Being Thankful

   I have been doing a lot of thinking these past few days.  I have also been watching around me and noticing the amount of time people spend on social media sites. Myself included. I found my son coming up with me almost irritated just trying to get any little bit of my attention. And there I was, just scrolling through Facebook saying, "Just one second, Carson." Wait, What? That shouldn't be happening. This little young boy should not be trying so hard just for me to listen to him tell me something. So, that was the day I decided I need to leave these social media sites alone for awhile. Here my blog comes into play. I can post on here once a day and for all that love to keep up with our little family, you can come on here. That way, I get my time with my kids and won't be missing anything.

   These last 4 days have been awesome! I got to spend all 4 of them with my family. I love when Aaron is home and wrestling around with the boys. I love when he gets to witness Carson playing with Hudson. I am so thankful that our boys truly love each other. On the way home from Fargo on Saturday, Hudson started crying in the back of papa's pickup (we borrowed it so we could get supplies to finally finish our closet) and Carson turns to him and says, "Oh Hudson", and grabs his hand and just holds it. Hudson stopped crying. I turned back and wanted to cry. He had to have learned this from us. He is watching the way Aaron and I react to each other and our children. This is how I have dreamt that my children would be. and for this, I am thankful.

   But I have been doing some thinking about our house, too. And I know my husband will hate to hear this. I have been thinking about living here forever. Or plan on living here for a long time. So why not start making it our dream home. The home that our children will be excited to bring their friends over to. The home that we wake up on the weekends and run to the table and eat breakfast as a family together. The home that is, well, a home. Not a house. A warm, comfortable home. So I was looking up ideas for paneling. We have paneling in our kitchen and living room. I do not want to remove it because that would be a pain. So I want to go with gray. Like this http://www.pinterest.com/pin/417145984205371690/ .  And white trim. I would love to slowly put up crown molding. It is expensive, so I was thinking one room at a time. I have a lot more ideas for the house along with an addition of two more bedrooms. Those will be discussed later. But, little Hudson has woken up from his nap so I must attend to his needs now! Until tomorrow....

pss... Here is a picture I took of Carson today to try and get a good one for our Christmas cards (:
http://instagram.com/p/hbL-_9gCCM/

Well, Here it is.

   So, is has been a really long time since I have last posted. I have been very busy with life. Very busy cleaning, cooking, wiping dirty butts. Yes, I stay at home now with my boys. And not just my boys. My two boys, my two nephews and our dearest friend's little girl Marley. I am blessed. I am blessed to watch these crazy, loud, eating, pooping machines. I get to stay at home and watch my children grow. I will no longer miss those first moments of life that we all cherish so much.

  But lately, I have been doing a lot of thinking. I think about how blessed we really are. To have two healthy children. These two babies of ours, rely on us for everything. They rely on us to breathe. To eat. To sleep. To live. We are here to teach them the ways of life. How to love and be loved back. How to live healthy and learn as we go. We make mistakes. We screw up from time to time. This is a huge job and it is on top of every other job we have. Sometimes I start to think about everyone who wants that job and can not have it. It makes me cringe inside that these two children came from something that people do every day. Two people loving each other or simply having a little more fun that night. Either way, we should all feel a little more blessed with the simple things in life that others may wish they could have.

  We struggle. Well, we all struggle a lot. Aaron and I were talking about money one night. He went to the gas station to pick up milk and probably Oreos (we have an obsession with these), and there was a nice fella standing in line to pay for his little treats he had. He was probably in his late thirties, early forties and was wearing some sweats and had a stocking cap on because it was chilly outside.   He had a special k bar, some chips and a couple other things. He went to pay for it and came up $1.35 to short. He started scrounging through his pockets to gather every piece of change that he could find. There wasn't enough. He put the special K bar back. Aaron dug in his pocket and threw a couple bucks on the counter. The guy looked over at Aaron and with pure excitement said Thanks! The man then proceeded to walk out of the gas station and instead of jumping into a car to go home, walked. Walked in the bitter cold weather all the way home. Aaron came home and told me this story. Of course, I began to tear up a bit but it then hit me. There are so many more people worst off than what we are. What do we have to complain about. We own a house, and keep it heated. We provide food for ourselves and children. We have two nice vehicles and a big back yard. The last thing we ever need to be doing is worrying about not having the new pair of Nike's that they just released. We should be thanking God for the life he has allowed us to live. And than thank him everyday for giving us one more day to live it.

  I have a lot of issues that I need to address. We are not perfect nor should be ever try to be. I wanted to start writing. I thought maybe this could help relieve some of the stress in my life and help me appreciate some of the little things a lot more. So, until next time.....
  

No Sugar for this lady!!

       So i promised you an article on my no sugar life.  Let me tell you what, it is hard.  The first 3 days were the hardest days by far.  We have cookies and ice cream and any other kind of sugary treat you can find in our house.  I wasn't going to get rid of them and make my husband live this life too because that isn't fair if he doesn't want to do it.  So every morning so far my breakfast has consisted of grapes and strawberries, which are great but you get sick of them after eating them every day for 7 days (which I'm on now).  Many days i almost caved in.  Days i was sitting at the computer desk saying to myself, well i might as well tell everyone I'm going to fail because i want to have ice cream with my son and husband!
     For any one that has quit smoking, you know an addiction is hard but this is life. Life because everything has sugar in it! My co-workers decided we should go out to eat at Subway for lunch one day and i looked on the ingredient guide and noticed every single bread had sugar in it. WTH right?  Now what, no subway for the rest of my life right? Well, I am willing to give spinach a try and hopefully i can have salads from now on!
     There are some chips that don't have sugar in it and other little snacks that tend to keep me going throughout the day.  But working at a bank, I have a container full of suckers sitting in front of my eyes.  Just makes me stronger when i have to be around it forever!! You can always politely ask the fella next to you to not smoke around you but how do you ask 300 people at a wedding dance to not eat cake around you? Eh, you don't so this is why this is one tough adventure to embark upon.  I didn't think I could do this with all the snacks i couldn't eat.  Oh but wait!! My best friend Katie introduced me to this website.  I call it a life saver!  http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/  I have no doubt in my mind that I can't do this anymore.  Just take a look at some of these delicious desserts and you will never go back!!
 Yes those are cake batter pancakes! And guess what? They are good for you? Ugh, who doesn't want to eat chocolate cake batter for breakfast? So, I am here to help anyone who is wanting to do this lifestyle with me!  I encourage it to everyone! It's not easy.  But most things that become a lifestyle aren't always easy.  You wouldn't expect loosing 15 pounds would be easy right?  So, join the band waggon and do this for your body with me. I am here to support you all!  Together we can help change lives together!! You can ask me any questions you might have :))

More Money Saving Ideas!

So I just basically wanted to share with you all my money saving ideas that I have been doing.  Our original city bill, (which included water usage, electricity etc.) was always around $140 a month.  I decided to try and get it lower and quickly realized how easy it was. Our next bill we got in the mail was $104! In one of my older posts, I had mentioned buying Energy Saving Light bulbs.

**We Put these in all the lights that we have including the garage and the hood above the stove.  We always turned off lights in the house except for the one room we were in.  You don't really realize how much electricity you use when a light switch is turned on especially when it's a 60 watt light bulb! So all our light bulbs are now 13 watt usage.

**The next thing I decided to do was take advantage of the clothes line in the back yard.  I decided to only use the dryer one time the whole week. And that doesn't mean one day out of the whole week, just one time.  The only time i used it was for socks and underwear.  That really cut back the usage in our house.  I just have to figure out what I am going to do this winter!

**We went and got a rain barrel from my father in law and we hooked it up to the rain gutter so it would collect rain from the roof then i wouldn't have to use our house water to water my garden (which is another money saving idea, a garden).  I often visit online flea markets and garage sales to find items that I could reuse in my house.  Picture frames are a great one that you can just spray paint any color you would like.  Same thing goes with old furniture.  Just like my end tables in our bedroom and the chair i refinished.

I am not ashamed to say that i do everything to save money.  The more money we can put away for something we really want one day the better.  Like this next January, we plan on putting in all new cabinets and appliances in the kitchen! So we will make sure you keep you up to date with that! 

**I recently got rid of all the chemicals in our house and switched to just vinegar to clean everything with.  You would be surprised by everything you can clean with it.  Its just crazy.  Plus, saving money on all those nasty chemicals you have in your house that could harm a baby or animal that got into them!  I am currently trying to de-clutter our house and not make it look like a daycare with toys laying everywhere!  Anywhoo-

**I plan to dig out my bike this week and bring Carson to daycare and myself to work. BOOM, saving money on gas now plus it's a great workout!

When I come up with more money saving ideas, (like once i figure out this huge coupon saving thing), I will let you know everything! Plus anything to help out the environment is better also.  So ta ta for now!

Carson's new pad~

A long long time ago, as in before we bought this house, my father in law John and my oh so awesome husband Aaron, decided to check out the spare bedroom of the house and saw a little piece of the wall sticking out. The first thing that came to their wonderful minds was to rip it up and see what it was...Well folks, it was 5 layers of wonderful wallpaper! And not the "oh that's kind of pretty" wallpaper. It was the 1950's little people dancing around in the garden wallpaper. At least one layer was! So Introducing....the mess...

We decided that we wanted to move Carson into this room because his set up was just kind of weird. The only way you can get to his room is through the bathroom. So anyone that used that bathroom had to flush and pray he wouldn't wake up. Not a fan of that. So we bought some paint and were hoping to just paint over the little wallpaper there was..til i started to pull on a piece that was pulling up. Oops.

So now what sir? Well we found that at one point they must have had a window in the wall on the first wall picture I showed you. So there was no just sanding and priming. We had to take out that whole wall and replace it with some sheet rock. I remind you, we only had one week til Carson's Birthday Party and my friend coming to stay, in the spare bedroom. So we had to get this done! Well, we did it! So here is Carson's new bedroom!

We are not exactly done with the room yet. The built in shelves I still have to paint the trim white and I am painting the inside...drum roll please...orange!! Along with the inside of the closet! We are going to paint orange stripes in the room as well. The color kind of looks blue in the picture but its really a grey color. Aaron put all new carpet in the room himself and did all the sheet rock, taping and mudding himself also. We have a few little things left also like to finish the trim in certain place and getting a light switch cover and putting trim around the window. But its livable and Carson loves his new room! 





Meet the Family!

Well I would love for you to meet our little family and what a better way to do it then on the Kappes Blog!! So ladies and gentleman, without further ado, I give you the Kappes Family!

This is our little family the summer of 2011. We were getting ready to go to the Minnesota Twins game. We are huge fans so we try to get to a lot of regular season games throughout the summer. Carson got to stay home with his grandparents that day while we watched the Twins more then likely lose win the game! Go Twins!

This is Aaron Kappes. He Loves baseball and really sports in general. He is a pitcher and center fielder.  His brother Andy and him created an amateur baseball team last summer called the Fertile Bees.  Everyone needs to get out and watch one of their games this summer! They need all the fans they can get.  Anywhoo...Aaron is 24 years old and from Ada, MN. Yes, that is the very first town in the alphabet in Minnesota.  He was born and raised here, literally. He was one of the last babies born in Ada.  He graduated high school and went to NDSCS for welding where he now works for Trail King in West Fargo.  He is the lead welder with his brother being his supervisor. He loves to spend time with Carson and make him laugh. Aaron is a hardworking, family oriented guy who will do anything for any body. 

This is me and my best friend Katie. I am on the right. I love to spend time with my family, blog and especially take pictures! I love to photograph anything! Check out some of my work here .  I am an out doors kind of girl. I like to watch baseball and be in the lake. I love fishing and boating and have been spending my nice days planting my garden this summer! You will usually find me either making something myself or finding more ways to save money!  I am all about DIYing and am willing to share it with everyone else.  I am from Miltona, MN and graduated high school in Parkers Prairie.  I went to school at Josef's School of Hair Design . I currently work at Bank of the West and love my job! I would love to open my own daycare one day but who knows! Well that's me in a nutshell!

Carson Aaron is 1 year old today (as you read in an older post today).  He loves spending time with his mommy and daddy and loves being outside.  His favorite toy is his John Deere tractor! He loves puppies and eating! Carson is the best son we could ever ask for and is so loving towards his family. I can't wait for another year full of joy and happiness with this little peanut!







This is Chassis Kappes! She is 3 years old now but this is when we got her.  She loves treats and dancing.  She loves to play catch and guard the house during the day.  She is a great watch dog and friend to us all! She sleeps with us every night and loves to play with other dogs!

Room Remodel

Well, I got sick of the brown in our room and I really wanted a room that we could go into and feel comfortable.  I didn't get that feeling with ours.  It was getting there but I didn't get that wow feeling. So I thought I would try a new color. For some reason I LOVE yellow black and grey together. I saw this color scheme together and fell head over heals for it. http://pinterest.com/pin/40391727877726206/

I wanted to be able to feel like when I got home from work, this is exactly where I wanted to go to relax. Brown was just to dark for me. So here is our room before..

It was even filled with our old box t.v. (which is for sale by the way!!, need to get rid of it) and Carson's stuff from when he wasn't sleeping through the night! With a little paint and clean up, this is the after...





Aaron and I made the Mr. and Mrs. signs out of old barn wood! If you would like any signs let us know and we can make some for you as well! The black chair sitting there is the one sitting outside in this picture....

I just re-painted it and put new fabric on the seat and Wall-Ah! I Also found an old wooden ladder and repainted it white so i can hang blankets on it! We bought some old wooden side tables as well and re-painted them yellow to go with our room!

 I am really starting to Love this room. Next on the list it to redo the ceiling and put new sheet rock up. Then new carpet and I think our room Might be complete! Fingers Crossed...