First day of school 2009

Name: Miles
Grade: Fourth
Teacher: Ms. Harrod
I think he secretly like school. He just doesn't want to show it. He is so good about waking up in the mornings and getting himself ready. He will pace the house if he thinks he is going to be late.

Name: Caden
Grade: First
Teacher: Ms. Riley
First year of school all day! Caden will be friends with anyone who plays with him.

7:10 is too early in the morning for Caden to wake up.

This is how I feel!

The boys start school on Monday. Love this commercial!

Church Prom

This happened way back on March 7, 2009; but I never posted the pictures.

Tim's calling is the 2nd Counselor in the Stake YM's presidency. He goes to all the major stake activities. They had a prom for all the LDS kids 16 and up in the area. Most of the Proms at the high schools are not a good environment to be at these days. Tim ended up taking Alexandra as his "date." They had a great time and she was really good, and probably the cutest girl there!

I did her hair before they left. I was thinking to myself that I will (hopefully) be doing her hair when she goes to her own prom in about 14 years.
Daddy & Daughter before they left:
Dancing:
Zani & Daddy
Tim tells everyone that Alexandra is his favorite child. (no secret there.)

Under Construction

We have been working slowly on getting our front yard cleaned up and ready to put sod in the front yard. I have ripped out many rose bushes and have been moving rocks. Tim and I have different ideas of how the yard should look like. We put down some redwood bark on top of the grass/weeds that I killed and we roto-tilled it in. A few weekends later we redid all the sprinklers.
Before picture: We are planning on putting sod in October. Hoping for a nice "after" picture in a few months.
Last September we had a pipe break in our back yard. We had it capped off. The same weekend we did the sprinklers we decided to re-build the pipe that was broken. After Tim fixed it by himself (and only making 5 trips to Home Depot, including sprinkler parts). It was fixed and we had running water again in the back yard. But I could hear running water but couldn't see any coming out anywhere. And dark spots started showing up on our dining room wall. At first I thought the kids had smeared chocolate syrup on the wall but I cleaned it up and the next day there were more spots. So I called a plumber and he came out and found that this piece (picture below) had broken and was leaking water (most likely when Tim was tightening everything for the new pipe.)
The water had been leaking for 4 days. So the plumber fixed the broken pipe and left a hole in the wall.
So I started ripping out the rest of the wall where the water damage was. I am hoping we can get the wall fixed this weekend with new sheetrock. This is what our dining area had looked like for the last week:


AND I forgot to add that our new dishwasher kept filling up with water again. (3rd time it has happened.) And I was tired of not having clean dishes when you opened it up after the cycle was over. So we ended up getting a dishwasher from the McKissicks, who had recently moved and couldn't use theirs anymore. Tim replaced the old one with the new one (with a little help from Ted Ballin.) And it works perfect! We are quickly becoming good DIY's.

Now she stands

All of a sudden Avery is growing so quickly. She started pulling herself up to everything. The first picture is at the swimming pool. Love this little girl and her large thighs!

Girls Night Out

We went out for a special girls night July 15 to say "good-bye" to our good friend April Preston who moved down to San Diego. We already miss her very much, but we know she will be visiting often. We went to this swank little restaurant in Downtown Walnut Creek. Ate amazing desserts and enjoyed our girl talk. I am so grateful for this particular group of ladies. We have all been "Concord 1st Ward" members at one time together. It happened that Naomi was up visiting family the same week, which made the night even more hilarious. (Don't ask about the sticks April J. and Tara are holding!)

On all fours

Since the first of June, Avery has gone from learning to sit up on her own to crawling to pulling herself up to objects on her knees. She is crawling pretty quickly now and will follow me around. He is a little video of her crawling (for her Grandma's to watch). Before we know it she will be walking!