Crawfish Boil 2014

Weekend Fun

 TOMATOES!!!!  Jen and Jack went off to the garden plot to plant some stuff.  Things are doing well, so far, but tomorrow we are supposed to get 3-9 inches of snow.

 SNAKE!  We got rid of the trampoline that came with our house.  While dismantling it, a snake came out to say hi, so I snagged it and showed it to Jack.  He pet it and was really cautious, yet excited.  I had to explain to him that not all snakes are nice, and to always ask Daddy before he comes close to a snake.

Jack's 4th Birthday Party

We did a Thomas the Train theme, including décor, cake, tent, Thomas blue and red playdoh, and trains to play with.

 Jon picked up 2 dozen balloons in Thomas colors.

 I hit up the Thomas section at Party City.

 Good thing we haven't actually hung any pictures on this huge wall yet!  :)

 We bought a bubble machine for outside - the kids loved it, and it will be fun in the summer, too.

 Checking out his cake.

Apparently 4 year olds still enjoy smash cake, especially when encouraged by the dads.  :P

Around the House

Who has space for a couch when you've got a whole parking lot full of trucks??

Current reading  :)

Following a pinterest trend, I reorganized our family room bookshelf by color.  I love this!  :) 

New appliances delivered yesterday.  The fridge was too big, so back to the store to look at models.

Big puffy heart LOVE the purple-blue inside of our new DOUBLE oven though! 

And having a functional microwave built in will be nice too.  We can resell the Craigslist counter model that we've been using for the past 6 months, and free up some counter space.

 My 2 guys.  :)  Unwrapping some gifts with Daddy.

January in Denver - snow and sunny, blue skies. 

This Week

 We've been raking a lot of leaves.  Our new house is on a 1/4 acre (big for around here), with lots of mature leaves and great fall foliage.  Gorgeous October = 17 full lawn bags of leaves and counting.

 Jack has learned the fine art of jumping in all the leaf piles.  :)  And then helping to fill the bags...sometimes one leaf at a time.

 Last Friday we had a 2 hour playground playdate.  Afterwards, he went upstairs, took his shoes off, crawled in to our bed, and went to sleep.  For almost 3 hours!  First nap he's had in months.

 I put away our summer-y colored dishes, and replaced them with the darker, more autumnal/wintery ones.  I'm going to miss these bright colors, but it's fun to have the seasonal change.

 Jack and I have been assembling a lot of IKEA furniture.  We've finally got the basement back to normal, just 4 months after it flooded.  We had exterior grading down around the window wells, cleaned out the gutters, got new windows installed, and finally this week had the carpet pad replaced and the carpet re-laid, and got the carpet cleaned.  So excited to finally put Jack's playroom/my craft space together!

 I had a stack of boxes of IKEA furniture sitting in the family room for the past month while we waiting on the windows and carpeting.  (I had coupons that were about to expire.)

 Jack is getting pretty good at furniture assembly.  And playing in the partially assembled furniture - he kept calling this a "bridge".

 He's really good with an allen wrench.  :)  Should come in handy in about 15-18 years in his dorm room and first apartment.

He has decided that if it's below 60, he needs his jacket (with hood up), hat, and mittens.  On the flip side, he's hot and uncomfortable if it's much about 85 (or 80 with humidity).  I think he may have to move to San Diego when he's older (or some other place where the temps stay right around 70).  :)  Although he does enjoy the snow...as long as it's not actually snowing on him.  We'll see how this winter goes!  :)

Grading, drains, and garbage removal

We had some landscaping people come out to do some grading on our house.  Our basement flooded twice (bigtime) since we moved in, so we needed to get something done.  They brought in about 3 tons of dirt, moved the rocks back, ripped up weed barrier, put in new dirt, put down new weed barrier, and replaced the rocks.  They worked fast, did a good job, and charged a very fair price.  Before and after pics are below.  Oh, and they also replaced 2 drains and made sure that our gutters drained correctly.

Before

After