I Spy!

Can you see it?  Amidst all our clean-waiting-to-be-folded laundry?

Scroll down to see it closer.

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Yup, that is right.  We found Tessa here.  The clothes had created a "ladder" for her to climb up on the couch and take a nice warm nap.

Portfolio de Bugaboo

I went somewhere, leaving Elijah home with Keith (while Keith was working) and came back to see this. 

Elijah had kept busy painting.  He had painted on a stack of papers about 1/2 inch thick.

Love it that he can spend hours entertaining himself with drawing, painting and other creative outlets!

Anastasia helped him with this one.  But he made these hearts for everyone for Valentines Day and stapled them all together.

Elijah saw this castle at Michaels and really wanted it.  I helped him earn money to buy it by doing a lot of little jobs.

He had the funnest time painting it.  And he plays with it all the time.

Sooo proud!

Love that kid!

The Footings are Framed and Poured

OUT BACK DOOR

I guess I didn't get a good picture of the framing for the footings from the back door.  This is the first delivery of crushed glass..... but it shows the footings and foundation.

CORNER OF HOUSE

Can't see much here... probably won't until the framers come... or we get some backfilling done.

1ST FRUIT TREE

Footings and foundation... and only a little lake.

2ND FRUIT TREE

CHINOOK STREET

OTHERS

Elijah watching the men put up the footing frames.  If you look really closely you can see the window that Keith broke with the tractor... oops.  He still feels bad about that one.... but it is going away anyway.

This is the little pumper machine they used to pump the concrete.  Waaaaay different than when they built the house.  Then it was a huge semi pumper truck.

Elijah was totally fascinated.

This is Adam, the head concrete guy.  Totally nice and helpful.  He let us (and even helped us) put boards under their boards to save on concrete.  And he let Keith pick his brain on more than one occasion.  Very patient.

Adam talked the inspector into coming back the same day after concrete was poured.  This allowed them to come back the next day frame the foundation walls and pour them.

This guy saw me taking pictures and said, "We charge extra for pictures.  Are we going to be on youtube?!?!?!?"

Elijah sooo wanted to play in that mud.

So with the concrete they had extra and just poured in a pile next to the house, we made handprints and then decorated them with beads.

Plagues of Egypt on Us

Jonas is very much a trendsetter in this house.  If he gets into something, invariably EVERYONE gets into it. 

Well, he started making armies of frogs.  This was the same pattern that Mom (wasn't it you, Mom?)taught us to entertain us in church.  We would make them as small as we could, even down to papers 1/4 inch long.  I taught the older kids how to make them long before the girls came home.  I don't know what brought this on, but frogs Jonas made.  And LOTS of frogs.  He made Generals (1/2 page),

Majors (1/4 page), Captains (1/8 page) and grunts (1/16 page).

(Sorry for the poor picture.  I sent one of the kids up to take a picture and then didn't look at them until after the frogs had been put away.)

Then Anastasia got into it and they had a war (meaning set the frogs up and set more frogs up)

I finally had had enough and made them get paper out of the paper garbage to make their frogs.

Even Ryah worked hard to learn how to make frogs.