Happy Easter

We had such a wonderful Easter weekend - spoiled with love from babi & deda and grandma. 

After waking up on Sunday morning to see that the Easter bunny had left little baskets of goodies (recycled from last year (not the chocolate) ;)) at home, the kiddos, especially Elise, were excited to see if he too had visited babi & deda's and grandma's house.  We had a wonderful weekend with family, delicious dinners and tasty treats.  

Babi & Deda's 

 Grandma's

Baby bump at 25 weeks

Pickle ball on grandpa's court

Finnegan 18 months

Finnegan Michael

18 months ago you made us parents of two and a little girl a sister.  You are in every possible way an exploring, tinkering, climbing, car and truck admiring little boy!  You absolutely love to help out and get yourself involved with all kinds of tools, the drill and screwdriver are your favorite.  Little toy cars are constantly going vruuuum across any ridable surface and you yell out in the car every time we pass a bus or truck.  Though your speech is still difficult for some to understand, your vocabulary is definitely growing: dada, mama, Eese (Elise), babi, deda, auto, bal, bus, may (mail) you say "mo may" (more mail every time we get home), ahh done (all done), mo (more), milt (milk), opus (octopus), moon (your absolutely favorite thing is to look for the moon every night), beba (bagel) and lots of other words that somewhat resemble what you say.  It is so much fun to see you learn how to communicate.  

Your personality is starting to develop and you are still truly such a easy going, self entertaining little man; though you are getting feisty and stubborn in order to get your way.  You definitely can hold your own with Elise and you both love to wrestle one another.  You follow sister around and mimic all that she does and still the first thing you shout out in the morning is "Eese" and look for her.  You are also a momma's boy and are my glue wherever we go, though when daddy comes home you are both so so excited to see him and play chase.  You are a snuggle bug and love to be held, snuggled and kissed, and I am so hoping you will always be these way:)  You are incredibly independent in your play and can stay entertained for at least 2 hours outside just playing in the dirt and picking at the bushes; all while Elise is shouting your name to come play with her from inside your little play house so that she doesn't get dirt in her crocks :)  You two are so funny together and provide the absolute best entertainment for us!

We love you so much our sweet little Finnegan.

Trouble.... pulling daffodil flowers!

You two truly do love each other!

Early spring phone pics

These two have discovered Nutella

Rocks and mud

With the water levels so low the kids are in heaven with all the mud and rocks on the rivers edge.  After all the yard work, we had a fun evening picnicking and playing by the water.

Outdoor Reno Phase 1

Spring is here and so are our projects: landscaping, irrigation, retaining walls.... and heating pump/furnace!!!  When we bough our house in late summer last year with it we also inherited randomly placed irrigation lines, spikets, 10 different hoses and sprinklers that the original owner probably loved operating for 34 years; we on the other hand, within a week, were tired of running around every evening turning on each hose and sprinkler to water the lawn.   So we knew this spring we would be digging trenches and starting fresh.  We also were planning to take down a very overgrown juniper hedge and build a retaining wall to extend the back yard lawn.  Little did we know that our heat pump and furnace would also choose to die (just last week), but at least it happened during our planning and bidding stages so we were easily able to put a halt on our retaining wall and lawn project.     

The past few weekends we have spent cleaning, pruning and prepping for "trench" digging day.  My dad had drawn a color coded schematic of the irrigation lines, styles of sprinkler heads and pumps and so on Saturday morning, Evan and my dad, were ready to go.   It was lots of hard work for these two and dad's help was tremendous.  They enjoyed some nice chardonay and the hot tub later than night to recovery their very sore muscles:)  Now the trenches are dug, some pipes are in place but there is still quite a bit of work to do.  In the mean time I am doing my best to keep the kids from getting stuck in the trenches as we enjoy the spring weather outside!

Fairy Wings

Elise has really been into Curious George and loves watching it on the phone, little monkey Finn, is also very curious in his fairy wings :)