Summer Fun, the Zoo, and Yardwork.

We're only a week into summer vacation and we are having fun already, whenever the kids aren't fighting that is. Geeesh you'd think having them 5 years apart would eliminate some of the fighting over toys and attention, but it doesn't. Last week we rode Frontrunner to the gateway and went to eat at California Pizza Kitchen and went to the planetarium. We thought the kids would have liked the train ride a little more. Grady got pretty bored with it. It was nice to be outside since it was finally a decently sunny day! Then yesterday my parents wanted to take all their grand-kids to the zoo. It was so much fun and the weather was perfect!

On the train!

I love the way she is looking at him in this one, so cute!

Bouncing around on Mars!

Weather girl Hallie.

Hallie and her only girl cousins on my side of the family, Emma and Alaina.

Ethan, Hallie, Alaina, and Emma. (Ethan wouldn't look at me for the pic.)

Grandpa Jeff and Grady.

On the train ride at the zoo. I didn't get this self portrait lined up very well, but Hallie looks beautiful in it.





These next few pictures are of our yard. We've lived here almost 3 years and finally finished the yard. We have a ton of planters in our yard and when we moved in 2 had daffodils in them and that is it. The rest were just full of gross old wood chips. We fixed this one up last year. In the middle is a lilac bush, I don't remember the name of the red bush, and day lilies around the outside. I think it's looking very nice and the day lilies are just about ready to bloom. The next picture is our parkstrip by the mailbox. There are no sprinklers so we are limited in what we can do. We replaced the lava rock (I hate lava rocks!) with some better looking rock.

We also redid the planter in our backyard last year(above) and planted this autumn blaze maple in the front yard (below). This year we added some flowers around the tree.

Jake dug this planter this year and we added some flowers to it too.

This planter had daffodils when we moved in, but then has sat empty for the rest of the year. Last year we dug it up and replaced the mulch. We finally added some bushes and flowers to it the other day. It still looks a little bare, but the taller bushes are Hydrangeas so they should fill in pretty quickly.

YAY for Summer and finally some warm weather! Yesterday was the first time getting the slip-n-slide and kiddie pool out, they had a blast!