Busy Summer

Well it has been a little over a year since I have posted and a lot has happened. We bought a house and moved in and got settled. Got pregnant and now summer is here. Along with summer came a long list of honey do's. First up, Cassie decided that Drostan and eventually our other children need a swing set . No ordinary swing set would do, she wanted the one that takes three weeks and an engineering degree to put together. Luckily my friend has an engineering degree and I have time so eventually that project was done and Drostan loves his "house"
Next up was refinishing the deck (you can see the completed swing set in the background). First we had to strip off all the old weatherproofing, and then five gallons of Thompsons water seal later our deck was ready to take on the elements again. You never realize how big a deck is until you have to paint it three times. One layer of stripping compound, wash, one layer water seal, by the time you are finished it is time for the second coat, and that is just for the area around the firepit, tomorrow you have to do the rest of the deck by the house.
We also decided to plant a little garden. Three rows of potatoes, two rows of carrots, broccoli, onions, peppers (three different kinds), six roma tomatoes, six rows of corn, two rows of beans, two rows of peas, a summer squash and a winter squash. Some of them are doing better than others but hopefully we get some good food. We also had to redo our front flower beds. Cassie tore out all the pre-existing plants (because she didn't like them) along with the copious weeds and we replanted them and added 2.5 cu yrds of mulch. In order to accomplish all that........
We needed to buy a truck. It is really hard to rent a tiller and haul a truck load of mulch if you don't have a truck to do it with. 2.5 cu yrds of mulch is filling the whole truck bed to overflowing. Yeah, that was fun spreading around by hand. The problem is we still need probably another 2 cu yrds, but we'll get to that later. The truck was actually just luck. One of our friends was moving to Washington state, and after a little convincing decided that he didn't need to drive that truck all the way across the country. So he sold me the truck along with...........his hot tub. He was actually going to take it with him, but it ended up being 2 inches too big. Oh darn. Cassie and I really didn't intend to add a hot tub but if life gives you lemons you make lemonade. We had to have a second platform added to our deck because the existing deck was not sufficient to hold a 3000 lb hot tub. So we built the hot tub platform a little lower than the deck so you step down into the hot tub. Now we are just waiting for a little cooler weather to use the hot tub. Maybe we will just fill it with cold water and use it to cool down during the summer.
After getting all this work done Cassie gave me a great big long........ list of more honey do's. Oh well I better get back to work.

Two Years Old

Well Drostan actually made it to two years old (and counting). Cassie decided that he needed a real party, so on Sat (May 15) we had a party at the park with some of his friends. Cassie took charge of all the planning and preparation. She made him this awesome cake. It had a little pretzel fence, but Drostan got a hold of it before it was put on the cake.

These are Drostan's (and our) friends. Unfortunately, this is the only picture that has Dad in it because shortly after this picture I was called into work.

Drostan loved all his presents. He is at the age where everything is so exciting. It is so fun to watch him play and learn.

Actually these are large bubble tubes, but they make a usable light saber for 2-3 year olds.

Cassie also made Drostan this Cars quilt. He may get to use it when he moves to a big kid bed.

Our New House

Cassie started getting a little restless a while ago and decided she wanted to buy a house. So as luck would have it the Relief Society president in our ward decided to move back to Utah and sell her house. It is a fairly new house but Cassie only needed to see one thing before deciding to buy it.

And this was it. Cassie saw the tub in the master bath and she was ready to sign on the dotted line. The rest of the house is pretty cool too...

The front room which has a gas fireplace. The fireplace is also hooked up to the generator so that it will still work if the power goes out.

The tub in the master bathroom is pretty sweet but so is the double shower....

and there is a large deck out back with a built-in fire pit where I can go light a fire and celebrate my manliness.