his jungle gym and looking cute as ever.

lukie has been asking me to take pictures of him doing the most random things.

and our dear nolan boy has been dressing up like his daddy.  nolan found jake's life flight suite and decided to "suit up" and pretend to be daddy.  (he has said that he wants to be a pilot when he grows up)

nolan has also been in lots of trouble.  pretending to drill his little brother.

he has been on many timeouts.  i don't know what's gotten in to this kid but he is a big back talker.  he was on timeout for 15 minutes and totally fell asleep on the chair.

even though he is testing his boundaries he is still the best little kid.  i love having all 3 of these boys around.  they make me so happy.  now if only the biggest boy could hurry up and finish the bathroom i could be the happiest mommy and wife.  stay tuned for more bathroom updates. 

{flying termites}

i want you all to take a good look at this picture.  looks pretty normal, right?  not exactly.  if you look close enough you will notice a bunch of insects coming out of the holes.

they aren't any type of flying insect.  they are FLYING TERMITES!!!!  holy freak!  lukie and i were outside eating lunch one afternoon when we noticed a whole bunch of bugs flying around.  we look over to see them spewing out of the neighbors tree.  there were thousands of them.  we had to run away every time a big gust of wind came because the flying termites would catch wind and fly away in groups.  

they are completely disgusting.  and now i am totally paranoid about them getting in to our house.  i didn't really know they were termites until i spoke with my other neighbor and she googled to find a picture of what i took a picture of.  

i still itch when i think about it.  our neighbor really needs to do some work to that tree so they don't come back.  look at them all flying out of the tree.  gross!!!