A gathering of friends

Our friends, James and Shari hosted a gathering of our friends this evening. It was a wonderful evening with lots of friends.

Shari has a green thumb, two of them actually, and the plants that surround their home are gorgeous.


Brant and Jake sharing a chair and chomping down on some chips and salsa.


Cambry fell asleep before she even arrived and actually slept for quite a while on Chelan's shoulder. Eventually, she woke up and joined in the fun.




Noah and Jake "farming".


Mandi feeding Levi - trying to help him hold out until the hotdogs and burgers were ready.


The spread (and Shari's beautiful kitchen) with Megan and Amy chatting.


Shari, our gracious hostess.


See, I told you Cambry woke up.


Eric and James (our host) in serious conversation.


Noah, with just a small portion of the toys that were played with during the evening.


Thanks for a great evening everyone!

First of the season

We tried to go to the Hesston spray park for the first time this year on Saturday...well, we did go, but, the boys barely got a drop of water on them. They just ran around the outside of the park, so we took them back home and made our own water fun. They had a lot more fun playing in several inches of water in our driveway then getting pelted by water at the spray park.

Deck project, phase one

We've lived in our house for nearly 2 years now and have spent a lot of that time wondering what or if we should do something to care for our deck. We decided we need to seal the wood to extend the life of the deck and the first step in that process is power-washing the whole thing. Ben took this part of the project on Saturday morning.



You can see the amount of good the washing did - it's amazing how much better our deck looks after getting a good scrub.


This was my view of Ben at work (from inside the kitchen).


Now we just have to get the whole thing sealed...we'll see when we get to that part of the project.

In the kitchen

The kitchen is the where all the action is in our house. It's a busy place where we trip over each other, stub our toes on stray tractors, and where there is never a lack of finger prints to wipe away or crumbs to sweep up. Don't let these photos fool you.

Levi and Rylee

Mother's Day was a nice day with my family. Erica, Sherri and Rylee came out for lunch and naps. It's fun to watch our boys try to figure out what to do with 11-week old Rylee.

Rylee with Grandpa Schmidt (Rylee has a touch of conjunctivitis, which will explain the gunk in her eyes - poor girl has to get lots of eye drops these days).


Levi with sweaty hair after his nap.




Ben showed Levi how to give Rylee a zerbert (sp?) and


then Levi had to give it a try.




I even got a little bit of time on the floor with Rylee - we had a lovely chat.

Daddy's Breakfast

It cracks me up, every time Ben makes egg and toast for his breakfast (he rarely eats breakfast) the boys surround him and eat half of it! Thankfully, Ben is much more generous then I would be and always shares with them.

"Ducks! Look mommy ducks!!!"

Noah screams at the top of his lungs, "Ducks! Ducks! Mommy look ducks!" every time he spots a duck in our neighborhood. In spring and fall, we have several ducks that stop in our neighborhood for a couple of weeks. It's great - by far the most wildlife we see in our neighborhood all year.



Levi always ends up eating the bread himself.




We also enjoy the ducks, fish and turtles out at Dyck Arboretum.

Faces