29 May 2011 - Garden and Patio

This week I was able to finish the garden wall and fill in the top soil.  Joanne wasted no time in buying and planting a variety of vegetables.

We also filled in the area around the hose with gravel to make mowing easier and to improve drainage.

Aunt Jennifer came on Thursday.  After a day of mowing, trimming hauling gravel and pouring cement under sunny skies, a Popsicle in the shade of a tree was in order.

I had five tons of pea gravel delivered this week and used it to prepare the area under the deck to pour the rest of the patio.  As with the area around the hose, this is going to make mowing a lot easier.

 On Friday I poured and stamped a new section of patio.  It's going to take me a while to finish, but the patio should be nice when I'm done.

 The patio's first section against the house is now done.  Time to move to the next section.

22 May 2011 - Garden Wall

When I built the girls' playhouse a few years back, I made a poor choice on the climbing wall.  I used wood that was not terribly suitable for outdoor applications, and tried to improvise with the handholds.  Since it started falling apart this spring, I decided to make it right this week.  The girls helped me replace the wood with some good treated material, and I bought some actual climbing holds which made the wall a lot better.

 

Ever since we moved into our current house, we've never been satisfied with the south side.  The grass kind of grew up against the house, but it was patchy and kind of weedy.  We've talked about doing something with it every year but this year we finally decided to do something about it.  We're making it into a small garden.  This photo shows the first part of the retaining wall I've started building to level the ground and contain the fill dirt for the garden.

We ordered eight yards of topsoil to fill the garden.  I hauled the first two yards (one at a time) with my truck, but its 20 year old leaf springs made me nervous, so we had the last six yards delivered and began filling the garden by hand.  I'm tired.

Next week, photos of the finished product.

15 May 2011 - Pirates and Crazy Hair

Emily had a birthday party this week.  It was a pirate party.  This is Emily's impression of a hook-hand.

All the girls had to try on the pirate gear.

I think Jessica didn't get the right idea here.  The spy glass is used with the good eye.

On Monday, we had Meet Me at Music with Madeline's class.  I got to practice clapping and tapping cups with Madeline.  I was good at it.  That night, Jessica had her final choir concert for the year at the middle school.

Oddly enough, Meet Me at Music Day was also crazy hair day at school.  Joanne made Madeline's hair awesome, but when she saw it, she refused to go to school until Joanne tamed it down.  Notice in the Meet Me at Music picture above Madeline's hair is not like the original do.  It reminded me of the time my sister Angie went to school with crazy braids only to realize that they'd gotten the day wrong and she was so embarrassed that when the real day rolled around, she wouldn't let my mom make her hair crazy again.

Emily on the other hand went all out with an Eiffel Tower motif, and wore it proudly throughout the day.

8 May 2011 - Mother's Day

During the week leading up to Mother's Day, Joanne left town.  OK, that sounds wrong.  She actually had a conference in Ocean City, MD, so she was there Thursday through late Saturday night.  The girls wanted to do something nice for her, so we got some plant-able flowers so she can enjoy them all summer.  We also baked some M&M cookies and made her a card.

This week I was conducting some instrumentation research at the college's biological field station.  I love working there because its very quiet and secluded and there's lots of good hiking.  This is the college's Trimble GeoXT GPS unit.

Joanne made sure to get her Mother's Day flowers in the ground quickly.

One night while mommy was at her conference, we needed milk so we went to Sam's Club.  When we came out, we saw this.

I'm pretty sure Sam's Club is not a pot of gold.

1 May 2011 - Spring time

The weather this week was typical spring -- cold/sunny/warm/rainy/sunny/windy/cold/rainy/sunny.  Thus, you can understand why the girls were outside wearing jackets while not wearing shoes.  If you click this picture to expand it, you'll see that Jessica and Madeline are of the Blackfeet tribe.

The girls made some super awesome cupcakes with crushed Oreos on top.  Yum.

This week we had a pretty epic windstorm.  It wasn't anywhere near the tragedy and devastation of the areas hit by tornadoes and flooding in the Midwest and the South, but the wind was strong here nonetheless.  It pretty much shredded the side of our neighbor's house.  Ours is one of a very few in our neighborhood that has not suffered some wind damage over the course of the past several years.  The only thing I can attribute our good fortune to is paying tithing, although I realize that even that doesn't make one immune to the powers of nature.  Whatever the reason, we're grateful we haven't had such damage to our house, and hope our good fortunes continue.

When I went to campus Monday morning, I found that this parking lot light pole had blown over in the storm and smashed on the ground.  Fortunately this faculty/staff lot is rarely used for overnight parking, although I'm fairly certain the black car in this shot was parked there when the light came down, missing it by about five feet.

Because of our visit to Delaware last weekend, I went for more than a week without cutting my grass, and this time of year, I can't afford to do that.  On Friday it took me five hours to mow and rake the lawn.  I was very tired.  This week I've been attending motorcycle riding and safety school too.  I was supposed to do it with a friend from church, but he wasn't able to go.  Fortunately a different friend from church was also in the same class.  I'll go this coming week too and then be done.

24 April 2011 - Easter in Delaware/Emily's Birthday

This year for Easter we were fortunate to have enough time to go to Karl and Jolene's house for Easter.  The girls had Friday through Tuesday off, so we left Thursday afternoon and spent five days in Delaware.  On the first day we arrived, the kids made forts of blankets in the basement, and this is where they slept for the next four nights.

On Friday night, it was Emily's birthday.  It was fun for her to be able to spend it with some extended family.  Living in Washington, PA, that rarely happens.

Emily got a T-shirt that fits her perfectly:  The camera loves me (monkey).

All the kids couldn't wait to set the cake on fire and belt out Happy Birthday to you!

On Saturday, Jerry and Danae came from New Jersey with their two daughters, Calista and Eden.  All the kids gathered around to color three dozen Easter eggs.

On Sunday morning, the girls found some small Easter baskets.  These contained calories that were largely consumed by adults, although the adults did not need said calories.

Baby Eden liked to play with me, and I've always had a soft spot for little girls.  A couple of the days were sunny and warm, so I took her outside and pushed her in the swing.

Trevor is a rock star, with or without this Paper Jamz guitar.  He liked to strike the rocker pose though.

On Sunday afternoon, we had an Easter egg hunt.  The adults hid nearly 60 plastic eggs for the kids to find.  The real ones stayed safely inside.

Madeline was getting the tire swing moving one afternoon.

And Emily and Jake were having some competition to see who could fly highest on the swings.

As with every trip and time spent with family, this one was too short too.  We had a great time and feel fortunate to live close enough to pull these kinds of road trips off.  It was a great way to spend Easter weekend.  Joanne and I even sang in the choir at church, and Karl and I found a way to fit in a round of golf.  It was sad it had to come to an end.

17 April 2011 - A Visit from Grandma

This week Grandma Fails visited us from Utah.  They did all kinds of things together.  Although it wasn't quite Easter yet, the girls are always game to dye some eggs.

They did manicures with Grandma too.  Everyone got beautiful.

Grandma worked with the girls on making melted colored chocolate mold suckers.

I was impressed by the colorful results.

As always, it was nice to have a visit from our family, and as always, the visit didn't last nearly long enough.  Joanne had to take her mom to the airport not long after church on Sunday.