Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Our Fabulous Four-Day Weekend

Because David worked 17hrs Thursday (8am-2am), he took Friday off and had four whole days here at home with us! It was truly fantastic to spend so much time together! Friday was Amber and Jade's last day of school - a half day. While they were at school, David went grocery shopping with me and then we went to Home Depot for supplies for our next project. After the little girls got up from their nap, we went to the splash park. I didn't bring my camera (oops!) but do have a couple pics of Paisley and Shyla from two days before when we went for playgroup. We stopped at the store for an amazing deal on ribs (buy 1 get 3 free!) and corn on the cob (8/$1) then came home for a fast dinner before heading out for date night. I super love having a built-in babysitter! Amber being old enough to watch the kids has literally changed my life! lol


Alex and kids came Friday night and stayed with us through Sunday. Saturday, he and David fixed a cracked pipe in my garden. The leak was bad enough it created a swamp complete with mosquito larvae and black, sticky muck. Yuck! But it's all fixed and dried up now so I can start prepping the area for planting! Alex also helped us fix one of the ac units. We have two, the one in charge of the bedrooms works great while the one in charge of the public rooms needed a new condenser fan motor and bearings. For the past couple weeks, the kitchen thermostat stayed pretty steady around 83-87. But now, it's a nice, cool 77! Yay! Also on Saturday, we set up a big white sheet on the playhouse platform and watched Sandlot using Alex's projector! Soooo fun! I'm going to get some white canvas and have a permanent screen out there. It will do double duty as a bit of shade/railing for the playhouse. =) 
The culprit. Well, repaired now. Apparently the original pipe wasn't even glued in! 

My ellaborate drainage system. lol


For Memorial Day, David and I built Raph a house. While Amber and Jade picked up every piece of dog and turtle poo in the whole yard. lol I did reward them with chocolate chips and marshmallows. After the house was finished, we set to work in our neighbor's irrigation ditch. It's an empty lot (owned by the previous owner's of our home) and so full of long grass and weeds we haven't gotten much irrigation water the past 2 times. I called SRP the last time and explained the situation expecting them to contact the owner's and threaten a fine or something, but no. I was told that since it's a community-run canal system, anyone can clean it out and if it's only affecting us cause we're the end of the line, we can feel free to do something about it. Yeah, thanks for that. So we took our shovels over (and useless older girls) and dug up all the grass/weeds in the worst part. It was so full we couldn't even tell where the ditch began at first! We will finish the other half next week. For now though, we should definitely be able to get enough water to flood our whole yard!


Once that was done, I quickly ran inside, baked an apple and a peach pie, we all threw on our swimsuits, and headed to the Overton's for swimming and bbq. So. Much. Fun! I love that we are making some good friends here - especially since we are never, ever moving ever again! Hahaha!

Monday, May 20, 2013

The Girls Lately

Picture post! Here we go....
These two little girls just LOVE each other! Shyla is such a little tag-a-long, but Paisley honestly doesn't mind at all. Most days. I'm hoping they'll continue to be best buddies. 

Amber is the only clarinet player in the 5th grade band. This girl is pretty musically gifted. She plays the piano and violin at home and the clarinet at school. And she's got a pretty decent soprano! I don't think she'll be able to be in band next year though cause they're moving it to after school so she will miss the bus...

Here is Jade and David. They are working on Jade's school project. It is a model of some Native American tribe earth lodge. I'm not sure what the tribe is....but she does! I'm pretty sure she told me a couple times. But, yeah. lol Anyways, it's due tomorrow so it's a good thing David sat down to help her build it last night! It actually looks pretty amazing!

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Happy Mother's Day To Meeee!!!

This year's Me Day was wonderful! David knew he had to work Sunday, so he gave me my present on Saturday instead - red and green grape vines, and a blueberry and pink-lemonade blueberry bush! So exciting! Sunday morning he got Amber and Jade up and they made me waffles in bed for breakfast. The girls were relatively well-behaved in church - even Shyla who only tried to join my RS piano solo twice. lol This week David and I finished relocating the fence posts and enclosed Raph. And today, we planted my new plants! David also bought me a raspberry vine and put it in the ground himself. Can't wait for them to start growing and producing yummy berries for us to eat! =)
My beautiful plants!

Can you see Raph testing his new boundaries?? And my new plants in the ground?? The pink-lemonade bush is in the front, the blueberry to the right by the wagon, the two grapes on the front fence, and the raspberry tucked in the corner of the front and side fences. Yayayaya! The dirt that's dug up is where my garden will be - right now there's a cracked pipe causing an awful lot of flooding...

Monday, May 13, 2013

Fun In The Sun

It's stinkin hot here! I've lived here nearly my entire life, but I doubt I'll ever embrace (let alone get used to) the  heat. Hate it. Anyways, now that we have no pool, we have to be a little creative when it comes to keeping cool. Here's how we spent this weekend - 
The wagon is filled with water! lol

We replaced the lame-o lights for coolio fans

David decided the girls weren't wet enough....

And then he took them for a ride =)

BTW- The reason Jade isn't playing in the water is cause she spend the night at her friend's house the night before. Just in case she reads this later and complains about not being in the pictures....

Sunday, May 5, 2013

The Start Of Something New

Now that the guest room has been done for a bit, David decided to start working on the backyard. First he ripped out the fence, and now he and Alex are building a tree house! They spent 12 solid hours on it yesterday and finished the base. All the beams are sunk in about 2ft of cement. We are all very excited to see how it turns out!