Busy Days

We have had a busy week.

 Mike has been busy at work.

.

 We've brought him lunch a few times.

 We went to Home Depot for Cub Scouts.

 Ethan made a tool box. 

 One day Giraffey joined us outside.  Keith was ready to eat his lunch at 8 a.m.

 Since he had just finished breakfast, I persuaded him to wait until later.

 Lillie is our little doll baby.

 Keith, Sally and I enjoy our walks each day.  Lillie, not so much.

 Keith loves to help me.  He hauled this branch down to the curb for me.

 We like to visit these bunnies once in a while.

 Worn out in the middle of the day.

 Jon likes mowing the lawn.

 We went to a Back to School night for Ethan and Rebecca.

 The assembly part was kind of long.

 Love the expressions Mike and Rebecca!

 Glad to be going home.

Have a great week!

Bus Stop

 Waiting for the bus to come. . .

 All here and ready to go . . .

 Superman with his dino backpack.

 

A bit early for little Lillie.

 

Bye bye guys! 

We really like our bus driver.  He is so nice.  It's great that there is also a bus monitor that rides along to make sure everything is fine with the kids as they ride to and from school.  The kids actually get home about as fast as if I were to pick them up from school, and they are never late as long as they get out to the bus on time.  Win win if you ask me.  We like to practice our primary songs and Articles of Faith as we wait for the bus. 

School Bells Ring!

 School has started.  Everyone was excited to go.

 

Gotta love those uniforms.  They all look so cute!  Plus, we don't really have to decide what to wear each day.

 Keith had his secret identity with him.  I made him leave it in the van. . .

Alyssa was so excited to go to class.  No hesitation at all.  We are so glad to get the same teacher that Kirsten had.

Looks like Kirsten has lots of fun things to learn this year.  She was the only kid to come home with homework on the first day.  Usually others have it too. 

 Ethan and Rebecca probably could have walked themselves to class, (Rebecca wanted to), but I insisted on taking them.  I feel bad for the little kids who show up on the bus and don't know where to go.  Fortunately there are plenty of adults to help them get to their classrooms, but still. . .  We went to orientation and helped the kids find their classrooms before the first day, which was a big help for me and them.

Keith got in on the fun with a new backpack of his own, complete with a little lunch box (very convenient for the days when we are out and about).

Donuts and Wood Working

After not posting for a while, we thought we would finally share some of the fun and interesting things that have been going on here.  One of the kids wanted to go get donuts recently and Lena suggested that we make some instead.  For what we would have spent on a dozen donuts, we were able to make a few dozen and the kids enjoyed helping as well.  It was a fun family activity and breakfast.

We have been wanting to get some swings for the kids for a while, but finally Mike decided to build a frame for swings and add it to our existing wood playset that Mike made a number of years ago.  We got the basic plan for the swing frame from http://ana-white.com/2010/06/how-build-swing-set-playhouse.  

We made a few modifications, but it turned out fairly good.  We still need to add a few more swings to it, but the kids are already really enjoying it.  Comparing it to other wood swing sets at Home Depot, this thing is a lot more sturdy than those.  It should last a really long time.

There was a kit at Home Depot with some of these same swings and hardware, but Mike decided to pick and choose the pieces that he wanted.  The funny thing was that the kit claimed it could be assembled in one hour.  It took Mike nearly 2 hours just to hang the swings, so no idea how the whole kit could be done in one hour.

For Lena's birthday recently, Mike got her a compound miter saw and a drill.  Now, I am sure you are thinking that is a joke, but Lena really asked for those for her birthday.  Part of the deal is that Mike has to help her feel comfortable with using the saw.  Lena looks at and follows the ana-white.com website fairly frequently and has a wide number of things that are so much easier with these tools.  The extra drill is especially helpful with the kreg jig pocket hole screws because one drill can be used to drill the pocket holes and the other can be used to drive the screws and we don't have to change bits back and forth. Here is Lena with her new birhday presents.  Mike built the cart for the miter saw from this plan on the ana-white website: http://ana-white.com/2012/04/plans/miter-saw-cart.  We made some modifications to the plans because we wanted to build it completely with leftover wood that we already had from a number of other projects.