Praise God!

Update. Justin has been studying for 2 months to pass his Series 7 License Exam. He needs this license from the government to be able to do his job for Edward Jones. Anyway, he took the test today-which he only got one shot to take-and PASSED!!! Woohoo. Thank you to everyone who was praying. This is a very happy day for us, since failing would have meant him loosing his job immediately. We're so glad the pressure of this monster test is off his shoulders.

What's next?

The training for Edward Jones is a long process-like 4 1/2 months. Next, Justin needs to study for the Series 66 License Exam-another federal regulation. This is next Thursday. It is less material to study and not as high stakes, but still important. After that we will enjoy Labor Day weekend getting settled in La Crosse and then Justin is off to Tempe, Arizona for 1 week of training there. When he gets back mid-September, he has some intense training with a Field Trainer for the next 2ish months. Finally, in mid-November he goes back to Tempe, AR for a week where he will "graduate" from the training phase. Then he can come home and actually start doing his job. Whew, I'm glad this will start to level out as the busy Christmas season starts. Oh wait, that already started-I saw Christmas decorations out at Walmart yesterday...

Nora's 1st Birthday

Our baby is 1 and is technically a toddler now. This was a bittersweet day for us. It's sad to think Nora will never be a baby again even though we are glad the sleepless nights and much crying are over. Sniff. Anyway, here is a recap from her first birthday.



We had a low key BBQ and party in our backyard. Apparently on your birthday your parents let you crawl on your highchair.

Nora eating her first bite of cake. I was kind of disappointed that she was such a clean cake eater.


After cake, Nora and her party guests Ella and Hurshle went for a swim in the kiddie pool. Emma watched longingly from the side. They loved playing with the plastic silverware from dinner.

Then it was time for presents. This was a fun but crazy time since all the baby guests "helped" Nora open her presents. It was hard to keep track of which card and tissue paper went with which present. Nora has been playing with all her new toys and wearing her new pajamas and clothes. Thanks everyone!

In other news, we are starting to move down to La Crosse. We took one load down last weekend, will take another Sunday, and do our big move next Saturday. We have our basement basically packed. It's so weird to see empty shelves. Also, I've finished my projects. For those of you who don't know, we bought cheap dressers from Craigslist and painted them black and a cheap table from a Thrift sale and painted the legs white. They ended up being more work than I thought but I like how they turned out!

Pool Days

Yay for warm weather. It's been a cool summer here, so we haven't gotten to go to the pool as much as we'd like. Thankfully, this week is hot, hot, hot. Here's some of us moms with babies cooling off in the shallow end-the new in place to be this summer. Man, do I love the pool! Water, sun, friends-what a blast!

Getting a little towel time in. Basically, the babies just crawl around and eat each others snacks, try to drink from each other's sippy cups, take each other's toys and crawl/walk to random stranger's towels as they tan. It's comical thinking about it really.

Garden

I can't believe I haven't written about our dear little garden yet. Since we have no land/yard of our own, when a couple from our church offered to do a joint vegetable garden on their land we were very excited. Here's our garden in full bloom.

Nora in the entrance, by the wildflowers.

This is a common scene. I pick with Nora right near me and she eats handfuls of dirt. I try to stop her in time, but sometimes I look up and mud is streaming down her chin. Gross.

Here's one of our fellow joint gardeners, Chrissy, holding Nora. Chrissy and I try to get out to the garden once a week. She is married to Lance, Justin's best man at our wedding. We're also sharing the garden with our hosts, Jay and Deb Holmen and their son and daughter in law-Dan and Melissa. It's so fun when all 4 of us couples are in the garden together.

One fun thing about our garden is the bean teepees. If you look at the first picture, you'll see them on the left. Here's Nora inside of one holding some fresh green beans. Besides beans, we've also been enjoying picking carrots, spinach, lettuce, zucchini, green peppers, fresh herbs and cucumbers (turned into pickles). I am especially waiting for our sweet corn and squash to ripen, oh and the tomatoes. It's so fun and delicious to have a garden!

Catching Up

We've had a fun and busy last couple weeks. So I'm going to write a few posts to catch up.

Last week, we had a little family reunion/vacation with Justin's mom's side of the family. There were uncles, aunts, first and second cousins, great-grandparents, grandparents, etc. We stayed in the lake house next to Justin's grandpa's house with 2 of Justin's cousins and their respective sons. Here's everybody together after celebrating August birthdays in the group!

Here is Nora with Lydia, Justin's cousin. Nora and Lydia loved each other! Grandma Sue and the aunts watch on. You may remember Lydia from our wedding. She danced with just about everyone in a tuxedo!

Nora got some quality time in with Uncle Jon this weekend. He rode her around in this dump truck which she loved. You look like a natural Jon...I don't know about this no kids thing.

Meet Ethan. This would be Nora's second cousin and they are 2 weeks apart. It was so fun to have a baby Nora's age there to play with all week. Here they are playing in their pj's.