Party!

We had a joint party this year in honor of Luke and Seth's birthdays.  They are exactly two weeks apart, so we kept it easy for everyone this year and celebrated with family together on the weekend in between their birthdays.  We went down to the park at the school, ate, and played and the kids had lots of fun.  They love their cousins!  The boys both love Lego Ninjago, so I made them cupcakes that kind of, sort of, look like them.  Luke actually turned nine yesterday...crazy!  I need to write a bit about him when I have more time.  It's after midnight and I need to run in the morning, so I must stop blogging.

  

I tried for a group shot at the end but quickly gave up on that.  Leah is such a copy cat...check out her hand in the picture!

And So It Begins

On May 2, 2013 we broke ground and began construction of our house.  It has been one crazy month since.  Poor Jer has spent nearly every waking hour out there (when he's not at his day job).  I've been a single mom quite a bit but luckily the kids have been good, and they love going out to the lot.  I am so excited to be started and now that school's out we can spend even more time out there.  It is quite a kid's paradise.  We have almost 4 acres which includes a big open field, swamp land complete with frogs, and a river...all with panoramic views of the mountains.  It really is beautiful...really peaceful, tons of birds, country living!  Now along with country living comes being farther from town and a dirt road we get to maintain ourselves, a well, and a septic tank, but I think it will be well worth it.  The kids are anxious to help.  We spent quite a bit of time there Saturday.  Luke hammered off a bunch of the foundation ties, and I could see he was so proud of himself.  He said he wanted to "make a contribution" to the house.  We are really trying to make this a family affair so that we can survive and even have some quality time while building.  It was quite a bit simpler building last time when we had one child!

Here are a few phone pics of dig day.  We ran out during the day to see what was going on and the kids had a quick photo op before we turned it back over to the pros.   Jer took only a few scoops with this bad boy, but he has done a ton of dirt work with the small back how that has been out there.

I took some pictures of the kids out at the lot on an amazing spring night.  This one is of Leah looking off to the west to the Wellsvilles.

After excavation there were some very large dirt hills.  My boys spent quite a few evenings out there climbing, rolling in, and throwing that dirt everywhere.  Needless to say they are completely filthy when they are done, but they have loved it!  Now that it is backfilled the piles aren't quite the same, but they are still managing to get really filthy!

Those trees in the background are back by the river.  I will take some pictures down there one of these days.

This old well rig sat at the lot for months, so I finally decided to take a picture of it.  This land sits on an artesian well so getting water and plenty of it was no obstacle.

This guy flew right over us and landed in a field.  The 50mm is not the ideal lens for a picture like this, but it's not terrible and there's a glimpse of the mighty Wellsvilles in the back.  I will have to get used to how much earlier it gets dark out there with these big mountains to the west!

 

Spring Soccer

I'm way behind on blogging, which is obviously not the end of the world, but I'm going to attempt a slew of posts to go along with all the pictures I've taken and get things up to date.  Seth and Luke both played spring soccer which made for a couple of busy months.

Seth's games were painful at times—like that time his coach told him to play "defense," and he hung in the goal for a good portion of the game, but it had its highlights too.  Seth actually scored quite a few goals, has quite a boot, and it getting a tad bit more aggressive.  He had fun.  I took my camera to one game of each of the boys and took virtually no good pictures.  I have no good lens for sports pics, and I just didn't get into documenting it at all this season.  Oops.

Luke's team had some rough times this season but finished the last few games so strong.  Watching Luke truly play his hardest and do awesome his last few games was really fun.  Luke tried out this week and is playing again next year, so I'm really hoping he'll carry that momentum into the next season.

 Luke's coach was such a nice guy.  (You may recognize him from his role in Napoleon Dynamite when he pulls up in the car with the hydraulics to protect Pedro.  Just picture him in a wife beater. :))