Memorial Day Weekend!

Memorial Day is not only a day of remembrance to all those men & women who gave the ultimate sacrifice, but it is also the kick off to Summer and a weekend we always try to get together with friends and family. This weekend we got to do both and not only did we have fun in the hot, hot, sun, we also got a ton more work done on our backyard expansion project!

On Sunday we headed south to our friends new house.  Now that they have a house with a BIG back yard, they were able to host us for the first time.  We enjoyed fun in the sun, good food, and great company!

My WORLD famous pico de galo!

The boys staying cool in the kiddie pool!

Daddy & Shaun

The Momma's got to sit and sip margaritas while the boys all played a game of kickball!

Love these boys!

Getting ready to head home!

Ready to head home and go to bed!

Sunday was our "funday" but it was back to work on Monday, only this time we were getting some reinforcements!  The Doc and I were able to make a dent on Saturday while the boys hung out in their kiddie pool, but there is only so much the two of us can do while keeping an eye on them.  It's nice to have the help from our family.

We had 3 chain saws going on Monday and got most of the fallen down trees all cut and ready to be stacked.  My brothers loaded up the truck with more wood and helped burn a lot more brush, clearing another one of the big piles we had!  And with my sister, SIL Kim and mom I was able to forget I had children for the day and concentrate on my helping with the brush.  Still have lots to do, but it's really starting to look like a yard and not a big giant mess!

Jason Stathem loading up my Dad's truck!

Mud puddle in the cleared area is KNEE deep for my brother John.

My Dad, finished all the trees in the back corner

While Jesse took care of the trees by the swamp!

It was a great weekend and I hope that everyone enjoyed their kick off to Summer just as much as we did!

Making a House a Home - Pretty Flowers

And no more snarly mess on our sledding hill and rock wall! Last fall we attempted to rid the hill in our backyard of the awful shrubbery on our own and it was such a pain! It took us 3 weekend days to do just half of the hill so this spring we got a quote on the job and it was well worth the money to hire a professional! The landscaper came in and not only finished the rest of the hill, but he also got rid of the nasty shrubs on the rock wall on the side of the house, and it only took him and his helper a little more than 1/2 a day!

Goodbye rock wall shrubbery nonsense! I still can't seem to find a before picture and I forgot to take one before the landscapers came. But trust me, it was a MESS!



And now it's beautiful! The iris is not only a beautiful flower, but it has special meaning for the Doc and I, it was our wedding flower!

I also picked up a couple hanging plants to decorate various spots in my garden until we are able to figure out how we want to arrange it.

Today I got back out in the back to clear more brush! Just when you think you have made a big dent, you go farther back into the old wooded area and see just how far we still have to go. But I keep plugging away when I can and we'll get reinforcements again this holiday when my family comes up for a Memorial Day cookout and brush clearing party!

It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it! Check out how grimy I am after a days work*.

*photograph by David

TWO 2 weeks ago...

And he's ready to start learning how to drive! His new obsession is getting behind the drivers wheel instead of climbing into his car seat!



Evan has been TWO for 2 weeks now and last week he went for his 2 year check up! He's doing great and still the biggest biggest of all 3 kids!

Evan's 2 year Stats:

Height: 35 inches (70th percentile!!)
Weight: 31.2 pounds (85th percentile)

David was only in the 25th percentiles and Shaun in the 50th. I thought it was interesting to note that David at 2, was 33 inches, Shaun was 34 inches and Evan is 35 inches. So David still continues to be the shortest even though he is the oldest! Shaun is already wearing the clothes that David wore last summer.

Happy Mother's Day!

What a wonderful Mother's Day! Since the Doc had to work this weekend, I decided that I didn't want to spend Mother's Day alone and invited the family over for brunch! Everyone contributed and together we had a great breakfast spread, of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, pancakes, muffins, fruit salad, and I even tried out (thanks to pinterest!) some red velvet pancakes, which I was told were excellent!

After everyone enjoyed some delicious food, it was time to get on our work clothes and get out into the yard to do some more work. My Dad, was able to get a lot of the hard wood out in the old wooded area cut up, Jesse loaded the truck with another load of wood to take back to my parents house and my brothers and I got a fire going and cleared the rest of the huge pile of brush! Looks like we might not need to rent that chipper after all!  And while all that was going on MIL & my mom tidied up the kitchen, while my sister and Kim helped keep the children from wandering the neighborhood!

By the end of the day I was dirty and covered in pine pitch, my legs continue to get scratched up and I even had the joy of pulling a tick off the back of my neck (eww!), but I'm keeping my eye on the prize. Soon all our hard work will pay off and we'll have a gorgeous back yard oasis!

I hope that all the Mom's had just as wonderful a day as I did, celebrating with my boys and my family!

Me and my boys!

Brunch!

The Red Velvet pancakes...which my sister said tasted better than IHOP's!

Carter & Evan enjoying Brunch

It was such a gorgeous day the kids enjoyed Brunch on the deck!

Mother's Day Brunch!

The Mother's

Nothing like seeing the end results after a hard day of clearing brush and cutting/loading wood in the hot, hot sun!

Making a House a Home - Backyard Expansion Project

When we bought this house we knew that we were going to want to expand the backyard. We have 2.3 acres and there was a good amount of wooded area in the back that was begging to be cleared and leveled! Most of the existing backyard was taken up by the previous owners landscaped swing set rock pit. We knew it had the potential to be an expensive project so we started trying to do as much on our own as possible. In November before any major snow, my Dad started by taken some brush down and the first 2 big hard wood trees.

Then it was put on hold for the remainder of the winter, until St. Patrick's Day when we started back up again!

After that weekend, we were motivated to continue working, so Charlie went ahead and got himself a small electric chain saw! It was nice to be able to get out in the yard when we had free time instead of having to plan on my Dad making a trip north with his equipment.

There was only so much we were going to be able to do on our own, we had a number of pines along our property line that abuts our next door neighbors property and while Charlie had become pretty skilled (thank you YouTube!) at cutting down trees, he wasn't about to attempt trees that, if they fell the wrong way, would take out the neighbors house. So it was time to get a quote from a tree company. We had been told by a number of people to try calling lumber companies because they would want the wood and would most likely do the work for free, but the company who came out late last summer had told us that lumber companies don't take lumber from residential properties because there could be the potential for more damage done to trees, like nails or bb's. I ended up calling a local company and got a quote that was pretty standard and they were scheduling 6 weeks out so I sat on the quote and decided to see if there was a local lumber company just to see what they said. With the house needing to be painted and the upcoming installation of a sliding door for our deck we need to save pennies where we can.

I don't know why I missed this the first time I looked but I found Varney & Son's Logging. Their website states that if you have 20 or more trees to remove it could potentially be free, so I called the number and left a message. About 5 days went by and I was about to call the other company to get the job scheduled when I got the call from Cy. He came by looked at the job and told us that while we have the quantity they are looking for we didn't have enough quality, so he would have to charge us a small fee. It was WAY less than we had been quoted and he could do the job by the end of the week! Holy moly! Now I am getting excited! On Wednesday April 18th, he came by to drop off his equipment so that he could start first thing on Thursday. The boys got a kick out of the tractor and I made sure to go around and snap some "before" pictures!

On Thursday, after we got home from school and Family Center, I came home to find Cy (the one man wrecking crew) working his magic. I was so impressed with how fast he was able to get these trees down. At one point while the boys and I were eating lunch we watched him drop FOUR trees at once! I wished I had my camera ready for that! I did manage to get this one though!

After he cut the trees down he would drive them up to the side of our property and stack them for the lumber truck. We had some hard wood trees that we also wanted cut and since he breaks even with the hardwood and my parents heat their house with a wood stove, we asked him just to drop the trees and we'd cut them up. The one downside to using a company like this, is that all they do is take the wood, they leave the limbs and tops. So the aftermath of this process has your yard looking like a tornado had touched down.





Lucky for us, it happened right before April vacation and Charlie was home so we spent as much of our free time as we could working on clearing brush. In the last 3 weeks we can now finally see our swing set pit again thanks some help from my Dad, my brother David and Jesse. We still have a lot more to do but it's nice to see the progress!

Here is a slide show of the entire process so far! We just got the quote back from the company who will come in and stump, level and loam the new open area and hopefully if all goes well, they will also be able to muck out the swamp so we can turn it into a pond! We have to find out the exact details of what is allowed since it sounds like it's been delineated as wetland.

Happy 2nd Birthday Evan!

At 1am this morning my little nugget turned 2! He was very excited about it being his birthday. He's been singing Happy Birthday to himself all weekend and I was able to get it on video last night before bed. All day he's been asking to watch his video and he even sings along to it!

Evan is such a fire cracker.  He's extremely independent.  He loves to play angry birds and trace letters on my phone, saying "I did it" when he finishes.  He doesn't stop talking or singing from the time he wakes up until the time he goes to bed and I am sure that someday he'll be going into public service since he loves the people!  He waves to strangers at the mall, saying "Hi, hello! I Evan!" and he is always finding some adult at family center to wrap around his finger.  Including the schools principal who he got to play puzzles with during a recent math night.  Ever since then he's been running up to her and giving her hugs every time he sees her.  I think the school is in BIG trouble when Evan starts going there!

He is also taken terrible 2's to a whole new level!  He's super fresh and the most demanding child I have ever seen.  He knows what he wants and wants it NOW!  And will often go right up to someone and take what he wants.  Right now we're trying to combat a hitting problem.  He's not doing it aggressively, but because he thinks he's funny.  Either way,  we need to nip that in the bud.  Doesn't help when he is learning it from his older brothers who like to solve their issues by duking it out [insert big eye roll here!]

I don't know how he does it, but he has the personality that makes me want to simultaneously hug him and strangle him!  He can be a royal pain most days but I adore him and his mischievous ways!  Here are some Birthday pictures of my Birthday Boy!








Make a wish Evan!!!


Opening his brand new LeapPad, he is always trying to play angry birds on my phone or grabbing one of the boys DS's so we got him something he could call his own.  He didn't want to let it go, but we have to set it up first so he'll have to wait until morning to try it out!

Happy Easter!

Another successful Holiday for the memory books! We started our celebrations yesterday with our annual Easter Party at the old Rec center. It's nice to still be included and have the chance to catch up with some of our old friends. I can't get over how big all the kids are getting!



After our Rec party we high tailed it back home for our neighborhood Easter egg hunt! Our neighbor has been hosting this event for the last 8 years and even though her son is older now, it was a tradition he wanted to continue! It's just another reason why I am so happy we moved in to this neighborhood!


After the egg hunt was over it was time to head home and get ready to decorate eggs. This year I found a really cut pirate kit at Target and decided to forgo the coloring. I think they had more fun coloring the eggs than dunking them in cups and waiting! They came out really good!



Ahoy Matey!


Then it was time for bed. The Easter Bunny can't come if we're awake!


Easter Morning the boys found their baskets waiting for them on the kitchen table! Candy, bubbles and DVD copies of Hop, The Muppets and Chipwrecked! Oh and of course, no basket is complete without chocolate bunnies!




Uh-oh, someone got into more chocolate!


After we got the boys cleaned up from the breakfast chocolate, we got them dressed in their Sunday best for our annual Easter family portrait! It is always a challenge to get the boys to look at the camera when they are supposed to, but it's especially challenging when there is no one in front of the camera getting their attention!


Once we finished doing our portraits we decided to put the boys down for a little quiet time in their rooms so that they wouldn't be cranky for company! I had already put the big giant ham in the oven earlier, so now it was time to prep my leg of lamb! I have never made one before so I was a little nervous, in any case the house smelled amazing. Garlic and rosemary and apple and maple! YUM! While the food was cooking and the kids all arrived we got ready for our first egg hunt! We sent the kids down to the cul-du-sac, behind our house, with some of the grown-ups while the rest of the grown-ups stayed behind to hide all the eggs! Once the eggs were hidden, we called them back sat them down and explained the rules.



And they are off!


There was one special egg that had a $5 bill inside and Carter was the lucky one! David was got lucky too, finding the second best egg with a $1 bill! It was a lot of fun even if it started to sleet a little!

After all the eggs were found it was time to eat the Easter feast! I thought I might have over cooked my lamb, but it ended up being just right. I had never really eaten lamb before but since I made it I was going to try it! It was DELICIOUS!




It was a wonderful day spent with both our families and I am so glad to be able to have the space to host holidays! Nothing makes me happier than cooking for my family! And of course I had to take advantage of us all being in our Sunday best to get an updated photo of my siblings and parents!