We've moved...

We've moved our family blog to

Http://thewithersfamilyfour.blogspot.com.

We hope you will check in and set us as one of your favorites! Happy blog hopping :)

kitchen remodel...

over spring break, bobby and i tackled the kitchen island. We loved it so much, that we decided to paint our kitchen cabinets. I was a little surprised that Bobby agreed to it, since we had already painted our kitchen in our last house - not a fun project to say the least. I wanted to share with you some before and after pics. We are so happy and excited with the way the cabinets turned out. It's like having a new kitchen! YAY :)

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 this how the kitchen looked when we went through the final "walk through" before buying the house...notice they had carpet upstairs and no hardware on the cabinetry.

 can you believe that they were able squeeze four people around that table? ouch!

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 this is what the kitchen looked like before we started painting the cabinets...better than before we bought the house, but not by much!

 those are some UGLY cabinets...old, scratched, and worn!

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ta-da! for a little over 200 hundred dollars, we were able to completely change the look of our kitchen cabinets. we added bead board to the inside of the inner cabinets, sprayed the hinges, painted the cabinets, and changed out the hardware on the drawers. it was A LOT of work (thanks, mom and dad!) and it took a week's time, but it was sooooo worth it!

 remember those old, scratched, and worn cabinets? well, not anymore! look what a little bead board, paint, and new hardware can do for an old kitchen.

now we can sit back and enjoy our lovely kitchen. hmmm...i wonder which project we will be tackling next?

summer bucket list...

at the beginning of the summer, we created a "summer bucket list"- all the things we wanted to do before school began in the fall. Here are some of the "pins" that were on our bucket. It has been a great summer, and we're not even done yet...

PLAY IN THE BACKYARD

 FIREWORKS

 JUMP AND SWIM IN THE LAKE

 FISH

 TAKE A BOAT RIDE

 HAVE A DRINK WITH MY HUBBY

(actually it was on our deck, but I didn't get a picture of that...tee hee)

 NICKELODEON UNIVERSE

 EAT OUT

 AMAZE 'N FARMYARD

 TEDDY BEAR PARK WITH THE MORDORSKI FAMILY

 our bucket list is almost done...

livin' by the lake...

before you begin, i have to apologize for the MANY pictures in this post. If you can believe it, these aren't even HALF of what I actually took over the course of 5 days (about 140 pictures...but who's counting?). We left for my Uncle Scott/Aunt Lisa's cabin on Diamond Lake early Saturday morning. After numerous sweltering days of heat and humidity, Saturday was the first day of many lovely days "livin' on the lake".

day 1:

 all packed up and ready to go!

 we stayed in the "bunk house" for the entirety of our trip. Scott and Lisa had recently remodeled this part and added a new bathroom area to this section of the cabin. We were fortunate to be the first visitors staying there (Sophia said, "Can we live here forever?").

 this is where we lived when we were at the cabin...the floatee seats around 8 people (it even had a spot to put your feet in the water in the middle, 2 coolers inside, and a nice couch to lay back on). What a treat!

 the bean bag tournament got "epic"...it came down to 3 winners from the first seed - me, Bobby, and Livia

 look who was the winner - honest, i did not try and lose to her, but look at that face!

 gotta love those two!

 i brought along the gourmet s'mores buffet...quite tasty!

 shhh! don't tell, but my uncle puts christmas lights in his bonfires- cool colors, huh? 

 we were treated with a fireworks show the first night at the cabin...it was over 45 minutes of constant fireworks. It was an awesome display of lights over the lake!

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day 2:

 we woke up to this little visitor sitting in the inside of the cabin by the door...i guess he wanted out!

 water balloon fight!

 we took many trips on the pontoon...it became a nightly tradition to take a pontoon or boat ride at the end of the night.

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day 3:

 we visited spicer often to pick up bait, visit the grocery store, the go-cart place, and eat at zorbaz's...this was taken at their AMAZING kids playground (it even had a "mister" for the kids when they get warm!)

 we took a pontoon ride to the other side of diamond lake to the public beach. Since it was Monday, there were no campers- it was fun finding rocks, catching frogs, making a sand castle, and grabbing some ice cream before heading back to the other side of the lake.

 we headed back in to town for some go-kart fun...unfortunately, we lost but it was a ton of fun!

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day 4:

 tuesday morning livia and the guys headed out fishing in the wee hours of the morning...they did really well!

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day 5:

 not to be outdone by her older sister, sophia headed out the next morning to try a hand at fishing too! we ended up having a fishing feast that evening.

 we took a couple of biking trips throughout our stay and the glacial ridge trail was beautiful! here we stopped at an overpass to check out the sights.

 the last day of our trip we tried to lay low and enjoy the beautiful weather at the lake...we were blessed with 5 days of incredible weather. It was definitely a memorable trip to the cabin (not to mention the few visitors that we had in the cabin...it was like a scene out of "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation"), and how could you not love "livin' at the lake" with sunsets like this?