Anniversaries

Well, Carl did it, the tree house is done...almost. The only things left is to hang the door and build the ladder up to it. In the meantime, our neighbor is nice enough to let us use his ladder, as he has for the past 7 weeks on this project. This morning it rained hard for about 5 minutes to Carl and James go to run outside and listen to the rain on the metal roof. From the pictures you can see how the tree branches pop through the roof. Carl had no idea it was going to take so long to do the roof, nearly 3 days straight, from morning till night. It is great to have it practically done. We burned all our construction garbage with a huge bonfire which resulted in the logical choice of hobo dinners. James and Emma even got to eat hobo dinners up in the treehouse last night. This morning, I had a realization of all the anniversaries that come on June 6th for our family..here is a list of them.

June 6th....
It has been...

2 years since we closed on our house here in northern Kentucky
4 years since Audrey Ann was born (the adoption that fell through before Anna)
5 years since the moving truck left our home in Utah with our earthly possessions
11 years since James was blessed in church by his dad
and finally
66 years since Poppa Jack landed in France, right before D-day

Pulling herself up, eating blueberries, crawling

Yes, Virginia, you are perfect.
sometimes doing a "wounded soldier" crawl, and sometimes doing the real thing

Eating blueberries for the first time

MY FIRST GOOD CORNROWS

I am so proud of myself! I did nice tight cornrows in Virginia's hair for the first time. Thanks to a friend, Kim, that taught me how to do it. WHOOO HOOO.

Treehouse Progress

Well after tax season every year, I give the kids a really great gift of something they really want, to assuage my mommy guilt from working. This year was no exception, other than the gift is an over the top, extreme, Westergard style treehouse. Built by Carl and paid for by Missy.The latest pictures, with the railing mostly done! So now the cedar wrap around the deck edge is done, and the 4x4 posts for the railing is well on it's way, and one section of partially finished railing is done. We will all breathe slightly easier now when Anna is up in the treehouse. Tomorrow...more railing, and hopefully roof, weather permitting. Well, the trim and siding is all done, now onto the roofing. Well, no, let's put that off a little longer, and do the cedar wrap around the deck and also the railing.

You can see the green steel roofing on the ground waiting for Carl to put that up.

You can see the structure from underneath and the beautiful siding.

We decided to side the house with cedar lap siding, for a beautiful look. I found a re-use center in Covington, which gets donations from Home Depot etc, of all sorts of building materials. So, I got 3 vinyl windows dirt cheap for the treehouse. Having vinyl windows, spurred us to do the nice siding.

Standing on his deck proudly.

The custom metal bracket built by Carl to support the project.

Getting it level, this is taking way longer than planned.

The man that "doesn't do wood" starting an over the top treehouse.

Why do we think we can do these kind of projects? Motivation! We started by checking out a ton of books at the library.

You bit the baby!! and Ginny's first carousel ride

We had our playdate Thursday, and met at the zoo. There was just one other mom that went, Melanie with her 2 kids. We had a great time, as always. The zoo is one of our favorite places to go. Now, neither of us had taken our children to feed the lorikeets so we decided to do that. we got a seed stick and a cup of nectar. It was pretty fun, but then, as we were feeding one, Virginia reached out to touch the bird, and it bit her. Not hard and she didn't even cry, but it startled me. Melanie had the camera and took a picture just as it happened, so we can laugh about it now. Anna loved to feed the birds, until one tried to land on her arm. Then she decided that she was done feeding the birds.

YOU BIT THE BABY!!

Then, I had one land on my head, Anna took the opportunity to feed it to. Once it nibbled on my ear, I was done with him, and got him off.

Ginny's first carousel ride!

At the entrance to the zoo, there are the rhino statues that the kids always climb on.

Anna had decided to wear her peacock costume to the zoo, so all the peacocks could see her. The whole day she got compliments how beautiful she looked. On the way home she fell asleep, and as I tucked her into bed for her nap, she said,

"Momma, everyone thought I was beautiful".

I told her, "Yes, they did".

Temple dress

Well, I started Emma's temple dress last week and did the hem today! It turned out really nice, before I put in the drapes, it just looked like a big marshmallow, but now it is awesome. I have now started on Anna's. Our temple date is June 12th! We are returning to Columbia, SC for the sealing.

Virginia got on her hands and knees for the first time today, she can roll and pivot, but she hasn't offically crawled.

She got her first tooth on April 15th, 2010, and her second a couple days later.

May 2010 - so far

For playgroup, we decided to all go to the Krohn Conservatory Butterflies of Japan show. Anna was "less terrified" this time than last year.

Oh, she noticed a butterfly on Virginia's hat, you can just barely see a yellow sliver on the white hat.

Sitting outside on the grass while momma works in the yard.

what a cute bum.

Virginia's new funny face she makes while snorting.

The treehouse progress....