Brenna Update

Brenna is going to be 16 months on Monday! It's crazy to me that she's already that old! She's been saying quite a few words, which has been fun. Here is a video of her saying some words and animal sounds...with our prompting. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YglLI9SQxW8

It's been hard to get good pictures of Brenna lately because she's always on the move, but I was able to take a few the past few days.


Brenna & Daddy having fun after dinner.

One of Brenna's favorite foods is crackers!

Mommy's little "helper"! :)

Brenna talking on her cell phone (an old one of ours). She's starting to actually pretend like she's talking to someone. She hasn't quite figured out what end to talk into though :)

Trim and Doors Are On!

Some more pictures of the progress from last week. Trim and doors are on. Painter will start painting this coming week. The trim carpenter will start to hang the maple for the beams and columns. That will be fun to see. The hardwood floor is finished except the entryway where they will pull up the old and put a walnut inlay in as well. It will look similar to the dining inlay. I've been looking online and i think our style is going to be prairie. Eventually I'll finish the exterior to look like the last picture below. We're either going to paint the brick in the front and around the fireplace a darker color or hang stone veneer on it instead. More pictures to come after this week. Hopefully we'll get some painting done and more of the final trim work.

Shot of the doors we are putting in, trim up, floors done.

Shot of the dining room floor, inlay finished, same inlay to be installed in the entryway.

Shot looking through the kitchen toward the entryway and living room.

Shot of the family room with the fireplace, floors covered for painting.

Brenna in her bedroom.

Steph checking out her new closet in our bedroom.

Another house in town that we like the colors on, will do something similar to the exterior of our's, if we do the stone it will be different than this or we'll paint the brick, planning on painting the front door and the garage door a lighter brown color.

Van Cleave Housing - out with the old, in with the new...staying the same: remodeling

Many of you already know that Steph and I bought a different house here in Ames. It's next door to some of our really good friends Paul and Jenni Sabino (Paul performed our wedding ceremony and Jenni sang in it). Our new address is 2114 Greenbriar Circle. It's located 1 block from the ISU football stadium and Reiman Gardens. It's a 3 bedroom ranch walk-out, with a great yard, mature trees, located on a cul-de-sac, and backs up to a park. We're pumped. We just sold our current house, yesterday, to a young couple. We will be closing on March 13th. They love the Wilson house and are super pumped too. They might even start going to Cornerstone Church with us and we invited them to our connection group. So cool.

Anyway, we are doing some pretty extensive remodeling our our new house on Greenbriar. I took some pics last week and wanted to post them so you can see the progress. It's been a lot of fun to see my vision come to life. On Wilson I did the lion share of the remodeling myself, but this time around I just did the design and I'm subcontracting out the labor. By the time the project is over it will practically be a new house. We picked it because of the location. New wiring, plumbing, drywall touchups, paint, flooring, bathroom, new trim, kitchen, hardwood floors, etc. The pics below were taken as flooring was wrapping up. More to come. Looking forward to hosting many Van Cleave gatherings at the new location. Come visit...after March 13th of course!

Open floorplan, view from living room into the entry and kitchen, beams & columns will be wrapped with stained maple to match the cabinets, oak hardwood floors throughout.

Second living room, used to be a 1+ car garage, wood fireplace, will be our entertainment/family room, hardwood floors in here too.

I had them do a walnut inlay to define the dining area off the kitchen, slider goes to the deck where I'll be doing our grilling, this turned out really nice, open railing to the right along the stairs will have wrought iron balusters and a center post in maple.

Fun times with Grandma & Grandpa Bohlen

My mom and dad came to visit this weekend (Thursday night through Sunday morning). We had a great time with them like always! We had connection group on Thursday night, so they ate supper with our group and then watched Brenna while we had our bible study. Brenna was busy modeling her jewelry...
showing Grandma how her piggy bank works...

and playing with the remote that Grandpa handed over to Brenna for a little while! Grandma was shocked! :)

The rest of the weekend was filled with the mall, thrift stores, naps, Wallaby's (Jared and my mom's favorite Ames restaurant), church, play time, making apple crisp, bath time etc. It was definitely fun filled.

"bye-bye, grandma & grandpa! thank you for coming to visit me.

come back soon!" ~Brenna

Books! Books! Books!

Brenna is really into books right now. Instead of getting dressed this morning, she wanted to read some of her books, so I ran to get the camera to get a few shots.

I think she has "book ADD"....3 books at one time :) She would look at a few pages in one book and then open another and read a few pages and then go on to another, etc.

If you look close, you can see that she's imitating the little boy in the book playing peek-a-boo.

It's good timing that Brenna is starting to enjoy books since it's so stink'n cold and snowy here and we've had to spend more time indoors. I am so ready for Spring!!! I like to be on the go, so it's a little hard to be at home so much.....but maybe it's a good thing that I'm forced to stay in a more. I've had more play times with Brenna, more time to update my blog, more time to get things done on my to-do-list, etc. Speaking of to-do-list, I better get to it :)

Cute Sunday Dress

New Year's/ Christmas Celebration with the Van Cleave's

We had a great time with Jared's family on New Year's Eve and New Year's. Brenna and her cousin Easton had fun playing with grandma and grandpa New Year's Eve, while we went on a hot date :) We went to the movie Seven Pounds...we thought it was really good....sad, but good. Then we went to Centro in downtown Des Moines for dessert. Great atmosphere! It was fun spending the last day of 2008 with my best friend! We stayed the night at Jared's parents and then celebrated Christmas on New Year's. We ate yummy food, played cards, watched football, opened gifts, etc. We had a great time and always enjoy spending time with Jared's family.

We were in our pajamas half the day, so we didn't get many good pictures...but here's a few.

Easton and Brenna were playing with Jared & Caleb's old toys. They were getting hot from the fire place, so we took off their pants and hiked up their socks. They looked pretty cute!

Where Do I Start?

It's been so long since I last posted that I don't really know where to start. Several family members have hinted around to update my blog, so they motivated me to take the plunge :)

Where did December go? The month went so fast. I so look forward to Christmas and spending time with family and then it seems like it's over so quickly. Even though it went quickly, we had a wonderful Christmas season.

We went down to my parents in Burlington for four nights the week of Christmas. We mainly relaxed, ate, watched movies, read, and my mom & I went shopping the day after Christmas. We celebrated Christmas day at my Grandma's house. There were 14 adults and 3 kids. I got to meet 3 new family members (or soon to be) for the first time. My cousin Sarah brought her boyfriend, Dalon, for Christmas and he proposed to her on Christmas Eve. It was fun to meet Dalon and celebrate their engagement. He's a great guy and we are really excited for Sarah.


The other family members I met were two foster children that my two cousins are caring for. One is Brenna's age and the other is ten. It was so fun to meet them and love them as if they were part of the family. My cousins are doing a great job parenting them and loving them. It is so neat that they are opening up their home and heart to children that are in need. What a great example of Christ.






Brenna enjoyed Christmas as well. She's getting better at unwrapping gifts and enjoyed all the fun things to play with at grandma and grandpa's house: Zeke (their dog), my mom's old jewelry, tree ornaments, baby stroller, etc. She also enjoyed a bath in their big tub. She is at such a fun age and doing so many new things. There were several times that my parents, Jared and I would just sit and watch her play.

"What do you think of my new hair-do?"

I will update more later. One post is all I can handle tonight. :)

Van Cleave Family Meal

After church on Sunday we went down to Jared's parents for a delicious Thanksgiving meal. I think I gained five pounds this weekend with all the good cooking we had! During the meal, we went around the table to share one thing we were thankful for...we have so much to be thankful for living in America. We enjoyed spending time together in their new addition and Brenna & Easton had fun playing together too.

On our way home we drove through the Jolly Holiday Lights in Des Moines with Caleb, Maranda, and Easton in their new van. The kids loved looking at all the Christmas lights and Easton had fun driving with his daddy!

Fun Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at Ryan & Dana's house, my brother & sister-in-law's, in Eden Prairie, MN. They made a traditional Thanksgiving meal and the turkey turned out awesome, along with the rest of the meal. Besides the Thanksgiving meal, some of the highlights were going to a few thrift stores, playing poker, going on a walk around a lake near their house, eating yummy food, Brenna learning to sign "more" (Thanks, Dad!), and last but not least spending time with my family. See Ryan & Dana's blog for more details.

Thanks, Ryan & Dana, for hosting our family Thanksgiving. You have a beautiful home and we had a wonderful time.