An aerial view of our land

We found this aerial view of our land on the Pike County website - cool, huh??!!! Our parcel is the "L" shaped one outlined in red. We will build our house in the center of the southeast square part about 175 feet back from the road. Still no showings on our house here but we'll close on the land in 5 weeks. You can see the edge of the lake on the far right side of the photo.

She just couldn't wait another minute....

A few weeks ago I was taking too long to get the twins down for their nap after lunch so Maggie decided she just couldn't wait any longer and put herself to bed. I sure hope it's that easy when they get "big kid" beds! Matthew's 8th birthday was a quiet one at home. Our neighbors and friends Amy, Brooke and Blake came over for cake and presents. Matthew loves to play at their house because he says Amy is a "fun" mom...and apparently I'm not. : ( Maguire hasn't had this much fun with cake since his first birthday party. Maggie ate the frosting off the top of the cake then put the plate on her head like a hat...it's a good thing they're cute!

False alarm...

I'm sure many of you were sooooooo relieved that they let school out early for us to prepare for this major storm that only brought 2-3 inches of snow today - so much for the HUGE storm...unless some major snow happens overnight this whole thing will have been one big hurrah over nothin'....How much money did our school district spend on thousands of phone calls, text messages, and double bus trips for those kids whose parent's couldn't pick them up early only for our kids to laugh that they got out of school early for something that didn't happen?

Oh, the snow....

So I know many of you reading this are living through this junk with us right now but for those of you not in the midwest, we thought we would show you what it looks like in northern Illinois right now. I really hate the snow. It's only beautiful when it's actually falling. As soon as it stops and the snow plows come out and people start leaving home again, it's just dirty and messy. (And this is from someone who is buying 9 acres in the country to build our next home!) I look forward to the 60-70 degree winter days as a resident of the great state of Georgia, may this be my last winter living someplace where it snows! Our cat Muffin likes to try to chase snowflakes through the sliding glass door. I didn't wait long enough to get a photo of her in a full jump but my camera doesn't take good action photos anyway. Oh, the things that provide entertainment in the winters here! These are views out our front windows right now. It's supposed to snow a foot in the next 24 hours so I'll post again with after photos. Our playset hasn't had much use in the last four months but provided a good backdrop to show you how hard it's snowing.