A day at the gardens

Now that we've moved to Hoover, and the Aldridge Gardens are literally down the street from us http://www.aldridgegardens.com/ we don't get out to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens in Mountain Brook as much anymore. But yesterday it was gorgeous out and we wanted to go see if the flowers were blooming at the "old gardens".

There isn't any reason that everyone is wearing red shirts, it just worked out that way. Check out my boys...

 The roses aren't blooming yet, but plenty of other flowers were and the gardens are full of blossoming trees now.

As usual, Baylor preferred to sit on the bridge and throw rocks in the water. He likes to do his own thing.

 The boys playing soccer in the still unfinished living room:

Baylor is really into kicking the soccer ball around, and he is actually pretty good at it. Beck is a little less coordinated, but he really enjoys it, too.

She's crafty...

So, I came to the realization that I was probably never going to learn the proper way to play with our newly found Carrom board (see earlier post). I wondered what I could possibly do with the thing, since the frame is a huge piece of solid metal and can't be thrown away or fit into our car to take to Goodwill (I'm guessing this is the same problem the original owners had when they decided to abandon it in the basement). I've always wanted the boys to have one of those big Lego tables like they have at McWane center, and I've seen them for sale before, but they are usually around $200. I figured that I could probably use the frame and make my own Lego table top for much less than that. I got a piece of plywood from Home Depot big enough to fit the table ($2), sanded it down, and applied four large Lego baseboards with cement glue to the top. The baseboards are usually $15 each, but I went to the Lego store by our house and they had the red ones on sale for 1/2 off.

I think it turned out pretty good. I hope the glue holds. Apparently it is really difficult to glue plastic to other things. The guys at Home Depot know me by name now. When I went there the other day some guy I didn't recognize asked me how my flooring turned out. Maybe I need to drive out to Lowe's every now and then, so I don't look like some sort of crazy fix-it lady.

The D turns 2!

We have a lot of different nicknames for Baylor David- Bay-Bay, Baylon, Peach, Peachtree, Sweet D, Baylor D, but usually we just call him "The D". Since The D is our spring baby and was born so close to Easter, we thought that this year we would just have a couple of friends over and have an Easter themed birthday party. The kids had a great time!

                                                                  
Here is The D on his actual birthday, isn't he a peach! 

For the party we did an Easter egg hunt in our backyard, a harder one for the big kids and a very easy one for Baylor and Aleksey.

                                                                               

Beck had a great time. Baylor was less interested. I don't think he really understood the concept. He preferred instead to throw things into the lake that used to be our sandbox. He is kind of in a throwing-things-into-things phase, he doesn't care as much for organized activities.

After the egg hunt we dyed Easter Eggs out in the driveway.

Then it was cake time.

Bay with one of his presents. We can not wait to open it up and use it. It is supposed to be 84 degree here tomorrow, so it shouldn't be long before we break out the slip-n-slide and other various water games. *Note to grandparents- sorry I didn't take any pictures of Baylor opening your presents. With Rob out of town, and so many other things going on, I just kind of let him and Beck tear into them in no particular order. Thanks again for all of the wonderful new toys!

I do need to mention one special present that I did take a picture of. My sister Peg made the boys a stuffed Brobee doll from their favorite show, Yo Gabba Gabba. At first I didn't even realize it was homemade, it looks that good. I still think Peg needs to go into business one day with all of her jewelry and knits and different projects. Thanks Aunt Peg! Brobee is being loved on every day. Beck even took it to show and tell on Friday and I heard other kids ooohhing and ahhhing over it. Everyone loves Yo Gabba! 

Baylor conquers his fiends

Every month Beck and Baylor's classes send out electronic newsletters describing the upcoming activities for the month. I just got Baylor's newsletter for April:

To celebrate our theme for the month of April, the Hugger’s class will be learning about how our bodies grow and develop. The overall theme for this month is, “All About Me.” The weeks and their topics are as follow:



• Week of the 5th: My Body


• Week of the 12th: My Fiends


• Week of the 19th: I’m Growing


• Week of the 26th: My Family

I don't know why, but the thought of 2 years olds sitting around discussing their "fiends" made me laugh out loud.

Carrom anyone?

I was doing a little spring cleaning in our garage/basement today and look what I found...

And the flip side:                                               

Yup- you guessed it, it's a Carrom board. Judging from the looks of it, I would be willing to guess that it was purchased by the original owners of the house, several years before I was born.  Rob and I Googled how to play it, but were left with more questions than answers. If anyone is a Carrom expert and knows where I can buy some Carrom-men that are "ICF-sanctioned pieces with a diameter of no more than 3.18 cm and no less than 3.02 cm, and must be between 7 mm and 9 mm thick, with an edge that is round and plain, and a weight of 5–5.5 g." please let me know. If feel like if our old college friends were around we would find some way to make a Carrom drinking game that would probably make about as much sense as the actual games rules.

Kitchen Pictures

So, I finally got around to doing the kitchen and I would say it is 90% finished. I am extremely proud to say that I laid the flooring completely by myself. I also cut and installed the baseboards and quarter round and painted. It was a lot of work, spread out over a week's worth of nights. I ended up with a lot of little cuts and bruises and a sore back, but it was completely worth it.

We basically went with the least expensive flooring, so it didn't turn out to be exactly what I would have otherwise chosen, but I've come to view this house as my practice house where I am here to learn all of the lessons of home improvement and maintenance. We went ahead and had professionals fix the drywall and tear the wood paneling off of the other walls, but I feel like maybe I could have done that myself too.

They tore off the old painted-over wood paneling that covered the bottom the kitchen walls, and replaced the drywall under the window, which had gotten wet and rotted.

 I think this is a vast improvement on what we had when we first moved in. 

Before

After