the great Vacuum debate, Part 1

I need/want a new vacuum. I have a Lab who sheds (we love him) , and a busy family that goes in and out although we always take off our shoes. I am not strict with eating snacks in the living room and our dining room is also carpeted, so I do need to vacuum daily.

*this post might get a little gross for you, hopefully I won't scare anyone into not coming over anymore!

I am currently using a 6 year old Bissel Clean View. I have been super pleased with its performance until recently. It is beyond loud, it hasn't always been, but something has changed in the last half year. I hide the kids upstairs if I am vacuuming downstairs. Once I put them in the car in the attached garage, all doors shut and it still woke up my newborn! Lately it also seems that it does its fair share of pushing the dog hair around instead of picking it up.

First order of buisness:

I want to know if the Dyson is worth the price, or could I just upgrade my Bissel to the new model or even go to the Bissel Animal model. (most everything I have read about animal versions of vacuums is it is the basic vacuum with a special attachment)

I have borrowed a friends Dyson to play with for a while...

Dyson DC07 Pink; Day 1, after cleaning the whole house minus the guest room

Dyson DC07 Pink; Day 3, cleaning just the living room

-Lots of Dog hair/lots of dust. I think I will unpack my pro/con list in a later post.

Dallas in the exersaucer

Emily's reading nook

Emily... the girl who won't play, read, color anything by herself without you by her side, wants to be in the backyard alone, or "only with Bo". The big dilemma is she can open the door by herself and she doesn't announce/ask that she is heading outside!

VEISHEA weekend

We had a wonderful weekend, had great friends stay with us, and hosted many more for a BBQ Sat. night. Robert marched with Alumni Groove. You can find pictures of him on almost every media outlet in Iowa, he was also interviewed for the TV broadcast of the parade! We also were able to attend our dear friends son's baptism.

I think I will just let the pictures do the talking.

Easter

Thanks to everyone who sent Easter stuff and other surprises for the kiddos. We had a nice day. We got up and went to the Sonrise service (6:30 am) for the traditional music, it was so nice, although I wish our church had an organ! The night before we went to an Easter Egg hunt sponsored by our church. It was really nice (we forgot our camera), but Em won a prize, a new Bible!

Dallas wearing his tie.

Although we forgot to get a family pic, here are some little bunnies I caught around the house.

Our church is hosting a Town Hall For Hope, please look up your zip code and attend or watch online or on TV. I think this will be an awesome opportunity for many get HOPE and become inspired. Consider this your personal invitation from me. I might even bring cookies!




For my family I counted over 80 church is Iowa alone, two in my home town, how exciting!

"Visions" of true love

A couple people have already commented, but yes that is a picture of us in the most recent issue of Visions, an ISU Alumni magazine. The feature is about love birds that fell in love at ISU. Our picture is on the page featuring a lot of couples on their wedding day under the Campanile. Our picture was not of our wedding day, but of our engagement. It just happened to be captured by an Iowa State Daily reporter and was run in the paper the very next day (I didn't have to tell any of my friends about Robert's proposal!) Robert took several newspapers back to Connecticut with him and he successfully used one to get out of a ticket on the drive home, I guess the trooper was a sucker for love stories.

Robert Kibbe ('99 mech engr)Laura Johnson Kibbe ('00 microbiology)Marriage proposal, Ames, Iowa

He was wearing a suit, I was fresh from a study session for a presentation I had the next day so I kind of look like a slob in sandals, jeans and a t-shirt.

Dallas eating the ladybug

my 4 month old

Dallas is 4 months today, we have celebrated so far by going to the Dr's for a well check up and watching water gush out of the hydrant!

Dallas is still in the 75% of height and weight, (no surprises there) is now 25.5" and 16lb. He handled the shots like a champ and we can try cereal now. I need to check up on the cereal they recommend. I noticed they sell 5x more kinds of cereal than 2+ years ago when I first bought some for Emily. They have organic brown rice, rice cereal, whole grain cereal, whole grain oatmeal, oatmeal cereal, and organic mixed cereal, how confusing!

Day off

I get the day off from cleaning and maybe from cooking. They are flushing hydrants in our neighborhood and from 10:00 until 5:00 our water will be shut off!

I State

My two biggest fans!

Sneak preview

A sneak preview of what I have been up too. This will be for the little guy to wear on Easter Sunday. I used the tutorial from this site. I used a onsie I had, and grabbed the fabric from an old shirt. The project has cost me zero dollars so far. I am planning on stitching around the tie, but want to pick up a contrasting thread.

I heart garage sales

12 pieces of kiddo clothing at $0.25/each all brand name!