Just Call Me Martha...

I went all Martha Stewart yesterday and froze 3 dozen sweet corn! It is seriously the easiest recipe and it is so much fun and yummy to pull out a bag of sweet corn in the middle of the winter to add as a side dish to your meal! The boys' had a good time 'helping' me too! I was a bit nervous with my electric knife and the 10 little fingers that kept throwing ears of corn at me! Ha!

I take no credit for this recipe as I got this from my Mom and Stepdad, but thought I would share it!

3 dozen sweet corn
1/2 pint half and half milk
1/2 pound salted butter

Cut kernels off from the raw corn. Place in large roaster. Add milk and sliced butter. Bake uncovered in oven at 325 degrees for 1 hour, stirring every 15 mins. Cool. Place 1 1/2 to 2 cups in storage bags.

You're Gonna Love It At...

ADVENTURELAND!

Yep! We took our first trip to Adventureland today! Jeff and I hadn't been there for nearly 6 years and this was the boys' first trip! We had a GREAT time!

The boys' had so much fun going on both the 'smaller' rides that they could enjoy without Jeff or I with them,

but they also had a blast going on the 'big' rides that required an adult too!

Their favorite rides were the water rides! You can't beat the good ol' Log Ride and Raging River!



Two happy, wet, and sweaty little boys'...

high on funnel cake, soda pop, and ice cream!

LOVE IT!!!!

Northern Exposure

The Davis posse hopped in the Mini H (our van) last weekend and took a much needed road trip to visit our homies....Uncle Adam and Aunt Kaferine (no, I did not mispell her name, that is how the boys' say it...even Jeff!)

We pulled out of Cville (Coralville) around 1700 (5pm) Friday evening and set the GPS....final destination....Forest City, Iowa! Home of Winnebago (where Uncle Adam does the 9 to 5) and the BEST Middle School teacher north of I-80! We made good time in our Mini H and pulled into F.C. around 2030 (8:30 pm).

Okay, my head hurts from being creative. That's all I got folks....BUT....we had an awesome weekend!

Drinking...

Relaxing...

Touring...

Swimming....

Grilling.....

Daddy's Helper...

I seriously don't think that this picture could be any more funny and/or cute! This is Aiden's version of a 'tool belt'. I just wish that the circumstance that surrounded this 'tool belt' was just as cute and funny! When we got home Sunday afternoon from being away all weekend, we discovered that our freezer had been left open partially! LOVELY!!! Needless to say, nearly 90% of the food in our freezer was tossed in the garbage. On a positive note, we were in such great need of groceries that not too much had to be thrown away!

Busy Bee...

We are busy bee's at the Davis Homestead this week! Some of this busyness was not by choice, but tonight as I am typing this blog post, fresh from the shower, and sleeping boys' knowing that it was all worth it! We got to check off some very major tasks off of our Master 'To Do' List and this feels soooo good! Here is the lowdown of our accomplishments. You can stop reading this now if this bores you, but I really want to look back on this in the future and wonder how we got major household projects done with a 4 and 2 year old!

1. Our dryer officially died last Friday. After Jeff attempted to fix it for the fourth time in the past 18 months, a trip to Best Buy for a new one was on the agenda last weekend. I gave Jeff my 'must have's' in a dryer and I granted him the responsibility of picking out a new one. Because appliance shopping with two wild boys' is next to impossible! So, one of our major 'to do's' was to vent the dry a new/better way so, Jeff spent a good deal of time with his friend and our neighbor getting this accomplished. Much of this had to be done while the boys' were at school/daycare or in bed at night because we would have had two little head's shining their flashlights down the dryer vent hole being good helpers that they are! Our new dryer was delivered this afternoon....waaahhooo!!!

2. While Jeff had his friend helping with the dryer vent, they thought it was a good idea to quickly fix the leaky faucet in the bathtub. Well....I got home from work Thursday evening to chaos! After getting the boys' out of the house for dinner because they were too much help for everyone involved to handle, I came home to an unassembled bathtub faucet, a hole in my bathroom closet wall, and a rather damp basement ceiling. Needless to say, a visit from a plumber was on the agenda for Friday evening. All is fixed now! Jeff was just sick to his stomach about this one, but our house is going on 20 years old and luckily we fixed this leaky faucet before it became a more emergent fix and now we have an access panel to our bathtub plumbing from our closet. It really does feel good to have things fixed the correct way even if it costs you a bit more money than you had anticipated.

3. So, I thought it would be a good idea to keep the productivity train chugging along this afternoon! I chipped away the paint on our front porch, the trim around the garage door and basement sliding glass door. Well, if that wasn't enough, I convinced Jeff that borrowing our friends' pressure washer was a good idea! So, we got the house pressure washed this afternoon! Yay!  Now, I just need to pretreat my porch and garage/sliding door trim and give it a new coat of white paint! Jeff and I took turns keeping an eye on the boys' while we worked on this project, but both of the boys' enjoyed running through the mist of the pressure wash inbetween playing in the sandbox and on their swing set!

I have officially decided that a Pressure Washer is my new favorite power tool! I am sitting here right now thinking of all of the things I could wash..ha! It was bath night and I thought for a nanosecond if pressure washing your children would warrant a phone call from DHS..ha!

To end this novel of a post, here is a picture that Jeff took last weekend of Ty going potty in the big boy urinal! Could little bum be any cuter?!? (Yes, this makes me crazy looking at his little hands on that urinal, but my first question when he brought Ty back to the table in the restaurant was if he washed his hands!!)

Girls' Just Wanna Have Fun!

This afternoon I met up with two of my college girlfriends', Jenn and Alisha, for lunch and a movie. It was so great to catch up with both of them. I just love old friends' when there can be months or even years between seeing each other and you pick up right where you left off! Jenn, Alisha, and I raised some of our own trouble in college and we had a really good time doing it! But, now we are responsible mother's and wives...ha! But, we did go see Magic Mike! The entire movie theater was full of women and we giggled for two hours and the men in the movie were not bad on the eyes either!

We didn't make it to church this morning so, here is my prayer for today...ha!

Trying to beat the heat...

This 100+ heat wave that has taken over the country the past few weeks is getting very old. We were starting to get the 'February Blues' in July at the Davis Homestead! So, we packed our bags, got in the van, and headed West! It wasn't much cooler West, but we sure had fun at the Ramada Tropics Resort in Des Moines (http://www.ramadatropicsresort.com/)

We made a spur of the moment decision Friday afternoon to spend the night at one of our new favorite hotels/indoor waterparks. We got a great deal on Groupon a few weeks ago and decided to take advantage of it! We discovered this hotel back in February when we spent the weekend there with Uncle Adam and Aunt Katherine and we knew that we would be back! This indoor waterpark is so geared towards younger kids' so, it is so safe for the boys' to play and swim without the worry of being trampled by a bunch of teenagers! Aiden took swim lessons all winter and we noticed the difference from February until now in his swimming improvement! Ty just follows Aiden around and is getting to be quite the little fish himself!
Jeff and I spent a great deal of time lounging in the zero depth area watching the boys' play and chum around together. It seriously melted my heart to see how big both of our boys' are getting and also how close they are getting as well!

A really big event that happened while were there is Aiden went down the big slide all by himself! This slide requires you to climb three flights of stairs and the resort allows children to slide down with an adult, but Aiden met the height requirement. So, when he told us he wanted to go down by himself we were all for it! Right before the first solo trip, the plan was for Jeff to go down with Ty and I would stay down at the bottom to catch him. We had to tell him that he couldn't 'freak' out once he got up there! He did so great! He was so proud of himself!

We swam until 9:30 on Friday night and then ordered late night pizza in our hotel room and just goofed off together until almost midnight! Everyone slept great and we got up to have a free breakfast buffet in the hotel this morning before hitting the waterpark again before check out! Jeff and I decided that we would hit another stop in Des Moines before heading home so, we checked out the Iowa Science Museum in downtown Des Moines. The boys' had a good time, but they started to get tired very fast! So, we packed up the van mid-afternoon and headed back home!

As the boys' snoozed to the sound of Finding Nemo on the DVD player in the van on the way home, Jeff and I talked about how much fun/easier it is becoming to take the boys' places. We started talking about future family vacations in the years' to come and all the cool things that we will see caravaning across the good ol' USA!

SWEET Summertime!

I live in Iowa, Iowa, Iowa

Iowa, my home.

Where the corn grows talls,

and the kids' are GREAT!

I'm sure glad that I live in the Hawkeye state!

I live in Iowa, my home!

I think that I may be the only person that remembers this song from childhood because Jeff thinks I am crazy whenever I sing it! I swear I sang it in good ol' Denver Elementary School back in the day! Or, I was just a very creative child and made up this song....even better!!!

Anyway, you know what season it is! Yum, yum 'Sweet Corn Season'!! I picked up our first batch this week at Hy-Vee, grown in Independence, and it did not dissappoint!!!

The boys' LOVED it! Now I just need to find a farmer who will let me walk through their field with my boys' and pick it right from the source! That is one of my fondest childhood memories...going out to my Grandpa and Grandma Christoffersen's farm, picking sweet corn from the field, and cooking it up with some fresh tomatoes from the garden!

Have I made your mouth water yet?!? 

4th of July

Happy Independence Day from our little firecrackers! (Waiting for the Coralville 4th Fest Parade to start)

Don't Let The Bed Bugs Bite!

It's official! We took the crib down Saturday evening and put together Ty's new 'big boy' bed! It was a little emotional for me watching our crib come apart piece by piece to be replaced by a bed, but it was another reminder that we are entering a new season of life with the boys'. We are hoping in the very near future that we will be able to bunk the boys' beds and move them in together!

The walls in Ty's room are a lighter green color and I was not thrilled with the thought of repainting the walls to make the room more 'boyish' BUT I scored some ADORABLE bedding/accessories at Target on Friday that will go perfect with the green walls and give the room a definate masculine feel! I am so excited to post pictures in the coming months once the project and move is complete!

Ty did pretty good last night sleeping for the first time in his new bed. We all took really long naps on Saturday afternoon so, bedtime wasn't until 9pm on Saturday night. But, after a few trips out of his room and some cuddling with both Mom and Dad in the new bed, Ty was finally sleeping around 10:30 and slept all night! We thought Ty's bed, which is the bottom half of the bunk, would have a built in siderail, but it didn't so, we winged it last night in hopes that he wouldn't fall out! We put a few pillows on the floor in case of a crash in the middle of the night, but we don't think he fell out because we didn't wake up! We made it a really big deal this morning when he woke up that he slept all night in his 'big boy' bed and he was pretty proud of himself!