The "before". Trever starting to clear out the space for the new patio. (And yes Dad, we do love using your tractor!!)
Andrew is more intersted in the grass than the project at hand. The border is finally installed... and by finally I mean FINALLY. My husband is *amazing*, and I am SO thankful for his dedication to perfection and hard work. However, he wore his dad and me out. We were nervous to do any work with him absent. And the work that we did??? Yeah, we had to remove it and do it again. If you know my Father-in-law you would be even more impressed by these statements. The man is definitely a perfectionist up to the highest standards!
Natalie helping to pound in the last brick. Did you know that when you cut a square brick into two triangles you can use BOTH of them for the finished product??? :) You had to be there.
Nathan loves the job of sweeping the sand. He had eagerly awaited this stage during the two days it took to build the patio.
Ahhh... the finished product. And what better way to enjoy all the hard work than a fireside sing along. 
The almost "after" shot. I love it at this stage! Then we put some poly on it... and it changed the color a bit. I'm a little bummed, but not enough to do anything about it. You don't really see the bottom that much anyway, and the poly will make it much more durable to the kids. I'm so glad to have a table that seats 8 comfortably!!
The office redo. When we made our list of projects that we'd like to accomplish this summer/fall the office was at the top of my list. I knew it would make a big impact on our daily life. Being in a room with too much clutter was not helping my mental energy. We got a bid on having it built out... yikes, almost $3000 and that didn't include painting/staining. Although the finished project would have been amazing, I just couldn't bring myself to put that much of our project money into my office. So we got creative. We used our current filing cabinet and my dad's old office components and created a new office. I love it! It's not perfect, we made some compromises, and we still need to come up with a plan for the wall area. But I still love it! (even though it hasn't managed to stay clean yet, we'll get there).
After... the total cost? $100 and some hours painting/staining. 
This was my favorite tree when we cleared the land to build our house. Thus, it stayed. Many people encouraged us to cut it down. Their reasons seemed to revolve around the maintenance that it would cause. We're not afraid of work, and we loved this old beauty, so we resisted.
It did distract from the view of our house when you drove up. And as we planned to landscape our front yard we realized it would be better to remove it now than in a few years (an arborist said we had 5 years or so before she would need to be removed).
I need to go take a picture from the back of the house so I can compare the difference.
I was SO sad on the day we were actually cutting her down ... very truly emotionally sad. It just felt a bit wrong to cut down such an old and beautiful tree (and maybe I'm still a bit postpartum)
If it can be said, the fall was both awesome and graceful.
Definitely opens up the front of the house. And once the tree was down we were able to see that about 40% was rotting. I felt a whole lot better knowing that.
Trever took Nathan to watch a housefire with our friend Coby. I could see the eagerness in Trever, he was looking forward to sharing a bit of his profession with his son (always a bit of hope that someone will follow in the family footsteps). We know so many kids who are in awe of firefighters. Not our kids. Don't get me wrong, they like to see a firetruck, and they love the idea of going to see Daddy at work... but ask my son what he wants to be when he grows up....
A ROCKSTAR of course! Lovin' the rockstar pose :)
A little playdate with some friends. I am looking forward to a summer filled with giggling kids and time chatting with my friends. 
For the 3rd time my friend Marissa and I have kids very close in age. (Nathan and Logan are 2 weeks apart, Natalie and Anna are 7 months apart, Andrew and Michael are 2 months apart). You would almost think we were some crazy ex-cheerleaders who had planned this craziness. Nope, just lucky.
The faces of Natalie... partially serious/somewhat pouty.
Happy smiles!
A girl who takes after her brother, she LOVES her rain boots!
Natalie is learning fashion, aparantly you can't have too many polka dots. I keep trying to edit her closet :) Truthfully, I think it's darling to see a child in mix-matched attire. To see a child in a self-chosen outfit always brings a smile to my face.
We're so blessed, Andrew is getting tons of time with his Daddy (we all are). I keep kidding that my kids are going to start thinking that we are independantly wealthy. Trever was able to take almost 12 weeks off when Andrew was born (he worked off and on during the last 6 weeks). Life went back to normal for a bit and then Trever found himself with an injury that is keeping him from work again. It's frusterating for him to be injured, this is the time of year that he is able to really enjoy his favorite activities. The Rainier trip is questionable, Trever is determined not to throw in the towel until he has to so we'll see. That frustration is balanced by the joy we've found in spending so much time together as a family.
