Screamer

Devin does this most of the day.

You might want to turn down your speakers.

Pittsburgh

As I mentioned in my fence post, we took off to Pittsburgh for a night. We wanted to something fun while Matt was on vacation. It's about a 2 hour drive. 

I didn't take many pictures, but we didn't do anything that was really picture worthy anyway.

It was a lot of "firsts."

It was Devin's first time in a hotel.

Mine and the boys first time not spending the night in our house (wow, we use to travel all the time, we haven't gone anywhere is almost a year!!!).

Dev's first vacation.

Dev's first time going swimming.

And our first time to IKEA!!!

Matt excited to go into Ikea.

 After a few hours shopping at Ikea, which was awesome, we checked into our hotel. It had an indoor pool, so we went swimming for a while and then went out for dinner. 

Luke was happy to have his own big bed and loved that it had it's own remote. They were Sleep Number beds and I hated them! I spent 3 hours of not being able to sleep and fiddling with it, to get comfortable. It was so uncomfortable. It was either so hard my back was arched or I felt like I was sleeping on a water bed.

And Devin's crib was like a hospital crib. As I wheeled him across the room Matt said he looked like he was going off for surgery, sad! He was almost as tall as the crib, which might have explained why he was up most of the night.

But I did get some cute pictures of him playing in it after we checked in.

I just love my both my boys big brown eyes.

The next morning Matt was having separation anxiety from working on the fence (jk), so we loaded up and went back home. It was still fun to get away for a few hours!

Backyard Makeover, Phase 1-Yard Clean-up and Fence Part 1

This is going to be a long post, because this is the biggest project we've ever taken on and Matt insists that I include a lot of pictures!

Over Matt's workation we he took on the long awaited fence project! We've been saving up and waiting to do the fence, since we moved in. Matt has researched and prepared everything pretty much perfectly. He's awesome. He almost finished it over his vacation week, but we went on a little get-away for a night, so we didn't quite get it done. He's finishing it up right now, like I'm blogging while he's working, so the final fence pictures will be coming soon.

Here are a few before pictures:

From last spring, before we bought the house.

From a warm day in February. It's hard to tell but there is a lot of overgrowth and just random tree stumps and stuff all over the place.

Branches, over growth and roots were everywhere back there. It was just a mess.

You get a better idea of the overgrowth from this picture, from last year.

There was also a few panels of a very old, leaning fence and a few lone fence posts (piled up right there) that we ripped out.

Here are some pictures after the clean-up phase.

Can't you tell how bad we needed a privacy fence?! Especially with that road behind our house.

 

Matt then ordered ALL of our fencing supplies through Lowe's and they delivered everything straight into our garage. It was AWESOME!

It was quite the production. They showed up in this big truck with a fork lift and all.

Doug arrived (thank goodness!), they rented a two-man auger and nearly killed themselves (not really, but it was killing us just watching them!) drilling the holes. A few inches down the soil here is hard clay and is so heavy. The auger was so heavy. Doug put a rope on the bars and around his neck for support and he had rope burns on his neck!

The day (their backs and a lot of time) was saved when our good friends Jason and Daniel showed up to help. Seriously, we would have been digging holes for days if they hadn't shown up.

They went so much faster. They dug about 23 holes-I think. The city requires them to be 30 inches deep and that is so deep! My entire leg could have fit down these holes. These guys were amazing!

All of the supplies.

They thoroughly enjoyed their day of rest on Sunday. Doug and Katie stayed until Tuesday, so they worked hard on Monday. And it rained all day long. Luckily it was warm though. They got all but 8 posts up and cemented that day.

I mean look at those puddles! Our poor backyard was a swamp! Much of the grass was ruined since they had to do most of it in the rain.

But it got better. Tuesday was warm and sunny all day. I was so thankful, since we had the boys outside with us most of the day. The post holes were completely full of rain, so we built a little contraption and drained those and then Matt and I finished the 8 remaining posts, worked on cutting the rails and other things.

We were suppose to get "severe storms" for Wed and Thurs so we decided to pack up and take a little trip to Pittsburgh for the night. And from what we hear it didn't rain much while we were gone, but it was a fun and needed break.

Daniel came back over and helped Matt mount the rails.

Then Matt finally got to the easy part and also finally got to use his Christmas present that he has been dying to use-his air compressor and nail gun. He posted all of the slats (I don't know the technical names).

And it rained most of that day too. But this time it was cold rain. It was a weird week as far as the weather went!

And then it really started looking awesome!!!

Matt got to this point and decided to end for the week, which he is finishing now (hooray!).

Isn't she a beauty?

We'll post the completed fence pictures hopefully this weekend! 

And if your curious what the rest of the "make over" involves...well, you'll just have to wait and see!

Happy Spring!

finally

Easter Festivities

I have a lot of catching up to do on here! We've been very busy. We'll start with Easter weekend. Sorry for the lack of and lame pictures (besides this top one, which is adorable!).

We had a little Easter Brunch'n Hunt at our house with some friends. It was pretty chilly, so we just went out and did the hunt on our front lawn really quickly. Here's Luke with his "best friend" Emmett. Aren't they cute?

Doug and Katie came for the weekend, but I didn't even get any pictures with them! I was a major slacker this weekend. The guys worked unbelievably and ridiculously hard digging holes (more about the fence in a different post) on Saturday, while me and Katie hung out, ran errands, went to a ward activity and played with the kids. Sunday, was a much needed day of rest for the poor guys. We normally do the Easter part of Easter on Saturday but had forgotten, so luckily the Easter bunny came while we were at church and left a basket for Luke. The highlights of his basket were his awesome net to catch bugs, and his "work books," they are like preschool books, but are dry erase, so he loves to do them over and over. He's getting so big!

That night we had a lovely dinner which included a honey baked ham and it was DELICIOUS. Even Luke ate it, which truly is a miracle. 

Thanks so much for coming D&K, we loved having you guys. Luke still is always saying "this is the worst!!!"

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On another note: last weekend while Matt was on call Luke, Devin and I kicked on GARAGE SALE SEASON!!!!!!!!!! We scored!

The highlights:

Luke got this awesome train table, that is is perfect condition, for $10! Awesomeness!

And I got a cookie press that was like new in the box for $2.

Oh how we love to hunt (which isn't very hard) for treasures out here!

This morning

This morning Devin cried, Matt got him, put him in bed with us. Shortly after Luke joined us. I fed Devin, gave him his pacifier, hoping that I could get a little more shut eye. Devin pulls out his binkie right away....

Devin: Dadda

Luke: Shhhhhhhh!!! Dad is sleeping!

It was pretty cute.

Some Dad time

Matt has been doing an ED (or as most people know it, ER-it's called the Emergency Department now) rotation, so he's had quite a lot of time off during the week. It has been nice, but it has really thrown off our schedules, so oddly enough it'll be nice to have a more consistent schedule for his next (and FINAL!!!!) rotation. But we've really enjoyed having him around more.

The other day we took a walk over at Shaker Lake, just a couple of miles from our house. Give it a week or so and it'll all be beautiful, luscious, green trees!

This is a common sight in our house and throughout much of our day....Luke getting in trouble. Have I mentioned that the 3's are much harder than the 2's for us? :)

It's so interesting that only a few blocks away from our house, or in the other direction, not far from the ghetto, there are some amazingly HUGE & beautiful homes. Many of them are completely different in style too. It's so fun to see them all. I think this one is one of the biggest I've seen here. One of Matt's favorites. It's so big I couldn't even get it in the whole picture!

 I liked this one too.

And since there are never any pictures of me....I had to (and have always wanted one of these..haha) take this one.

This is also a common occurrence at our house. Whenever two of us are interacting with one another, or hugging or whatever it doesn't take long for a Luke to end up squished between you. He loves getting all the attention he can!

Devin has recently learned how to wave, say "Dada" and is almost crawling. He's doing the army crawl and working on getting up on those knees. It won't be long! He's getting his first tooth now too!

And one of the biggest things that went down recently was Matt's BIG birthday!!! He turned 29!!! And all he ever wants is my homemade brownies and ice cream.

Happy Birthday my love!!! 

You're the greatest Dad & Husband I know!