FIVE!

Jonas is now five! We had a pretty low key birthday since he got his birthday present (a Nintendo DS) before we left to come to Kentucky. He had a fun day at school and I made some treats for him to share with his class.




From the looks of things, he had plenty of fun and had PLENTY of sugar!

On the Move!

Adele has decided to walk! One day for family home evening we were playing a game where we were throwing balls through the railings of the stairs. I guess Adele thought it looked like a lot of fun and wanted to be part of the action because she started taking a few steps at a time to get to the balls. The next day and for a few days after we purposely played the game again so she would keep walking. It worked!

1st Day of School 2011

Liam and Jonas had their first day of school on August 12th.

Jonas on his first day of Kindergarten

Liam is in 2nd grade

backyard guests

One day Nate and I were in the kitchen and I looked out the sliding glass door into the backyard and could see something moving on the hill in our neighbors backyard. I stared at it for a while and finally decided I had to know what was up there. I was so excited to find it was a turtle. An Eastern Box turtle to be exact. I brought it back down to our patio so Liam and Jonas could have a look and of course take some pictures.




We thought about keeping him as a pet but decided it would be too much work and he probably wouldn't be very happy. So after we played with him for a bit (watched him poke his head out of the shell) we let him go to walk back up our huge hill back into the trees.


We also have 5 or 6 deer that come into our backyard to eat.

For a while it was like clockwork, every morning and night they would come around but I don't think they liked us watching them. Now they mostly go to the neighbor's yards where we can't see them as well. I'm kind of happy they don't like our yard as much. One morning before school they were out there eating and Liam decided he was going to go out and see them. He went out the front door and snuck around the house. I was still watching from the back door and could see one (the mama) looking towards the side of the house standing very still and then she started stomping her hoof. I ran around the front screaming for Liam to come back. I was really scared that she was going to charge him!

One day when we were out mowing the lawn we also saw a couple snakes. The week earlier our neighbor told us her gardener had seen a Copperhead snake (venomous) in their yard and said they were very common in our area. So when we saw a snake we automatically assumed it was a Copperhead and wanted to get rid of it. Nate took care of it and then later on I saw another while I was mowing. After looking up pictures online we aren't certain they really were Copperheads but with 2 little boys running around the backyard we didn't want to take any chances.

We have also seen quite a few lizards, a couple of frogs and a stick bug in our yard.

Conquering the Lawn

Our yard is insane. I don't think the pictures truly do it justice because we saw pictures before we got here and it is so much worse than I thought. It is so steep that you can't even push a lawnmower all the way up. Actually Nate can push a lawnmower all the way up because he is superman but it is pretty dangerous considering you could easily slip and get run over by the lawnmower. Since these pictures were taken we bought a weed eater for the higher up parts.

The frustrating part for me is that we spend so much time mowing it and we can't enjoy it because it slopes so badly. The kids don't even like playing out there. So we are basically mowing it so our neighbors don't hate us. We are wondering if we will be able to sled down it when it starts snowing. That might make it all worth it.

CONQUERED!