The Deck is In!

After a few very late nights and a very long Saturday, the deck is finally in! We used to have a Jacuzzi built into our deck, but it was too much of a temptation for a certain 4 year old so we gave it away. We were left with a huge hole in the deck which finally got filled in!




Note how well Natalie is holding the nail for spacing between boards.

I can't tell you how many boxes of screws I went through to build this thing. Even worse, I must have taken 30 trips to Home Depot. I've never built a deck before!

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Pumpkin Patch (Oregon Style)

Yesterday we took a short break from deck-building, paint-choosing, and Home Depot-trekking to go buy our pumpkin. Like every one else, we buy a pumpkin every year. But we have never had an experience like this before!

We headed to a farm about fifteen minutes away. Yes, you read that right. FARM. Not the grocery store, not an empty corner lot that once a year becomes a pumpkin and Christmas tree store. A real farm.

Kettle corn kept us happy while we waited for the boat to take us across the lake.


View from the boat
They're still growing!!!
Nat likes this mini


And the winning pumpkin is . . .
Amanda inspects it
Happy with our choice

All aboard the train to go back to the parking lot

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Lisa is a Peer Pressure Pushover

Yes. I am caving. I am giving in to the intense pressure to "blog". Ezra got this page started and has made all of the posts so far. He has convinced me that this is a great way to keep in touch with our family and friends who are oh, so far away. So, thanks to him and plenty of pressure from 99.9% of my friends who already have blogs, here I am. Now what shall I write about? Oh, you want pictures too? Hmm . . . .

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She is so Great!

She loves coupons!

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Backyard Progress

So we've brought in 18 square yards of dirt to the backyard (or should I say we've been lazy and hired someone to do it?). The rain is starting up, but there is still hope we can get the grass in soon. Can you see us playing soccer back there?

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Conference Sunday

One tradition (ok, so we've done it twice) we have on Conference Sunday is to let the kids prepare any thing they want for one meal. They choose the food, drink, everything else. This year they prepared ham and cheese sandwiches with a salad.



















You can see my sandwich below, note the two slices of ham. Lisa only got one. Apparently the kids made their sandwiches first and noticed only three slices remained. Good thing Lisa noticed the plentiful number of slices on their sandwiches and made a quick, covert switch.



















Brendan's Salad also came out extremely well. Two handfuls of carrots first, a few pulls from a head of lettuce, and whatever it takes to cut a tomato with a butter knife.

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Tags

For some reason, she always finds the tag on a toy and starts to chew on it. Who cares what the toy is...let's find the tag!

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Amanda tries something new...

Amanda is starting to experiment with new foods. Check out those teeth!

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Our Backyard

Don't ask me why we did it, but within 2 months of moving into our house, we tore up the backyard. Now we need to bring in about 30 yards of dirt with a wheelbarrow to fill it up to the level of the wall.

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Natalie and the Bugs Bunnies

Natalie's team is about 5 games into the season and she seems to be having a blast. We captured a few of the highlights in our video. Check it out and leave us a comment!

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