Let's go to Canada

 On Easter afternoon we piled into the party van for our 5 hour road trip to Canada.  Besides visiting Sam and Darcie, we are also towing back Sam's car so we can buy it. We had a great trip and arrived at Sam and Darcie's right on time.  It was so great to see each other!  After lots of hugs and visiting we all went to bed.

In the afternoon the next day, they took us to a goat farm for goat milk ice cream and goat cheese tasting.  Yum!  Then we headed to a beautiful park by the lake and walked around and took some fun pictures!  We had awesome food at every meal and fun playing games.   Before we knew it, it was time to say goodbye...

Happy Easter

 We had an awesome day celebrating our risen Savior.  We are so glad that Dad and Mom are here with us!  We always take family pictures Easter morning and we were so happy that Dad was here so we could all be in the pictures.  We have an awesome bridge right outside our front door and with the blossoms out, we knew it would be the perfect spot.

At church I led the Sunday School kids in singing "Alive, Alive".  After church we had a wonderful Easter meal with the DeGroot/Sharkey families.  Then at 3:00 we piled in the car and headed to Canada to visit Sam and Darcie!

Micah 11 years old

Jacob 9 years old

Naomi 5 1/2 years old

Chicken Dreams

 When we got up today it was not raining so we knew we needed to work on our outdoor projects because you never know if it will rain the next day or not.  Darrick is not on leave until Thursday so it was up to Papa and the  boys to build until he got home.

Build what? you may wonder.  Well, we are getting chickens!  I have wanted chickens for a few years but the timing was not right. But now that we own our own home and Darrick is not deployed, everything is falling into place.

We were thinking about building our own chicken coop, but we found the perfect coop on Craigslist for a great price.  It was just made and needed exterior paint so that was my job today.  Darrick thought up the idea of painting it like a barn and I loved it, so that was the paint scheme I followed.

We also need to make a fenced in yard for the chickens to live in.  We were going to build that too but when we figured out the cost, we discovered that we could buy a dog run for the same price.

Micah was in charge of the directions and Papa and Jacob were the workers! 

Before Paint

Digging a trench to make the "chicken run" level

Darrick and Papa leveling it and filling in with bricks and wire

DONE

Micah inspecting the work & Nana checking it out

Now all we need is chickens!!!

Papa and Nana Visit

 We are overjoyed to have my Dad and Mom visiting us!  They will be here for two weeks and we are soaking up every minute of love and fun.  The weather has been typical-rain, rain and more rain, but we are not letting that stop us. 

The first day they were here we did a fun craft project that I found on Pinterest.  Papa was Naomi's helper and Nana was Jacob's.  We had a lot of fun doing them and they turned out super cute.  Now we just have to keep them moist and wait for the seeds to sprout!

Friday, we went to Snohomish for the day.  They have a lot of neat shops to browse in.  We enjoyed a yummy lunch at the Snohomish Pie Company.  We had soup and sandwiches and shared a few slices of pie.  Then we walked around and we found a few treasures.

Friday night we went out to dinner at Blazing Onion, which was Darrick's choice since he was at work during the day and did not go to Snohomish with us.  We enjoyed awesome burgers and fries.  Then we shopped around Fred Meyer and showed my parents what it was all about.

Saturday morning is chore morning at our house, so Papa and Nana relaxed while the Hays family cleaned and did their Saturday chores!  After a quick lunch we headed to Lynnwood to see our friend Steve display a model he made for Darrick in a model show.It is the John Paul Jones, which is Darrick's favorite ship that he has been stationed on.  Steve built it for Darrick, during the 13 months that he was deployed to Cuba, to give to him as a surprise when he returned.  He took 2nd place in the ship category!  Then we went to Hobby Lobby because we had never been there.  We enjoyed homemade stone soup and rolls for dinner and chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert.

Today was church and then we started prep work for the kitchen and out project we are doing in there!  I will post pictures about that soon!

Preparing the Backyard

 We have big plans for our backyard!  We want to build some raised beds.  But first we have to clear the way.  The current raised bed is made out of railroad ties, which leak chemicals into the soil.  We had to remove those, cut down a tree and clean up the flower bed, which had a tree and rose bushes in it.  We also had to salvage what plants we could.

We were able to save a few rhubarb plants and a bunch of strawberry plants to put in our new flower beds!

Bye Bye Monster Tree

 When we moved into our home there was a Japanese Maple Tree in our front yard.  It looked ok when it had no leaves but when it did have leaves it looked like Cousin It.  So I called it the Monster Tree.  Our friends wanted the tree so Darrick decided to take it out so we could give it to them.  It started out ok but eventually the top pulled off...so we could not give it to our friends but we did get the tree out.

 We took some patches of grass from the back and filled it in a bit and also laid seed down.  Now we just wait for it to all fill in!