Memorial Day Weekend

We’ve got a lot of work to do in our back yard, and we decided to take advantage of this long weekend with beautiful weather to get some of it done.

Last time I used this picture to show you the TV cabinet we removed from the back of our house; now I want you to look at the foreground of the picture and notice all the brush.

Wow, what a mess. Steve’s dad let us use his Kubota tractor to remove two of the smaller trees in our back yard. Here goes the first one:

Here are some still shots of the same tree coming down. The pictures are quite dark due to all the shade in our backyard. But don’t worry, by the end of our day (and this post) that shade will no longer be a problem. ;)

And now for the second tree:

For this one, Steve’s brother Mike got to take the tree down. Here’s Steve’s dad telling Mike what he needs to do.

Here’s Mike doing what he’s told.

Ta Da

Look at the size of the root that was pulled out!

And now, the much brighter and more open yard (with a little clean-up needed)

After the boys had their fun, the real work began. Notice the professional in these next few pics delicately remove the over growth in the back yard. Notice the concentration, the precision, the skill, the pick?!?

Ahhh, what beauty.

Then on to the front yard. Here’s what it looked like before:

And now:

Brielle even helped Mama tidy up the front yard after most of the plants were removed.

Okay, so she might be sleeping here, but she’s helping in spirit.

Whew, what a weekend.

All Caught Up! *

And here it is, the blog to get me officially caught up (until I fall behind again…)

8 months! And this time, she is still 8 months while I am writing this. Woo Hoo.

Brielle is standing without parental assistance (as seen in a previous post), and working hard on crawling. I’m a little worried she’ll start crawling before Aruba, more for the constrictiveness of 4 long flights and having a crawling baby on my lap! But I’m sure it will work out.

* Footnote: I started this post before vacation and a family visit but obviously didn’t get it posted in time. Can we still consider me caught up? I can’t seem to catch a blog post break!

Summer work and 7 months

In honor of my Yankees loving friends, I wanted to start this post off with a little fun. We love you Alan and Carla!

And of course, to represent our new State

Now onto summer work. Now that the weather is getting warmer, Steve and I (and Bri) have been getting some work done on the outside of the house. We would like to paint this summer but we have a few things to take care of before that is possible. One is to take down TV cabinet in our back yard. We didn’t take a good before picture so I’ll have to use one from when we first were looking at the house. You can see the cabinet in the middle left of the picture. I’m standing right next to it (well, I’m behind a post).

Here’s Bri and I working on removing the screws.

Here’s Steve using his brute strength to remove the roof.

I leave Steve to feed Brielle and he finishes pulling the cabinet down from the outside of the house…

Notice the whole left behind. Oops.

Angry face.

Actually, turns out the wood was pretty rotted out behind this portion of the cabinet. Steve is currently taking out a whole section of the wall and replacing it with brand new siding. I’ll try to get pics of that later.

And now, 7 months. I’m not going to do the folder thing like last time since I know you guys couldn’t look at the files without signing up for blogger. Lame. Since I couldn’t choose, here’s a bunch of pictures of Brielle at 7 months.

Playing with Junior Cowboy Fingers during the “shoot”. (If you click on the picture, it will make it bigger.)

Here’s a face I’ve never seen before or since. The camera caught her just right.

Here’s the smiles.

Kick back after all that hard work

Awwww

Out of Sequence

I just couldn’t resist posting this today. This happened, today, not in the past. My next post(s) will still be in the past, sorry for the confusion and enjoy. Oh and sorry for the bad camera work. I wanted to make sure I got this before she was tired of doing it, which happened right after this video.

1sts

First picture with the Easter bunny.

First time getting her face painted.

At first she wasn’t too sure about it

But then she decided she made a pretty cute bunny

First Mariners Tee

First time in a shopping cart. She had a great time.

First picnic in the backyard. Hopefully those weeds will be gone one day.

First food, I believe this was sweet potato. I did not do a good job using a food with a lot of color contrast so it’s hard to see the food all over her face and chest.

And isn’t this face just too much!

First pirate patch. Actually, this picture is for Grandpa. He thinks these hair bands are silly, and after she pulled this one over her eye, I’m starting to think she may agree. ;)

This summer we hope to take her on her first boat ride, so we’re getting ready:

She had a hard time sitting with this big bulky life jacket, and mainly ended up on her back.

We also water tested the life jacket. It worked perfectly in an inch of water.

Whew, that was a lot. I think I’m finally getting close to catching up though. =D