The New Tree House

Doug has often talked with the kids about building a tree house in our big apple tree in the back yard. Last fall the "when" questions kept coming up from the kids. Doug starting answering "Well, how 'bout next spring we start working on that!"

Well.. my smart 6 year old held onto that answer and started watching the calendar. She knew when the first day of spring was, and held her dad to his promise. So.. Doug took time off over spring break and worked his tail off (as in at least 8-10 hours a day for 4 days) to build the most awesome and solid tree house for our kids. I totally married up!!

Here is a photo diary of the "big build"!

The kids in the back of the truck with some of the supplies. They were so excited!!

Doug worked so hard to build it and build it right. He also had fun, too!

Evelyn and Doug has some great times "working" together when Matthew was napping.

The floor is complete!

Little feet trying it out!

My sweet tree house babies!

Slide and rails next.. and let me tell you, that slide is fast!!

Testing it out for the first time!

Climbing up thru the trap door.. so cool!

He is excited but a bit timid of the slide!

He needed help ONCE getting into the tree house... then he had it mastered!

Sibling love...

Daddy had to try the slide out, too!

"Cheers" to the first snack up in the tree house!

We got rid of our "baby swing" and put in a big kid one. Evelyn LOVES it and can spend hours swinging.. for real!

Views from the top

The finished product.. so fun!

We look forward to many, many years of fun up in that apple tree!!

Catch Up

I have taken a bunch of pictures the past couple of weeks... just haven't gotten around to blogging.  Sometime I feel like there has to be a big story with lots of pictures in order to do a post. But really, for me, its about capturing moments in time that were special to me, no matter how big or small. So here are some snapshots of things we have been doing....

 Evelyn and one of her bestie's Heidi. They got matching outfits for St. Patrick's Day and wore them to AWANA the Wednesday before the holiday. Such cute girls!

 "Can I puu on myyy hemet an wide myyy scooder?" Man, I love him!

 Watching Creighton University Medical School's "Match Day" over the net. Our dear friend Casey just graduated and got  his "Match". He, his wife and kids are coming HOME to Portland for residency and we couldn't be more thrilled!

 Hippity Hop races are pretty popular in our house!!!

 Besties in "their" pose. I need to do a separate blog post with all the pics of these two over the years in this chair!

 Shamrock Cookie time!

 My favorite leprachauns!

 Making cookies with friends... it's a BIG deal!

Thankful for God's stories and blessings in my life, big and small!!

A girl and a tree

So... our apple tree in our backyard is just ripe for climbing, and Evelyn has been working on climbing it for the past couple of years. She is pretty independent with it now and I can, for the most part, trust her to be safe by herself.

However, we have a tree in our front yard that she has also wanted to conquer. My strong fear of her falling out of it as well as her lack of size has prevented her from accomplishing her goal. However, she has gotten taller and stronger the past year, and I have gotten braver, too.

The other day we were all in the front yard talking to a man who had just come to do a bid on a new fence for our house. I was talking to him and heard, "Mommy!! Look!!". And there she was. In the tree! She was beaming with pride! I did very good keeping my "freak out" voice on the inside and slowly walked to the tree and praised her for her feat. Then I made her get down.. haha!

Since then she has been climbing that tree as much as she can and is getting better and better. Sometimes she gets right up, sometimes she needs help. But she's doing it.

And I am letting her. That's a big deal. For both of us.

Enjoy the pics of my girl and her tree!!

Gosh I love her!

Ballet

Evelyn took another ballet class this winter with her friends Juliet and Maddie. Different Rec Center, different teacher. And she had a great time. Sadly due to all of our illnesses we only made it to just over half the classes, but it still was a great class.

We got to observe the last class, so I got some pictures.

Joel, Juliet's brother, taking it all in...

 My sweet, sick boy trying to stay awake. Poor thing!

Warming up.. she needs to work on her flexibility!

The girls!

We are focusing on swimming the next few months to get ready for summer, but I am sure ballet classes will be on our agenda again soon!