More Of Our Little Visit

 This is when we found out my sister is having a baby.  So now two sisters are having babies!

 The kids were so funny.  They all went to Grandma and Grandpa's room to find shoes.  Then after trying some on for size they coordinated a little dance to put on for the adults.  They would come out laughing, shake their booties, then blow a kiss laughing the whole time and then go back to do it again.  The influence of the oldest grandchild, I love it.

Perhaps soon I will find the pictures Willie took while I was away.

A Short Visit to Utah

May 22, 2014

We didn't waste time getting some vacation time in after school.  We headed to Utah for a visit.  We stayed with my parents for about a day and then I left with my sisters and mom back to Colorado while Willie took the kids to stay with his mom.  Jordan really knows how to make the kids laugh.  She will tell them stories that are super funny to the kids.

This tree is one that everyone needs to have their picture in at some point.  This tree has been around for my whole life and has provided so much happiness.  It's an apricot tree.  We used to pick apricots putting them into the metal buckets and then wrapped around the tree was the scale where folks would weigh their produce.  This tree was perfect for climbing in.  We have had so many pictures in this tree.  I think soon this tree won't be around much longer.  It sits in front of my parents home.

Mckinley let us use her stylin' car.  What fun it was to drive it around.

This picture cracks me up because of Henry's excitement, throwing his head back laughing like a mad man.

We will have to wait 13-14 years before he can drive her around again.

Last Day of 1st Grade!

May 21, 2014

Parker's last day of First Grade.  Such a wonderful day, the sun was shining the kids were happy...well for a little bit.

Here's Parker with his teacher who just happens to live on the same street as us.  Yeah for Mrs. S.

When we got home after playing with friends for a few minutes then we pulled out some water, but mother nature decided that she wanted to play too.

The sun was shining but the rain came and the kids had fun playing around with the sponge balls that Aunt Terrah made for us awhile ago.

I love when you can see the sun but in the distance or sometime close by you see the beauty of the dark clouds.  I love when my kids are happy playing together enjoying life.

Bare Feet.

May 17, 2014

When we moved in to our new home we knew that we would need to fix the backyard.  We let the horrible poky weeds grow.  We pulled some, we tried to kill some, we eventually let them die for winter.  Anytime we went outside we had to have our shoes on so the dry poky weeds wouldn't get in our feet.  We had a few times where we were pulling our ten or more from the kids' feet.  They preferred to play in the garden where there weren't any weeds, but that's where we had a few plants growing.  So this spring we decided it was time to get a lawn.  Willie's cousin Jamelle lives out here and her husband did us a huge favor.  He let us use his rototiller.  Willie went to work, tilling the backyard multiple times.  As you can see the yard wasn't all that great.

We ordered our sod paying .23 a sq. ft.  I write this down because it's fun to look back and see how prices may have changed.  The cost was less a month ago, but unfortunately we weren't ready to put the yard in.  A small blessing in the morning; we had asked for the sod to be delivered at 8am.  At 7:30 the sod was here on four pallets.  Willie and I didn't ask too many folks for help so we weren't really expecting much.  At about 7:40 another little miracle showed up with his wheel barrow.  Earl!  Willie calls him an ox.  In an hour he helped Willie to lay a whole pallet of sod.  It was still early enough that I was helping the kids to get ready for the day and have breakfast.  Once Earl went home to help his wife out then I went out to help Willie.  The kids were really good and they assisted in unrolling the sod.  

 The morning was perfect.  It was overcast and maybe in the high 40's or low 50's.  So when you worked it was just right.  The boys wore their coats to stay warm.

  Willie brought the sod out and I unrolled and placed it.  We worked until 11:30 when the wonderful Elders showed up.  This ended up being perfect because I was unable to help Willie.  The kids were hungry.

 

 We had to get water on the sod so it wouldn't dry out and we had three great helpers with that project.  We just had to make sure those who were working didn't get too wet.

 Watch out for this crazy boy.  Willie and I were unrolling and we just happened to get a little wet!  Willie yelled out 'Hey!', when we heard this outrageous laughter from Henry as he had uncontrolled possession of the water.  He was being wild and we just had to bust out laughing.

 Lincoln knew how to take care of the crazy kiddo.  He seriously had to be about 20 ft away from him.

 Lincoln was so happy to help with the wheel barrow.  He did great taking it back to the pile so Willie could bring in more.  Parker helped earlier in the day with this same task.

 Elder Hern and Parker worked great together.  

 Elder Chandler was always willing to listen to the kids, and continue to work hard.  We could never have come so far without our three angels of the day.  Thank you so much for all the help from Earl and the Elders!

 We ordered a little more sod, just in case.  Well the just in case turned out to be about 100 sq ft.  So we went out front to the sort of lawn we had and we tilled up some nasty stuff and laid down the good.  This added about two hours to our day.

 Can I just say that it was so much fun to watch the kids' reaction to the lawn.  Willie said that after about four rows had been laid, Lincoln was on the ground rolling.  They had their shoes off, they played in the water, the kids were so happy.

 

 By the end of the day it was about 4:00 and Earl came back.  He helped us to get this water barrel for rolling and flattening the bumpy areas.  He was kind to take any left over sod we had so he could patch up a few places that were hit hard by winter.  In Colorado you actually have to water your lawn in the winter.  Crazy!

 Can I just say that we are so excited to have green grass in our backyard where we can walk bare foot.  Oh how we LOVE it.

We finished up.  The menu called for BLT's, but we knew the kids wouldn't eat it and we had had a long day, so we went to Dion's for dinner.   At dinner we introduced a little game while we waited for our pizza; basically 20 questions to find out what animal we were thinking of.  Henry's was the best.  We kept asking is it black and white, or does it have legs, or does it have four legs.  He kept giving us different answers to every question we asked.  He had a smile on his face the whole time we were guessing.  Then we finally gave up and it happened to be a Panda Bear.