Lately and Projects

Well, about a week ago, I opened my camera to take pictures of the Carles before they left and found out that my camera was broken! It still took pictures, but the screen was messed up. So, I was very upset at first as we only paid $15 for the camera and now we were going to have to pay tons more money, but honestly once I started looking for cameras, I started to get excited to have a new camera with new features! So for about a week we've been casually looking at any store we can think of that has cameras and found some I liked, but I didn't want to pay that much! Finally I decided if I wanted the features I wanted, I was going to have to pay a little bit extra and the fact that my other camera was so cheap, I felt I could splurge a bit. I had it narrowed down to two and I was headed into the store to buy one of them, then we forgot about another store we hadn't checked yet, so we went there first. We are glad we did as we found a camera that was on a great clearance price and it had all the same features of the other cameras I was deciding from before for about $100 cheaper! I was way excited and I have been pleased with this camera. So, the girls have been my guinea pigs on testing out all the features, so here are a few of the pictures.

The girls cheesing...
Then we had to take them to the park to test out some other features and for the girls to play. I won't bore you with the pictures of the sunset, landscape, distant pics, etc...so I just included the pics of the girls! Einstein also had his share of sliding down the slide...as well as Nick!

Then last night we went to Liberty so Nick could go to his favorite store, Great Guns. The girls and I stayed and played with Ashlyn and Preston while Daddy did his boring gun shopping! Kayley has lately been into working on things like Daddy works on things with his tools. We don't have any tools at our house, so she's had to pretend, but she was in 7th heaven being able to play with Preston's tools. I guess we are in really big need of a boy in our house! So here's our Handy Manny!

Then, here's my projects I've been working on...the outside of the house! Here's one project to check off my list. I pulled up that nasty black plastic stuff that just kept pulling up more and more with each mow and replaced it with the smaller landscape rock. I'm also in the process of changing out some landscaping on our retaining wall along our fence as this is where I got these small rocks! I'll put pics of that up later once I start planting the new plants I want to put in there. Here's the rest of my to do list for the outside of the house:

1. Paint the front door

2. Put up the new doorknob on the door

3. Paint the trim along the garage doors

4. Put up the new lights on the outside of the garage (this is Nick's job with my assistance)
5. Build a retaining wall in the front landscape (also Nick's job with my assistance)

6. Plant plants along the retaining wall

7. Put the extra small landscape rocks around the willow tree in the backyard

8. The small landscape rocks around our trees in the front need to be dug into the yard, they are just sitting there and get turned everytime you mow/weed eat

9. Start our garden...it will be on a much smaller scale this year than usual with the baby coming

10. Pressure wash the deck (more of a spot clean as I did this last summer) then stain the deck

11. Lay the tile in our bathroom

Don't worry Grandmas and Grandpas, I am not over doing it! I just want these things finished before the baby comes and Nick won't let me paint anything inside that I want to paint, so I have to settle for the outside projects! Plus I want to get these done before it starts to get stiffling hot and before our pool opens so we can go swimming instead of working!!

Here's the before pic...notice how it's all coming up!??!!

Here's the after pic...I have to seed some of the lawn now as it's much easier to curve the black plastic stuff than it is to curve the landscape rocks! I just love it so much more now this way!