Back to School

 I asked the kids to take a picture of each of them with their school year on this chalkboard.

 These girls take picture taking very seriously.

 These are just a few of the dozens of shots they each took.

 Parker of course looked the same in every picture.

 At least this smile is not creepy.

This is what I was after.  A photo collage to decorate with.

Anything for their picture being displayed in this house I guess.

Vacation

 Headed to Utah for vacation and lacrosse camp.

 I was prepared to photograph every moment.  But then reality hit, I was vacationing with teenagers, who do not want to hang out with their mother or have her take their picture.

 So this will be a short post from a weeks worth of Utah fun.  Our friend Kyle, big time football player at the Y.

 Parker stuffed into a cart in hobby lobby.

 Fourth of July.

 Megan won the mosquito run again.

 The Rich family all ran, Blakelee and I watched.

 Reese and Keely were at lacrosse camp.

Where it was very hot! And that's our vacation.  Better luck next year.

Long overdue

 My cousin Michelle and husband Wendell gave me this idea.  I just took my time getting around to it.  Can you see how many different colors the water closet has been?

It is yet another color but this time no painting (or trying) to paint behind the toilet, ever again.  This is brilliant. And it looks good too.  Five colors in twelve years, not too bad.  I missed the fact that Gregg had already put the plunger back before I took this picture.  Bonus!  I hope we never need to use it on our new toilet.

How old is this table?

 My dad built this picnic table when I was in high school.

 We inherited it and to say it has seen better days is an understatement.

 I stained some lattice on top of it.

 The dog chewed on it.  In other words eye sore in our back yard and unusable.

 Until now.  Gregg helped me cut the benches off.  We shortened the legs

 and replaced the wood on the top.  I cleaned the wood really good and got the termites moved out.

Stained it and now it looks great and you can just sit in a chair at it.  Our girls are not ones for eating outside with the bugs but we could if we had to now.

Free free free

 I got a pile of old windows from someone at church. 

 I forced a few on neighbors and friends and gave them some ideas.

 I painted mine red and hung it up.  Not to exciting

added some vinyl and now I love it.

One sad looking tree

 Welcome to the backyard.  This was a big beautiful tree not that long ago with branches that would reach the grass.  And we hate them.  They are the messiest trees, the roots are coming out of the grass.  They take a ton of water.  I could go on and on.

 Lack of water the last three winters have reduced these 30ft plus trees to a mess of dead wood.  No way Gregg is going up there.  You could see these trees over the house from the front yard.  At least the dead parts.

 Believe me we have tried watering them, short of turning on the sprinklers we thought we were doing pretty good.

 January and February of 2013 were the driest in Reno in 150 years. 

 Lucky for us we found a 65 year old tree trimmer for cheap.

He brought his buddy Jimmy and they trimmed this tree and cleaned up their mess for $80.  I was a little nervous when he was up this high, on a dead branch.  Crazy tree trimmers. With Jimmy yelling from the roof, "get up there Jerry and get that dead one".  Jimmy is missing his two front teeth.  Was that from a job injury?  The view from our neighbors is no longer a half dead tree.  Now, the other tree, wasn't so lucky.

Photo Shoot

 Reese and Blakelee were the photogs.

 They did a fun photo shoot of Keely for pictures in her soon to be revealed new room.

 I can only show you a few because they aren't turned and I can't do that in this mode.

Where did he come from?