Welcome April

by Sarah

Wednesday April 1 we had Anya and Joelle, and Joelle finally mastered the hover board! She absolutely loves it! When she gets to our house, usually the first thing she asks is "Wheresa baby?", then second, she goes running to Josh's room to get the hoverboard. Which can also be a slight problem, because Clay also thinks he owns the hoverboard so there are sometimes fights over it. So as a result of fights and little kids always falling off, the hoverboard is now sometimes conveniently "lost" on Wednesdays:)

 

 

We have been doing lots of tree trimming, so Josh's task is to haul away all the branches.

 

Anya loved being outside! She even took her morning nap out there.

 

You can see that Joelle is in the middle of a very high jump right now, but don't let that deceive you into thinking she's coordinated. She was probably sprawled all over the ground in the next second:)

 

Four-wheeler rides are always a hit.

 

You saw from the last post that we finally took down the last pine tree, so the next step was to grind down the stumps and reseed that area.

 

More branches to haul away.

 

And more trimming.

 

We started planting the garden Wednesday afternoon. We did onions, peas, lettuce, spinach, and a row of green beans. The rest will wait until warmer days.

 

There was lots of this going on all week. People out enjoying the sunshine and warmth!

 

And it's reseeded! I gotta say though, there is only one thing wrong about tearing out the last pine tree. It made a prime spying/hideout spot while playing capture the flag/kick the can/gray wolf. Oh well. We'll get over it. If we have to.

 

Josh dug out Grandpa's old mower from the shed and decided he'd do a little mowing. I can hardly imagine having to mow our entire property with a push mower like that. I have to admit I really like just sitting on a nice big zero-turn listening to music and doing as minimal work as possible.

 

And now we're back to 40 degrees and windy! Woohoo! *heavy sarcasm :)*

 

He Is Risen!

Farewell March

 

by Jewel

 

I don't know why these kids were here, but we enjoyed them as usual. Kiowa loves to help around the house, especially at Grandma's house!

 

 

Both these kids love the tire swing, even though you can't tell about Flint in this picture. I don't know what his problem is, but I think it probably didn't last long.

 

Kiowa was very impressed with the snake Josh brought home from the creek and simply loves it. Flint wasn't terribly impressed which was surprising especially since he's usually all about stuff like that. Oh well. Give him a couple of years... 

 

Kiowa was so funny. She didn't want to give it back to Josh at first.

 

 

I think this was on a Friday when Levi and Echo closed on their old house. These kids sure love playing at Grandma's house.

 

 

I guess this must have been Wednesday, since we have this sweet little Anya baby. She is absolutely, totally, and completely adooorable.

 

We also had Joelle, and since she had major bed head after her nap, Sarah gave her a super cute water sprout. Even Ben thought it was cute.

 

 

Mom has been having problems with her sewing machine lately, so her newest project is to try to fix it, but I don't know whether or not she was successful.

 

 

Josh got on a chess kick lately, and so he and Jake spent one evening playing chess.

 

Josh is showing how he can climb up door jams, which is actually more than most people around here can do (except for Katie, as we have evidence of in earlier posts).

 

Dad and Mom are remembering how handy it is to have an electrician in the house again. I know this was a Saturday because Dad and Jake didn't have work.  

 

This is the second 2000 piece puzzle we did so far this winter, the first one being the America puzzle. Ben didn't do much on it. He maybe did one piece just to say he helped.

 

We had Jesse & Lucy and Levi & Echo over one night.  Anybody in this family who hasn't held Jason yet has no excuse if they try to complain their way into getting a turn for him first.

 

Kiowa is enthralled with her new cousin, and Flint doesn't quite know what to think of this new little kid who always comes to Grandpa and Grandma's house with Jesse and Lucy now.

 

 I don't really know when this was.

 

In that warm snap, everybody got in the habit of going on jogs and walks, and a lot of times some of us would end up at the lake on the rope swing (funny how that happens).

 

Say goodbye to the last of the three pine trees to the south of the house. Ben got the job of hauling this last one to the south grove and later cutting it apart and burning it. I don't think anybody was sad to see it go, as it tended to block our view, especially from the patio and Dad and Mom's bedroom windows.  

 

A day's work.

 

And that's the end of March.