Ta-Da!

It's done! After many many hours of staining/weather proofing the wood, Thad was able to put the last few boards on the top this weekend. I love it. It's like it was meant to be there, and now that cement pad in the middle of the grass doesn't look so out of place.

Now for seating :) . . .
Speaking of seating, look where Peter is sitting these days.

He looks so little in there, but it's so much easier to feed him when he's not trying to flip backwards out of the Bumbo. And speaking of feeding him, the poor guy is on a very limited diet at this point. So many of the things we tried either made his spit up so much worse, or he couldn't get it down at all. Like peas. He did try to eat them. He'd take a bite and try to swallow but then his gag reflex would kick in and they'd come right back out. So since he proved to be sensitive to grains I'm just not pushing the foods he reacts weirdly to. Maybe we'll try those again when he's older. For now he gets apples, pears, bananas and squash. I would be so bored with food if that's all I got to eat.
This weekend the kids got to go bowling for Ellie's birthday party. They had a great time, and the adults had a great time watching. These pictures are awful, but show their amazingly coordinated bowling form.
That's gonna work out well. . .

A little better.

Here's the gang before the fun began.

Thad was out of town this week, which made for some very long days for me. He came home about 9 thursday night, and though he had basically missed valentines day, made up for it with these.

The flowers were lovely, but I was very excited to see that little brown package. My favorite!
We also joined the rest of the world in technology this week. We got new smart phones and so far I've figured out how to call and text and set my alarm, use the calendar, take pictures and even video chat. I'm sure the phone does a million other things, but I'm pretty content with that.

New Tricks

Monday night we had the funniest FHE activity ever, at least it was funny for me to watch on the side lines. Like our own personal episode of America Funniest Home Videos. Andi has had a free pass to rollerama for months now and we finally took her to redeem it. The problem is that neither she or Sam have ever been on skates of any kind. And they were not exactly naturals once we strapped the roller blades on them. They fell so many times in the first few minutes I thought the activity would last all of ten minutes and they'd be tired of it. But they surprised me and we had to drag them away after a full hour. Thad spent the hour in the rink trying to teach them how to stay up, or gracefully catch themselves as they went down. Excuse the blurriness and weird lighting in the pictures, the roller rink is not a great place for pictures.

This is just a great action shot of them clinging for life to the walls.

 One of the moments of success.

So now they are both begging for roller blades, determined to learn how to skate.
Peter also learned a new trick this week. He's sitting up all by himself now, and really enjoys it.

We started a project Friday afternoon, and by Saturday evening this is what we had.

I've been staining the last two days while Thad has worked on the rest of the cuts and things that need to be done for the top layer. It should be done very soon, which really surprised me. I thought this Pergola would take us a lot longer to finish.
The kids love when we do projects, especially when Grandpa comes to help. Here are the kids "helping" hold the wood still while grandpa cuts.

I really liked that Grandpa came to help too because that meant Thad had someone else to help him lift those giant timbers. I like to help with projects, but this one was a bit much for me, so I helped by getting lunch and stuff :)