Garden of the Gods

Our Aussie friend Rhys (pronounced like "Reece") came to visit, and we took him to the Garden of the Gods. It was incredibly cold. But beautiful.

Good little mama

Katie nursing and burping her "bee-bee." (Whose name is also Katie. Really. She came named that.)

Christmas Day 2007

Sammy's birthday party

(Sorry these are late... I am finding it hard to get time on my own computer these days for all the other people in the house.)

We had a very small birthday party for Sammy the weekend after his birthday. Only his godmother showed up. But that was fine, since we hadn't seen her in 6 months.

They baked his birthday cupcakes together.


Meanwhile Katie climbed up on the table to steal his presents.


And was later very happy to find there were a couple for her, too!


Sammy had a great time eating his cupcakes.

And an even better time dipping the Teddy Grahams into the unused frosting. (Sorry, no photos of that!)

We are getting our basement finished

We are using J & J Construction's Build Your Own Basement program. The framing and heating/ventilation duct work are complete. The plumber is coming today. The electrician will come some time next week. After that we have to install the fire stop and then have our first round of inspections.

Cutting out the landing walls/door really opened up the main room.

This part of the room will be the kids' play area. (For those of you who have been in my house, this is under the dining room.)

This part (under the kitchen) will be the big kids' area, with a wet bar along the walls in that left corner, a window seat (reading nook) under the window next to it, a sofa right in front of where my brother's standing, and (eventually) a multi-media entertainment station on the left wall.

Here's a better view of that whole wall.

This will be the bathroom. I think we will be putting this cool tub into it. (Maybe now we will actually get some visitors!)

This will be the bedroom. It is under the living room. My awesome brother, who is helping us with parts of the project, is going to build a dresser into that little niche at the back of the room.

The bedroom from the other corner.

Another photo of the main room. You can see where they had to drop down the ceiling to go around all the pipes.


The kids are having a blast running through the walls, into the closet from the main room, through the door to the bedroom, out the door into the hall, back into the main room, repeat. And getting lots of exercise, which is good, because it has been too cold to go outside.

Deer Grampy

Thank you for the deer jerky. We love it. A lot. We are down to the last 2 pieces.
   
(We loved the breakfast sausage even more, but it has been gone for quite a while now.)

Geaux Tigers!

Thank you MawMaw for the outfits. Thank you team for the awesome game!

 

WEEEEEE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIEND!