Budding Musicians

Sam and Elle have started piano lessons this year. To say they are excited about it, is an understatement. I literally can't keep them off the piano! I often hear, "Mommy, can we play just one song??" They are already playing duets together, and duets with me! Sam is slightly ahead of Elle, but not by much. I'm very proud of their accomplishments in the 3 short months they have been taking lessons. Sometimes I see so much of myself in them, it makes me anxious to see where God will take their musical abilities.

Then...there is Jack. Many times I hear the piano playing and I think it is Sam or Elle, only to find out it was Jack! His musical ears are hearing what they play and he figures it out and plays it too! It freaks me out a little. Like..what do I do with this? He's only 3! Time will tell.

The picture you see above is the picture I was telling you that is going over my piano in the new red room (see previous blogs). It is enlarged to a 20 X 30 poster and framed. You can't find that picture at Bed, Bath and Beyond. Those are my 6 sweet little hands playing over the keys of our very own piano. This picture makes me smile every time I see it. If I am ever a music teacher again, I'm getting another copy to go up in my classroom!

(photography by Gramps B)

New Entry Way

Picture this: You walk through the front door of a house to be greeted with cream colored walls, decorated with mauve sponge painting splashed all over the 2-story foyer. You look above the stairs only to see the most horrible brass and crystal chandlier you have ever seen. It seriously belonged in the hotel lobby of a cheesy vegas hotel in the 1980's. The sconces that lined the 2nd floor hallway were of the brass candleabra family, belonging in the same hotel as the chandelier.

That was no entry way from my imagination, no sirrrrreee. That was our entry way in our new home until we painted the 2 story foyer and replaced the chandlier and hallway sconces. Unfortunately, the before pics I have of this lovely entry way would not go on the blog. Oh well...

So. Here you see the newly painted entry way! For those of you familiar with our IL home, the paint is the same color we had in our fireplace room/entry. Doesn't it look so much greener here against the wood trim?? I still love the color. We live in a treehouse. Why not be greeted with a little green on the inside too!?

Friends

Without a doubt, the most difficult thing about moving is not leaving the beloved town or house, but leaving dear friends. To my friends reading this blog, know that you are missed and thought of daily. Poor Dean, my social husband, keeps wanting to invite people over to hang out and we have but a few people to call on. I wish I could have taken all of you with me to live here with us. The lot next to us is for sale :o)

With all that being said, I'd like to introduce you to someone who I have met in the last 3 months and I would consider my first real friend in Wausau. She's the best. Sometimes I joke with her that we live the same life. Seriously. Beth, and her engineer husband who loves excel spread sheets as much as Dean...Nate, have also just moved to Wausau. They beat us here by about 6 months, and in their move, they also suffered through apartment living. Beth was a teacher until she had her children, then stayed home to be with them. Her children consist of a 2nd grade daugher, kindergarten daughter, and 3 1/2 yr. old son! Elle and her daughter are in the same class at school! The list goes on and on how similar we are, but the most important thing is that she is a genuine, real, easy going, fun-loving person who I can see going through life with for a long time. Beth and Nate have definately helped ease the pain of leaving our friends behind while creating our new life here in WI.

So...the children you see in the above pictures are her children with mine on Halloween. We trick-or-treated together and had so much fun. Both of our families bought down-hill ski passes and skis for all the kids, so we plan on doing lots of "skiing" this winter...i.e. time on the bunny hill teaching them to ski :o)

Enjoy the pics, and stay tuned for more "before and after" pics of the house!!

The Piano Room - AFTER

Here you have it! My "crackled" piano room! It is still unfinished, as I have an awesome picture to go above the piano (you will see it posted soon!) and the other picture (currently resting on piano) still needs to go on the wall somewhere. But you get the idea. I hope you like it :o)

Check out the next blog for the great "before" pics of this room!!

BEFORE

Here you see the piano room "BEFORE" it's makeover.

The top picture we took the first time we went through the house. Notice the pink wallpaper. love it....

The bottom 2 pictures were taken after we moved in, with our stuff in it, with pink wallpaper gone, but still not painted. (btw...the pink wallpaper came off the day we closed on the house!!)

Croup, Colds, and Crackle

I'm still here. I haven't left you.

*My absence began with Jack getting croup.

*Then, I decided to paint my dining room and do a crackle finish with it. Took a whole week. Jack still had croup.

*Then, I got the most major cold ever. EVER. Knocked me out for 2 days and I am still recovering.

So that's where I've been. I'm dying to give you a before and after of my new, fabulous dining room (really, it's a piano room) but I'm waiting for a couple finishing touches to be completed. So keep watch, the pics are coming!!

Ramblings

We have the most beautiful tree across the street from our house. Seriously. Sometimes it is truly glowing.

The other night we took our first family bike ride in our new town. I guess you could say it was a family bike ride-walk. We live on top of a hill, and although it is fun to go down, it's not so fun to go back up. The weather was as crispy warm as fall gets and the smell of leaves hung in the air. We had a great time, rode about 7 miles and in the end, as we were "walking" up the hill home, Jack fell asleep in the bike trailer. Strange place #57 where Jack has fallen asleep.

There are so many trees in our backyard, sometimes as I look out the window, it appears as though it is raining leaves. Really, it's quite magical.

I painted room #2. Sam's room. No longer pink. Yippee! It is similar to his old room except 2 walls are a deep red and 2 walls are a crisp khaki. Looks great with his blue beds and pottery barn quilts.

Something happened to me during this move. I can no longer stand the beds not made and my house not clean, at the very least, picked up. I used to feel so relaxed about that and I fear I am turning into my brother-in-law. No...I'm not that bad...but the clean house sure is nice. Maybe it helps having kids in school again.

Apparently, we are now a skiing family. We just bought 5 new pairs of skis and season passes to Granite Peak. Now I just need some lessons :o) Really, I just need some cute ski clothes :o) The kids are so excited though. For a week straight, the first thing Jack asked me in the morning was "are we going skiing today??"

And how about those Packers anyway!!???? I love Wisconsin.

Words You Never Want to Hear

Baffling. Interesting. I've never seen anything like this before. Hmmmmmm.

As we sat in the doctor's office Monday evening, these were the words we were hearing. And you never want to be "interesting" to a doctor.

It all began on Monday morning when Elle woke up with strange markings on the palms of her hands. All the soft puffy parts on the palms of both hands were red and purple. They looked bruised, like she played too hard on the monkey bars (which she hadn't been on) I sent her to school with a note to the teacher to keep an eye on her hands. Her teacher (thankfully) called me around 1:30 to inform me that the palms looked no better and now red lines were running up her arm from the markings on the palms. I immediately called the doctor and got her in around 3:00.

"Interesting". "I've never seen an infection so symmetrical before." "Why would it be on both hands??"

Followed by a blood test. Followed by "Her white counts are too high, I want to admit her to the hospital to get her on antibiotics and figure this out." Followed by tears (those would be mine). Followed by a walk down the hall and into the hospital, into her room, into a gown with an IV into her arm. Just like that.

Now, I must add a side note here. We were in such good hands. Elle wasn't even in her gown yet and my sister arrived to whisk the boys away for a fun evening with their beloved girly cousins. A Pastor and good friend from our church arrived to pray with Elle. My parents helped with getting the boys to and from school. And my sister works just down the hall from where Elle stayed, so she was able to visit often. This is why we moved. To be closer to family, and...little did we know, so we didn't have to drive an hour to get to the hospital when necessary. The whole experience was easy, considering everything we had to do.

OK...back to Elle...she saw 3 specialists. One thinks it's bacterial, one thinks it's viral, and one doesn't know, so she does a skin biopsy on Elle's hand, taking skin to send away to Milwaukee for analysis. In the end, it seemed as though the IV antibiotics did their job as her palms went back to normal, the red streaks went away and she feels just fine. They still don't know what it was, but hopefully we get an answer soon.

Elle was a trooper! She never complained about the IV stuck in her arm, being attached to her bed, peeing in a "hat" in the toilet, or having her vitals taken all day long and all night. She did complain that she missed her brothers,and she missed her school. Did I mention yet that her teacher came up to visit her too??

In the end, we are glad she seems to be OK. We are still waiting on some results, but I am confident that whatever she had, it wasn't that big of a deal. In the end, I bet those orginal words will still ring true...Baffling...Interesting....I wonder what it was she had....

Guess What We Did This Weekend....

Thaaaaaaaat's right. The Nienhouse Swimming Hole is back up for business. Ok, maybe it's not quite the same type of swimming hole, but it is a body of water nonetheless. And it just wouldn't be a Nienhouse without the pool.... of some sort....as it were. S0 - for those of you who were debating if you wanted to make the long drive up to see us, maybe this will help inspire you to set a date to come up and hang with us. AND - this little Nienhouse Swimming Hole plans to stay open all year round :o) Current temperature: 102 degrees.

Room Makeover #1

Welcome to the first of many TreeHouse Makeovers. Unfortunately, I don't have a before picture, but the room was white prior to the new paint color. I just had to decorate one room right away so I could have a place I could relax in and call my own. The TreeHouse is currently a little outdated, so the paint is going to come fast and furious, and as I have new rooms finished, you will see the progress too! Enjoy...

.....next room: Sam's room. Currently pink.

(ps....thanks to IL friend, Lisa P...I used the same blue you have in your house!)

First Day of School

Easily, the weirdest thing I have done since moving back to my hometown was sending my children off to school.

Renting an Apartment = Not weird, not fun, but not weird.

Buying a house = Not weird.

Changing Churches = Not weird.

Buying a Tahoe = Not weird.

Sending children to their cousin's grade school = VERY WEIRD.

We had attended many a function at this grade school while visiting my family. All of a sudden, I am walking down the hallway to see Sam and Elle's names by their coat hook on the wall. Strange. I couldn't believe they were going to go to this school now!

So the first day of school went without a hitch for the kids. I, on the other hand, did not do so well. I kept it together in front of the kids, but the minute I turned around to leave them, I started bawling. I think it was a lot of things. Moving into the house so recently, everything was different and now it was different for the kids too, Elle going to school all day long (yes, all day kindergarten) AND she's a young 5 year old who didn't have the pre-K experience all the others in her class had. Not only did I cry, but I continued to cry for 45 minutes after I got home!! Poor Jack, stuck with his sappy mother all morning long.

On his first day of preschool, Jack wanted to know if I was going to cry again. I asked him if he wanted me to, he said NO, and so I told him I wouldn't cry. I didn't. I went shopping instead :o) Alone :o)

The Fire Pit

In all our years of owning a home, we have never had a firepit. One of our first projetcts at the TreeHouse was to put a fire pit in. The best part about it was that we gathered all the rocks for the pit from our own property. So....come over sometime, I'm great at making smores :o)

No longer livin' in the Burbs..........

We've arrived! After surviving a 3 month stay in our 2 bedroom apartment, various trips between Wausau and McHenry, re-doing grandma's kitchen, packing and unpacking old house and apartment, we have arrived in our new home! To say we love this house and yard is a complete understatement. Having come used to the small apartment, this house feels like a mansion to us. And the yard showcases God's creation to us everyday. (Some day I will have to blog on the deer and wild turkeys we have living on our land!) The pics you see above were taken on our property over labor day weekend. With all the exploring there is to do, I don't think the kids will miss the pool....that much :o)

So, why the new blog name??? We definately are NOT living in any sort of suburb anymore. Although we have a neighborhood, the lots are large and the trees are many. We can be as secluded as we want, or we can take a walk and meet the neighbors. It is so different from our previous neighborhood. So...as we were sitting at the dinner table one night last week, Dean was looking around the house and said "It feels like we live in a treehouse". "That's it! That's my new blog name!" And there you have it...Life in the TreeHouse.

Never have I felt more at home so quickly in a new house. This house fits like an old baseball glove. We've only been here a little over a week and it feels like home. I love the sound of that. Home.