I Have Two Christmas Trees

We (when I say 'we', I mostly mean Jake) have been very busy around here doing a lot of stuff in the yard. Thanks to a very generous gift certificate to a local nursery from Jake's boss and his wife (Thanks Andy and Heidi!!!), we were able to get TEN trees for our yard! I am so excited about our trees. We got four Poplars, two Canada Red Cherries, two Elms and two Spruce trees (Sierra is so excited to have two Christmas trees in her yard). I love my trees! I could just sit and stare at them all day. It adds so much character to our yard. They are already quite big and beautiful!

Next is our walkway. We weren't sure what we wanted to do. We originally wanted to get some nice stones and place them in like bricks. Well, the stones we picked out would have cost us $600! No way! So, we priced out the cheapest bricks - $300 - still no way! Well, I noticed a bunch of old broken up concrete down the street from our house. So we took a bunch and set them out for the walkway to see how it would look. It worked! Free! Can't really beat that - especially when you have other things to spend your money on. We are going to plant grass in between all of the concrete. You can sort of tell it is concrete but it still looks nice. It will look really nice once we get some flower beds, bushes and green grass.

Our fence. Jake has been working hard digging all the holes all by himself and packing all the dirt back in. It is definately a project in itself, but will look so nice when it is done. It will be the split rail type of fence. I can't wait until it is finished. I can't wait until the whole yard is finished! Thanks Jake for all your hard work!!!!

Alfalfa Flowers

The girls looked so cute this morning picking the alfalfa flowers behind our house. The alfalfa is getting so tall and there are purple flowers popping up everywhere. I love looking out at our backyard and our views. Doesn't get any better than that. :)

Antelopes

We have a small little herd of antelope that hang out in the fields behind our house. We see them almost every day - usually in pairs. Today I looked out the window and saw this lonely antelope in our backyard. I have never seen them come that close to our house. If you look in the bottom right of the picture, those teepee things is where our garden is going to be - so he was right there, very close. Sort of exciting.

Later when we were outside doing some yard work. Maddie spotted a second antelope. I knew this one was a different one than the first because it had horns. We sat and watched it for a while. It even made an antelope noise for us. Then Daisy spotted it and that was then end of that. She chased it for a minute. It ran off and joined the first antelope which was in the back field - back where we usually see them.

Happy #2 Maddie!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADDIE! We celebrated Maddie's Birthday on Saturday. She was loving the whole Birthday thing. She knew it was her special day and I think she did feel special all day. We didn't do anything in particular, but we did celebrate with presents and cake. She was very good at opening her presents. Very neat and organized. She put every piece of wrapping paper on the ground and kept her presents on the couch. I don't think she even needed help opening them at all - but if she did, Sierra was right there waiting to help. :) It was fun celebrating. The girls even got to stay up late (to wait for Aunt Megan) and did a little dancing around the house to some loud music (thanks to all the sugar.)

I love the look on Sierra's face in this picture. She was so excited to see what Maddie got.

Maddie had a cat cake this year. He sort of looks like he's on drugs, but he was still good.

Blowing out the candles. Sierra got to help with this one.

Look!

Sierra: "Mommy, Mommy, look, come see!"
Sierra: "Look! REINDEER!!!"

There were three deer out our front window across the street. It was pretty exciting that the girls spotted the deer all by themselves and were so excited to show me. So we went outside and sat on our front deck and watched until the deer walked out of sight.

My Day

I had a wonderful Mother's Day this year. We celebrated it on Friday (because I worked Sunday). I cleaned all day Thursday so the house would be super clean for me on Friday. I had the whole day planned out. Eyebrow appointment with Megan in the afternoon and date with Jake in the evening. That was it. Nothing else but relaxing. Gotta love those days. Well, my day started out good. Then on my way to my appointment I got a flat tire - were talkin' driving on the rim for two blocks. So, that was fun. I did make it to my appoiment but had to go to the tire store after. Luckily the place I took my tire to be fixed is right next to the mall. So we hung out at the mall for an hour waiting for the tire. By the time I got home it was already 5:00 (there went my peaceful, nothing to do afternoon). Jake got home shortly after me and brought me this BEAUTIFUL bouquet of flowers. He said there is suppose to be 100 blooms. I would say it's close. We went out to a nice restaurant that we had never been to before - The Willow Creek Cafe. It was a nice to spend an evening without kids (Thanks Megan!)

Today, the girls made bird houses. I found a cute pattern online and was anxious to try it out. I think they had fun.

I think the eye thing Sierra is doing in the picture is her new thing to do for pictures. She closes the one eye everytime I tell her to smile for the camera. Hopefully that won't last long....

At some point today Maddie managed to take off her overalls (her favorite pants) and turn them around and get them back on. She looked so funny wearing them backwards.

Flowers

Sierra and I made these flowers the other day. They are made out of magazine pages and a pipe cleaner. So cute. I was going to make a vase for them, but I didn't know what to make a vase out of, so I stuck them in this plant instead. It looks so cute, but I am just waiting for the day that Maddie decideds to touch them with her messy food hands and ruin them. At least I can make more if I need to.

Easter 2009

We had a really fun Easter this year, so much fun that I am going to do two posts. We took a lot of pictures. :)
Megan came over on Saturday and spent the night - of course the girls loved that. They love their Aunt Megan. We started the day off with finding eggs and baskets. Jake informed me that the Easter Bunny doesn't know how to hide eggs very well, because Sierra found them way to easily. Oh well. The girls got little buckets (baskets), little shovels and gardening gloves for Easter - I figured since we have an unlimited supply of dirt - this would be a good idea. Luckily the weather was beautiful so the girls could try out their new stuff. After spending the morning playing outside in the dirt, flying the ever-so-cool inflatable kites and eating egg shaped pink pancakes for breakfast we went fishing - where Sierra caught her first fish!

If you look closely, Maddie has her mouth full of candy. She loves candy - I don't know where she gets that. This is also a good picture of our new coffee table Jake made for our new home. He decided to paint it instead of stain it. He went for an antique look with a black undertone. The color turned out to be more of a rose red- a little pinkish, but it still turned out very nice. I like the new look. Adds a little color to a very brown space.

The girls enjoying their new toys. Surprisingly, they didn't even get their dresses dirty and they wore them all day - even fishing. :)

Sierra flying her kite all by herself. The Easter Bunny gave the girls inflatable kites. They actually worked very well. Great for little kids.

Easter Fishing 2009

Jake wanted to show me a natural spawning spot that his boss had showed him. It was only about a 30 minute drive from our house. It was actually really cool. There was a fresh water pool that the fish lay their eggs in. They have to swim upstream and then jump through a culvert that is gushing out water (they have to jump in while the water is gushing out) to get to the pool. The fresh water is so clear you can literally see the fish swimming up. We saw probably 30 fish while we were there.

Here you can see the fresh water stream and the muddy (due to spring run off) Missouri River. The green plants in the fresh water stay green even throughout the winter.

Can you see the fish? He is resting getting ready for the big jump through the culvert.

This is where the fresh water meets the Missouri River. It's kind of cool to see the difference in the colors.

Right next to the river is a train track. Trains come by pretty often - we saw three in the two hours we were there. We were pretty close to this train as it came by. Sierra loves trains, so I was glad she got to see one up close and in action.

Next we went fishing. Well, Jake and Sierra went fishing. I don't have my fishing licence yet...

Jake's big catch. A nice rainbow trout. The river he used to fish (the one right behind our old house) has much smaller fish than this, so this is a big fish to me. I think it's cute that you can see the excitement in his face.

Sierra's big catch that got away. Sierra caught her first fish! It was a nice big rainbow trout. Almost twice the size of Jakes fish! It took a while to bring it in and Jake had it right there (I should have taken a pic while it was in the water), then the line snapped and the fish was gone. Sierra didn't seem to mind, but it would have been cute to have a picture of Sierra and her first fish. They tried again, but no luck. We needed to go home anyway. I had a ham in the oven and it had already been in there an hour too long. I guess always expect fishing trips to take longer than expected. But the ham turned out great (thanks to Brandi's ham glaze recipe).

Can you see him?

If you look hard you can see Jake hard at work. These pictures were taken while standing on my back deck. It is so nice to have Jake working so close to home. It is just way too convenient.