We have a deck!

Here is a pretty good pic of the completed deck!! Well, it still needs a step down off to the right side and maybe lattice or something to hide the framework on the side but those are so minor compared to what we started out with. I should try to find a pic of what it looked like before all this. Matt and I built this deck completely on our own. It took a long time and A LOT of nails/screws but we are pretty proud of the finished product. Matt gets points for being the project planner and manager while I filled in with mindless hammering and such whenever I could......

Happy 4th Hailey!!

On August 1st Hailey turned 4! My third 4 year old....... A few months ago when I asked her what kind of cake she wanted - she said a snake cake. I thought she would change her mind but she stuck with it. It was funny because she doesn't seem to have a real interest in snakes and she loves girly things. So I thought she would pick something else as time went by but even after looking through the cake books she still wanted a snake :) Funny girl. She loved popping her balloons to get her dollars out. Some of them went flying and we had to search for a little while to find them. Caleb had a hard time not getting to blow out candles and pop balloons........
She was so excited to open her presents. She got some cinderella glass slipper like shoes so Maggie wanted her to put on her Cinderella dress.... We also gave her a small set of Lego Friends. She was pretty excited about that. All of kids love Legos. The girls are especially happy about the new Friends sets :)
Hailey is such a fun little girl with an amazing personality. She loves to help people and will go and do things for you if she hears you mention something that you need done. She really likes going to the pool and hates it if she has to wear her lifejacket. She gets dressed all by herself and is anxious to go to school with the bigger kids (we still don't know if she will be going to preK or not). Her favorite toys are the little dolls and houses. She loves to play with the neighbor girl that is her age..... although it doesn't happen as often when we go to the pool everyday. She loves to give and receive hugs and kisses. She often takes a nap still but then stays up really late....... She is pretty fearless - riding bikes, scooters, jumping off the diving board. She still sucks her finger but is trying hard to stop since Matt told her that she's 4 now and needs to stop :) She is perfect fit in our family and we wouldn't be complete without her :)

Arlington Cemetery

When Matt and the big kids picked me up at the airport - it was early enough that we could do something around DC - so we headed out to Arlington Cemetery. I wasn't too excited about the idea since it had been a pretty long day for Caleb and I already - not to mention that it was hot and really humid. UGH. But it was pretty neat. We went to Tomb of the Unknown Solider and watched them do a changing of the guard. Jackson thought that was pretty neat. Caleb was not doing calm and quiet to watch so I had to take away...... It was a pretty quick but I was glad we stopped despite any complaining I may or may not have done :) See the Washington Monument in the background of the headstones?

WA

My parents held a short family reunion in July so Caleb and I made the trip out there. I really wanted to take everyone but it costs a lot!! and we are hoping to move back west before too long so we wanted to use the money to finish up house projects...... It was great to see everyone. It's been a few years since I've seen my brothers :) It will be nice to visit more often when we live closer again. It was fun to reminisce on the things I did as a kid in Wa.
Amy and Amanda were there at the same time - thanks for planning it that way guys!! That was really fun. It's so funny to hang out with your childhood friends when everyone is all grown up with families. The conversations are a little different :)

Air and Space

One of the space shuttles (Discovery) is on display at the Air and Space museum in Wash DC. Since Matt really wanted to go see it and he was nicely taking me to the airport so Caleb and I coud go to Wa....... we left early and made it to the museum before my flight. Matt was like a little kid - taking pics of the shuttle from every angle. He saw the shuttles so often in Florida but he just can't get enough of it :) It was pretty cool. The kids liked seeing it and all the other airplanes they had on display.
Since I was only taking Caleb with me to Wa, Matt needed to keep the Pilot to fit the other kids, that meant I would have to take Matt's truck to the airport........ I was not looking forward to driving his manual through DC so he offered to drive me - that's why we all ended up in DC together :) It was a lot of extra driving for him - I really appreciated it!

More deck progress....

 

The deck is coming along very nicely now. The deck boards are laid all the way out to the end..... (They are just over half way in this picture) The deck has been extremely time consuming. The biggest project we have taken on and one that was not even on the horizon when we bought the house. That makes it so much more frustrating. So much time and energy has gone in to this deck that we probably could have had EVERYTHING else done instead...... but, oh well. We chose to go for it since we had to do something out the back door after tearing out the step to replace the sliding glass doors...... We still have to do something about the entryway/front door and finish up tons of other little (hopefully not big) projects. The pressure is on since Matt has started applying for other jobs. Wish us luck.