Memorial Day Weekend

We had a pretty full Memorial Day weekend, as to be expected.  The weather gets nice, and bam, we must make use of every minute of daylight!  I put my not-so-eager/willing husband to work on quite a few projects when we were home, and at the end of the day, I know he's happy I did!  :)

So after I took photos at a dear friend's mom's wedding up in Loveland (post on that to come, I have a lot of editing to do!!), we enjoyed a fun night at Club Hutch (the annual family birthday party at the home of Howie, Bri, and Adele).  I'd post pics of that, but I don't want to start an international incident :-P And on Sunday, we decided to skip church for an early morning trip to Home Depot. (Turns out we weren't the only people that had that idea!)

After weeks of begging Matt to put in a screen/storm/security door on our front door (the middle of our house gets hardly any light, and I knew Benjamin would love being able to look outside whenever he wanted to see the cars, people, and dogs going past), we finally picked one out and brought it home.  Nevermind that we barely tied it to the top of the car at all... we drove slowly and crossed fingers, and somehow we made it!  Matt was nervous to take on the project by himself (because frankly, I'm only good at bossing around, not actually helping!), but wouldn't you know it - a few youtube videos, a lot of encouragement, a Benjamin-pool-party on the side, and some very poorly applied sunscreen got the job done.  And now, we have a beautiful new security door that provides a wonderful window to the outside for our little man, and some nice sunlight and fresh air for his folks.  Not too shabby!

Before & After

Moving the pool to the front yard to see all the action

airplane!

mom, i'm gonna help dad...

this shovel should do the trick...

in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out...

oops, bad wife!!! such a poor application of sunscreen!

And after working on even more projects...

like a cute post cemented in a bucket used to string lights up in our backyard (nevermind that we don't have electricity back there yet... oops!):

and lots and lots and lots of yard work (still not done- hello, dandelions!!?!? oh, and my garden needs serious help already), we had a few friends over to grill and enjoy the nice weather on Memorial Day.  It was fun to enjoy our backyard (as we love doing these days), and I'm looking forward to many fun times back there this summer!  And as usual, I'm so thankful for friends :-)

watermelon!

Benjamin is really good at playing bags (obviously)

Bam Bam at the Zoo

Last weekend (well, last, last weekend), Benjamin and I went to the zoo with his Aunt Amber (affectionately called "Bam Bam").  It's safe to say that there is nothing (besides airplanes) that can capture Benjamin's attention quite as well (and for as long) as animals.  He LOVES them.  It was a hot, crowded day at the zoo (hello weekend visitors), but this boy stayed happy as a clam for hours.  We saw all his favorite animals, and he tried to talk to any of the ones that he had practice in their language (like the monkeys and elephants of course).  The funniest part of the day was when a family of geese were walking by us, he pointed assertively and started quacking at the top of his lungs.  Passersby couldn't help but laugh.  Bam Bam and I laughed, too, but inside I was beaming with pride at this silly show of smarts :)  It's unbelievable how much information is crammed into his ever-growing brain.  I'm constantly in awe.

At any rate, we spent the rest of the time chatting with other animals, and Benjamin did a lot of waving hello and goodbye to almost every animal we saw.  It was pretty darn cute if I do say so myself!

And here's the otter that Matt NEVER gets to see... so I had to taunt him with pictures of how cute he is!