yard renovations!

when we moved into our new house in october, we didn't tackle our landscaping right away.  the only thing we had done was have a landscaping company come in to flatten our front yard, bring in top soil, and put down sod.  it looked beautiful and we knew we would have to tackle the sides and the backyard another time.  we didn't even do anything about our front flower bed and it has been sitting with just the landscaping fabric visible for too long.

during the month of august, our backyard has been a big construction project as the same landscaping company came back to excavate, fill, and level our steep property.  they even built two retaining walls in the back.  they finished it up with a layer of topsoil and gorgeous green sod all over the sides and backyard.  they also brought in beautiful rock to cover our front and side flower beds.

it has been quite a massive project that spanned over the course of 4 weeks.  they did an incredible job and we love the outcome.  

needless to say, noah was in his glory these past few weeks watching all of the heavy equipment up close and personal.  he also enjoyed helping us plant and move the flowers.

love, laurie

a sunday afternoon at lakeland orchard with grandma and grandpa

we missed two weekends at lakeland because we had so many things going on, and on the days we were available it was always raining.  we were happy to spend two hours at lakeland on sunday which was the last day of the august blooms and butterfly festival.

ryan's parents joined us and noah was happy to show them around one of his favorite play places.  we were very surprised to find out that lakeland opened their apple picking up a week early so we got to pick some apples on the first day of picking.  (we thought we would have to wait until next weekend for apples!)

we rode the rides and came home with some fresh-cut zinnias, fresh-picked apples, and free triple-berry lemonade doughnuts that they were handing out at the end of the night!

we're looking forward to this coming weekend when lakeland switches over to their apple festival for september.

love, laurie

noah's construction-themed 2nd birthday party!

we celebrated noah's 2nd birthday over the weekend at our house with a construction-themed party for our construction-obsessed 2 year old!  we bought a bunch of cute construction decorations, balloons, and his t-shirt on amazon.  we made the food tags and printed them out.

we had pizza and construction-themed snacks followed by chocolate peanut butter cake for dessert.

tools = utensils 

concrete = hummus

traffic light = red, yellow, and green bell peppers

wood chips = corn tortilla chips

timber = pretzel sticks

nuts and bolts = chex mix

safety cones = slices of pizza

spare tires = mini chocolate covered doughnuts

fuel station:

boulders = ice cubes

gasoline = lemonade

diesel = iced tea

he had a blast seeing everyone and opening presents!  happy birthday, noah!

love, laurie

blippi obsessed

noah is obsessed with blippi.  so, when we found this blippi shirt on clearance at kohl's we just couldn't pass it up.  needless to say, he loved it!

love, laurie

beautiful butterflies

the month of august is the blooms and butterlfies festival at lakeland orchard.  we love going there, and were excited to check out their new butterfly house.  we visited the butterflies and admired them sitting on the gorgeous flowers.

noah likes butterflies and was excited to go in the butterfly house.  about half way through he decided he was scared of them.  hopefully he will like them again soon.

love, laurie

a trip aboard the ice cream train!

the iron horse society sponsored an event where they ran a passenger train from our local train museum up to a cute little town and back.  they called it the ice cream train because when you got off at the town there was an ice cream shop set up and ready to make you sundaes!  

we saw the event advertised online and thought it looked like a great outing.  what made it even better was that they offered free tickets to teachers!

we loved our train ride and noah has been saying "foo foo" ever since (which means "choo choo" in noah's language).  of course he liked the ice cream component of the adventure too!

love, laurie