Memorial pics

Here are the pics that didn't save yesterday. I put up the canopy before I remembered. Nice and sunny warm today.

Memorial Day 2012

We had a pretty low key weekend; didn't go anywhere except Walmart, didn't have anything special for food, didn't have anyone over. It was kind of nice to have a long weekend all by ourselves.

We watched several movies, played trains, planes and cars with Sam, had a couple tickle fights and rough-housed, and otherwise just hung around the house. Oh, we did make it to church too, in fact we all went together even though Aimee had to go early to do the Resource Center.

I did get out today and do a little on the yard. I got the extra boards on the middle garden bed to bring it up to the same height as the other two and got the strawberry cage started. I don't, however, have pictures since my phone decided to not save the pictures I took today; only one picture of some fire boxes at Walmart was there when I went to post this.

I will hopefully have more success tomorrow posting the pictures after I retake them.

Cousins

I love that Sam has some great cousins. Tyler and Issac really have a fun time playing with Sam. The three of them have been getting along so well and keeping each other entertained. There have only been a couple of times that we have had to intervene, and several where it wasn't probably necessary, but we are learning as parents to let the right stuff get figured out between them.

Auntie Ann had some fun crafts for them to do; Pilgrim faces made from paper plates and hat cutouts with a buckle that they colored. That was fun but wrestling seems to be Sam's new thing this time; testing his strength against Issac and sometimes Tyler. He is about even with Issac, coming out on top sometimes and not others; it seems Issac is a little timid in wanting to fight Sam off completely, so he ends up letting Sam bowl him over. They love to hug each other when it is all over, which at 2, 4 and 7, is really cute.

I look forward to my brother, Tim, and Candace, his wife come Dec 28th, having kids (sorry guys, no pressure) and us having more so that there are just that many more cousins playing around at the holidays and other times we get together.

Sam is such a social man that I know he will be such a good cousin and brother with the younger kids when they come. With his play times at the babysitter and church daycare and playgroups, I am such a proud father he isn't following after my solitary ways.

I am also glad he is learning to have fun with friends and even cooperative play; although he is still working on going along with the other persons way of play and not always getting things the way he likes them. He is developing into a great little boy; he has a lot of learning and exploring to do but I couldn't be happier to have such a great son.

Labor Day Hike ...err Climb

We decided to try and do something fun for Labor Day with Sam, so we went to Mt. Pisquah Arboretum for a hike and to have lunch. We evidently didn't do enough research about the trails cuz we ended up scaling a small mountain, Mt. Pisquah. There evidently were rolling hill, mostly shaded trails, but we decided to hike straight up the steepest, full sun, hot trail we could find.

It took us over an hour and a half to get to the top and it was pretty steep. You can kinda tell in the pics where you can see where there are people walking way up the slope. Anywho... it was a fun time but we got home way later and were all exhausted when we got back... Sam even fell asleep in the hiking pack for the last 20 minutes or so coming down.



Aimee carried Sam up the first part of the very steep path and was having a harder time with it than she expected. So I took Sam for the rest of the assent and we still went pretty slow. We let Sam out to walk about 3/4 of the way up so we could have a snack and he wanted to walk. But when it proved to be even slower going with stops every 3 steps to pick up more rocks, we decided it was time to put him in the hiker pack and get up to the top so we could have lunch.



The top was fun and gorgeous, even with it being a little hazy. It was an awesome 270 degree view. We took some rest in the shade of the trees at the top and had lunch we brought... it was like 1:30 at this point since it had taken us 1.5 hours to make the top. It was a welcome break to have lunch. We even had a praying mantis visitor that started crawling up my leg after we started eating.




The decent was much quicker and Sam was able to actually walk a lot and just held our hands when the slope was a little too steep for him to keep his footing in the gravel. We made pretty good time but he started really slowing down and figuring he was getting tired we put him back in the hiker pack about where we had taken a snack break on the way up.



We got to a crossroads where two trails met and decided to take the slightly longer, 1 mile, trail that was much less steep compared to the way we came up, which would have been murder carrying Sam. Aimee did a great job carrying Sam all the way back down; I think she wanted to prove to herself she could do it.



There were three hawks, or maybe eagles, that flew over us almost one right after the other. I think this was the first one since the other two went over really fast and were out of sight before I could get the camera back out.



This tree was pretty cool with the moss growing on it; Aimee and I both commented as we went by so I decided it warranted a picture.



And the end of the hike, where we all feel like Sam, but just can't show it yet.



Anywho... when we got to the bottom about 3:30, our neighbor, John, from down the street was just getting there with his dog Turbo and his Son, Scott, and his dog Taser. It was kinda strange to see someone familiar up there.

Fourth of July

We had a fun fourth. We spent the day outside; Aimee washed the cars and I worked on trying to clean out the sprinkler lines that got some kind of debris in them. Sam had fun getting wet with the hose and trying to help me. It was a mildly hot day so the mist from Aimee spraying the cars actually felt kinda good.

We did some fireworks with Sam at 7 before he went to bed, then got him up at 10 and did some more. He was a little disoriented when we got him up for the later ones, but soon got pretty excited to see all the fireworks in the relative dark, in the street outside out house. We had bought a package of fireworks from Costco with a variety of sizes of fountains. We did a lot of the smaller ones before he went to bed and all the rest, which included the biggest fountains at night.



Here are the empties and the final pics from the night before we went inside:

It was a lot of fun and I am glad we got him up for the nighttime show. He really seemed to like it despite signing "loud" repeatedly for the "illegal" fireworks that the people at the end of the street were firing off. We will definitely be doing this in the future, especially since Sam went down to sleep afterword without much of a problem. We did have to help him calm down a little from the excitement but it didn't take long and was expected, so easily managed.

Here are some pics of the "good", yet illegal, fireworks that were being shot off down the street from us.

Father's Day weekend

For Father's day weekend, we ended up loading up the trailer with a load of dirt and pulled it up to my parent's house. My Dad has been deliberating about how he was going to go get some dirt to fill in around the retaining wall under the deck and I happened to have a trailer full of dirt. We were going up to go to a wedding of one of Aimee's high school friends and to celebrate Father's Day with my family so it was very convenient. The 100 mile trek with an almost overloaded trailer (and car) ended up taking us 30 minutes longer since it was much more stable to stay below 55mph; the trailer started bouncing and swaying a little more as you went above that.

So for Father's Day, my dad got dirt, 3 loads of dirt; he seemed happy with it. I got rid of almost a yard of dirt that would have cost me $5 to dump locally and Dad got to get his extra dirt while saving on the quantity a little.

I got to move that load of dirt we took up there three times; once to get it out of the way for the wood chips when I piled it by the hot tub, from that pile into the trailer, and then from the trailer into Dad's back yard. I was actually surprised at how much dirt I had moved to make room for the wood chips cuz all that loose dirt I had moved filled up the trailer.

Sam had fun helping with some of the dirt moving, but once Grandma brought out the watering can, he was all into watering all the flowers and pots and trying to refill the can with the hose that wasn't connected. Oh and he found Grandpa's hat and was having fun running around with it on and having everyone else try it on. Oh and at some point Grandma, Aimee and Sam went for a walk and stopped by the duck pond.

Working weekend...

The Memorial Day weekend starts off with a trip to the Koi Pond shop and removing the rest of the deck.

Sam loved the Koi pond but unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of him there. They have such nice ponds on display and they are so friendly to show us their personal pond behind their house that is just next door. I got so many ideas for the pond in the back yard and really look forward to being able to plan it all out to do later this summer or maybe next year.



So the remainder of the deck has been stubborn to come out, due to screws that have been in there too long, had stain clogging the head, or they break off when trying to pull them out. There were quite a few in this state when I started this afternoon and now there are none. I only have about 4 more short boards to take out that wrap around the end of the hot tub, which should come out with little trouble based on the ones that were next to these. Sam is standing on these boards in the following picture and you can kinda see them in the last picture way down at the bottom of the post.



Aimee helped while Sam was taking a nap and then Sam came out to watch when he was done napping. Aimee pulled a lot of the screws out that I had either forced out or that were just turning and pulled out the of the joist with the boards. There were quite a few of these and I really appreciated Aimee's help.



We ended up getting all the boards off by dinner time, then cut Sam's hair since we had been letting it get long for the past 6 weeks and didn't like it, before picture posted will post the after tomorrow when we get the pic.

Then I went back out and pulled up the joists and started unearthing the cement precast footings that were holding up the deck. Aimee was glad that I decided to do that instead of working in the garage like we had planned earlier in the day; she got to take it easy from her hard day's work.



Tomorrow, I need to move all the cement footings and then kinda level off the ground so there are not holes to trip in. I need to figure out some kind of temporary path to put down from the back door out to the grass until I figure out how to move the hot tub and if pavers or a concrete pad is going in to replace the deck.

I think the garage will be the task for tomorrow and Monday. Aimee said she would help with cleaning stuff up and putting up some of the last cabinets I haven't gotten up yet that are still sitting in the garage taking up space and waiting to be put together and hung. That will help to create space to put stuff that doesn't have a home at present and get one more thing off the floor to make more space. I am glad I put those cabinet pieces on a rolling cart though, it has made it easier to move it around the garage when they have been in the way.