Science Center with the Cousins

My family was in town back in March to visit including my brother and his family. Here they are at the Science Center. Lauren is off to the side not wanting to be in the picture.


Cole getting set to launch a ball.


Caroline and Lauren enjoying the water fountain.


Amazingly Cole is the only kid at the water sand box exhibit.


They opened up this new digital technology area. Here the kids are enjoying interacting with the screen.


I guess they don't have these down in South Africa. Can you tell which one is my brother?


Another group pose minus someone....


Caught Lauren hiding.


So that's an Angry Bird.

Transportation Day 2013

It's that time of the year again, Transportation day. This year they had a new vehicle, the Ghostbuster mobile. How cool is that!


The kids enjoyed climbing into the Cherry picker.


Future fire engine driver


Perfect fit if you don't consider the 2 foot distance to the pedals


Biplane flyby


We missed the helicopter landing this year but the kids enjoyed climbing in.


Lauren is clicking in for safety in the garbage truck


Cole is wondering how he can get one of these back to the house


The local Karate place had a booth where we won 5 free classes. Lauren's form isn't too bad.


Cole's punch wasn't quite as powerful as Lauren's.


The kids are getting to try out a waverunner.

Budding gardeners

With our backyard landscape, we designed in a raised garden bed. The kids were really excited to help put it together.


Here's the finished product. We purchased this kit from home depot. Overall the kit works well. The planks are a little warped but it should work fine.


Over President's day, we finally got some dirt in our raised garden bed thanks to my coworker who was kind enough to haul a cubic yard of soil for us.


Lauren getting ready to plant some seeds.


Cole is getting a head start on moving some dirt.


Here you can't see the drip lines that I buried under the soil. Each drip line has an emitter 6" apart and I connected drip lines every 6" across. Each line has a shutoff valve so I can control which areas get water. You can see all the lines that haven't been buried yet in the top half of the bed. Hopefully in a few weeks, we'll have some things growing.

Boy will be....

girls???

Dentist visit again

Still no loose teeth.

Secret back door

Who knew the doctor's office had a secret back door entrance with its own cool waiting area.

Master Closet Update

After finally painting the walls and having new carpet installed, I was able to start unpacking the closet system.


What you can't see in the photo is that every piece had fine layer of wood dust on them. I vacuumed and wiped every piece so it was clean.


Shelves and drawer pieces.


Here's Christy's side. The wall to the left is going to be household type items.


We put in the same hampers as we did last time except this one is a little wider.


Christy's side


Here's the hutch and you can see the outlet I installed.


My side.

Demo time

Our closet was getting a little out of hand so we figured it was time to redo our master bedroom closet with a closet system. We installed a similar one in our old house.


The old closet had a lot of hanging space but not very much storage space unless you consider all the shelves that needed a ladder to access.


Here's after demo'ing the old closet. I started demo'ing in mid December.


Unfortunately I'm going to have to redo the baseboard.


I plan on putting in a new outlet up high so that it sits right above the new hutch. I'll be tapping off the outlet in the bottom right.


I had to patch up a lot of the wall because the wall needed new texturing. Also, you can see my new outlet on the wall.


Instead of replacing all of the baseboard, I just filled in the missing areas.


Here are the boxes of the new closet system. Bought them from Closetstogo.com

Rainbow

It's not often you see one of these in AZ.

Picnic at the Farm

Christmas 2012

After Santa arrived. Note Santa doesn't wrap his gifts.


The kids are helping out with hanging the lights on the house. I had them attach plastic hangers to each bulb.


Hanging out at the Zoo on Christmas Eve.


They are checking out the plate of cookies left for Santa on Christmas morning.


Santa even had time to write a little thank you note.


They spotted Santa's gifts.


Note, not all the gifts are for the kids.


Dundun dundun dundun