A different way to celebrate

How do you show your excitement for a new baby in the family? Apparently if you are a teacher at AGWSR, you buy two dozen pink or blue donuts and encourage the other teachers to fill up on one while admiring pictures of your little one.

Way to show off little Makenna, mom!

2 Week Appointment

Yesterday Makenna had her first doctor's appointment. She checked out great weighing a whopping 6 pounds 15 oz. She seems to be doing great and growing relatively well.

Here are some pictures that I took of her today. Enjoy!

Dave on the economy

As most of you know, I really like listening to what Dave Ramsey has to say about money. I think he is right on with almost every point he makes. I like his "in your face" type attitude on why most people need help with their money.

Below is an excerpt from an article he wrote about the ridiculous 700 billion bailout plan and why you shouldn't expect it to help you out at all. Don't count on the government. If you have a financial crisis of your own, you have to fix yourself. To read the whole article, click here.

"Don't react based on fear or panic. Another negative reaction is that you are looking to Washington to fix your problems. Why would you do that? They have never fixed your problems, and you want Obama or McCain to fix things. That's ridiculous; there has never been a president who can fix your problems. They always say they can and they never can."

It boggles my mind why the officials we elect to "help" us out can never actually get it right, especially when such a huge majority of people thought the plan was crazy. To see how your senators and representatives voted, click here and here.

700 Billion dollars is such a huge amount of money. Too bad the average American will never be helped out by it.

A couple of firsts...

Not that I will do this everytime Makenna does something new, but here are a couple more shots of a couple of firsts for her.

She enjoyed her first bath at home, which you can easily see by the photo.

Her first trek outside in the stroller. Thanks Great-grandma Pauline


Her first time seeing great grandma Annice. Even though she kept her eyes shut most of the time.

Be careful who builds your house

This post has been brewing for awhile...

On either side of our place, houses have been started. Both of them make me wonder if either company has any regard for the person who will own them.

The first two pictures are of a spec house that was started early summer, and most of the framing materials have been sitting outside ever since. If you don't know what Iowa weather does to lumber, throw a piece outside in the dirt, let it get wet, then baked by the sun over and over and see how good of condition it is in after a month. Then take that times 5 and that is what this house will be built out of.

These pictures were taken about a month or so ago and if you drive by now, you'll see all the 2x6 studs all bowed and warped. Nice.





This next house really baffled me. The builder started out right, then took a big shortcut by backfilling their house with black dirt pulled out of a ditch. Generally that is a big no-no, but what made it worse is the dirt was filled with roots and other organic material, meaning the dirt will constantly be settling around the house for years as things decompose.


I know I still have a lot to learn about building a superior house, but I hope I never lose passion of trying to do it right.