More Baby-Biking and our yard

The boys have decided it's also fun to make bigger ramps for the baby bikes now, so today after work and before hockey practice we jumped baby bikes for a bit! It's so much fun to watch them fly down the drive and jump those bikes, sometimes even crashing a bit! Mom was a bit worried about the size of the ramp, but I convinced her that the fun is worth the risk in this case!





And finally, a view of our new and much improved front yard! The grass has been coming in well and things are starting to look very green again! Can't wait till next year to make use of our new yard!

Late Night Baby-Biking

So we have a rather unusual pasttime in our house. Our boys have named it "baby-biking," and it's where you hop on one of the plastic three wheelers - the big wheels, the Diego bike, or the garage sale bike, and sail down a hill as fast as you can go! They've managed to work in some spins and turns here and there, sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident, and tonight they talked me into building a little jump for them! Hope you enjoy the fun time they're having!

Sadness

I got a phone call from a very upset 8 year old this morning, who told me through his crying that mom had "run over George this morning." Our boys are very sad today as our new little kitten ran under the van wheel as they were going to take Ezra to preschool. Poor George is gone, and we'd appreciate your prayers for the boys as we say goodbye to such a fun little kitty.

Carving pumpkins and playing with George

Our fall has definitely been busy, but we found an hour tonight after church, small group, and kids Christmas choir practice to carve our pumpkin and play outside a bit. We had lots of fun digging the guts out of the pumpkin and designing the face, and then I cut it up for us. In the meanwhile Sol, the one kid we KNOW is allergic to cats, spent some time cuddling up to our kitty George. I also threw in a pic Rhonda took last week of George driving the kids car. Pretty talented cat we adopted from Grandma P's litter! Hope your fall is going well!

Sol and his buddy George

Digging out the guts

Ez showing his goofball side

George driving our car

Eli's Star Wars Show

Eli has loved playing with his Star Wars Lego figures, and wanted to put together a short movie for his online audience. What is it with little boys and Star Wars anyhow? Hope you enjoy it, from my getting bigger 6 year old to you!

This was the big weekend - getting our yard all graded off an adding a bunch of dirt to make a much smoother, easier to mow and enjoy type of yard. We began with over a week of cutting down trees, about 8 or 9 in total, plus a myriad of small ones. A lot of chopping wood, and some help from good friends, got us ready to begin this weekend with the grading. My father in law's friend from church brought his bobcat over on Thursday evening and we got started. He was amazing with that thing, turning our yard from something of a dump into a smooth, level place we can plant some new grass and begin to enjoy! He created a nice garden area for Rhonda, leveled out a good spot for me to put my woodpile in the future, and spread a bunch of wood chips under the zip line for safety for the kiddos. He also carved out a spot in back where we hope to put an above ground pool, and is almost done with adding rock to extend our driveway wider and give us extra parking! It's a good chunk of change to get it all done, but it'll sure be well worth it! Oh, and he also set the poles for our bridge across the creek to the fire pit! I'll make sure I get some pics up after we get some grass too!

Me cutting up some firewood

beginning the bobcat work

the boys playing with the downed trees

Grandpa helping Thad drop a tree

adding to the driveway

the new backyardRhonda's garden with the poles in place for the bridge

the front yard

Straight out from our house - MUCH more yard!

So lately I've been working outside in the yard, trying to get enough stuff done to be ready to try to grade off the front yard and re-seed the grass in an attempt to get a bit more usable front yard. Not sure exactly when, but sometime in the next few weeks we'll get some bobcats over here and get the work going. Hence the big piles of dirt and wood chips in the middle of our front yard, and the areas you can't see of chopped down trees and cleared brush where we hope to make a garden and perhaps put a pool one of these days.

And perhaps more importantly, we got a new addition to our family a week or so ago - a cute little kitty we've named George Bailey. That is, until he gets pregnant, and we have to start calling him Georgia! He's an outside kitty, living mostly in our garage while he gets big enough to prowl the area on his own, and I think will be a fun little pet that doesn't require much work, something that we like! The kids are having fun with having a pet, and he's become pretty friendly and even lets Eli and Z pick him up and carry him around! What a good sport!

Life is definitely busy this fall, with me continuing to work Monday evenings, karate for Sol and Thad Tuesday, church Wednesday, floor hockey practice Thursday, nothing Friday, floor hockey games Saturday morning, Lego Robotics for Sol Saturday afternoons, small group Sunday every other week, and kids Christmas musical practice Sunday afternoons as well. On top of that of course there is still all the homeschool stuff, which all makes for a very busy fall for us! Can't wait for Thanksgiving weekend, when we'll get to the end of some of these things and be able to relax in time for the busy Christmas season!

We hope you are all doing well and having a great fall, and hope to see some of you far away family and friends soon, and closer ones even sooner! God bless!