Hanging with the cousins!

So a week or so ago we drove up to northern Ohio to meet up with Braden and Carrie and their kiddos for a few days. We did a ton of stuff, and while I won't comment on every picture, we had a really great time doing things like playing at the campground (where the McDonalds sign kept us well lit at night!), going to a local beach and playing in the sand, checking out a wildlife safari and feeding the animals, and taking a ferry over to Put-in-Bay island where we rented golf carts and tore up the island! Everyone had a really great time and were talking about next time before we even got home! It was great to reconnect with my brother and his wife too, and Rhonda and I really enjoyed that part especially! Thanks for making the trip guys, we'll have to do it again soon!

Birthday presents and stacking wood!

This week we've been stacking our firewood in preparation for being able to use our woodburning stove this winter! It's been a family experience, sometimes fun and sometimes just hot and sweaty, with attitudes to match at times... But we're getting there, as you can tell from our pictures! The second woodpile in the second picture used to be MUCH larger, and now it's stacked on pallets and getting ready to dry out nicely for winter! Can't wait to have all that free heat!
Yesterday, in the midst of the stacking, the mail lady brought us a package from our Canadian cousins, so we had to open it right away, giving us a nice break! Of course, the fun toys and such made it difficult to go back to work, so not a lot more stacking got done, but that's ok!
Thanks Emma, Kaleb, and Navia for your cards and gifts, the boys love them! Hope we can see you all soon!

Thad's Birthday Party and a Family visit!

Today we celebrated Thad's 8th birthday with a party where we invited a bunch of his friends! They all brought their swimming suits and we played in the little pool, had a water war with new water guns, and of course played in the woods/creek too! The kids had a blast, so it was a successful friend-party! Too bad they were all so excited that they really didn't eat much, only eating about 2 of the 4 pizzas that we bought!

Then I also have to note that last night we had a really fun visit with my cousin Hollie and her husband Jon, and their 7 year old twins Mason and Liam. They stopped in on their way to KC for a conference for Jon, and we had a great time visiting with them and, once it was a bit cooler out, playing outside on the zip line and the 4 wheeler! We don't get many visits from our Canadian family, so this was a VERY special treat, thanks for coming! This is hopefully putting some pressure on the rest of the Canadian relatives to make a trip down here someday!

Finished by noon!

So the stairs are almost completely finished now, excluding the trim that needed to be replaced upon seeing the condition of it when I took it out! On to more projects, like that enormous pile of wood outside that needs to be stacked! Where are my sons...

New Stairs (finally!)

Since we bought our house last August, we have planned to put the same hardwood down on the stairs going to our upper level, so we bought extra wood for this purpose. It's been almost a year now, and I'm finally getting around to putting it in! It was quite a process, with having to replace all the base stair treads first, and then teach myself how to put hardwood down on the stairs. After one day of removal of old stuff, and one day of installing the new, we have all but 4 of our stairs looking much nicer than the mdf and osb (raw wood, for the non-construction speaker)! We also finally got around to putting down the carpet in the basement, and so finally put up the rope ladder, and had fun playing and doing routines to earn pennies, a favorite activity in our old house!
Another picture is of the boys and a friend at the Daniel Boone home, which Thad chose to do as a birthday activity! He even got himself a cap gun with birthday money from Grandpa Bailey, which is taller than he is! I'll have to get a picture of that for the blog one of these days!

As you can tell, it's been a busy summer for us so far, with lots of projects to do and trying to throw some fun in as well! We hope your summer has been eventful and fun as well!

Fun times in Denver

So here are some pictures from our vacation in Denver so far. We're still here for another day and a half, but I have a bit of time so wanted to share some of our fun with you all! There's also a couple pics from Ezra's birthday party and his Buzz Lightyear pj's from Grandma P!