Wildlife or Just a Wild Life?

Sometimes it’s hard to believe we live in an urban area with all of the wildlife we seem to have around our house. The last couple years we have had a duck lay and hatch her ducklings in our front shrubbery. And just recently, I found a litter of kittens living under our deck. It appears that they are from the same mother who had a litter of kittens under our deck last year! As if this wasn’t enough, several weeks ago, Aaron found a turtle in our front drive. I must have not taken a picture of the duck, but here are a couple pics of the kitties and the turtle.

I think Kayla looks so cute in this one!


As for our wild life, the house always seems to be a disaster, there are never enough hours in the day, and forget about finding myself any new clothes (the other day, I forgot to get myself breakfast). On the other hand, it is so much fun watching Kayla learn new things and repeat (or try to) any word we say to her. Hearing her say, “love you” can help me forget almost all of my stresses of the day.

Here she becomes one with her toys.

Kayla’s latest passion is swinging. Aaron’s mom found an outdoor swing that we could use at the lake cottage and at their house. We hooked it up in our garage for an initial test run, and it was a winner from the first push. The downside is that Kayla asks to swing 24/7. All of the pictures I took were blurry, but you get the idea. The other funny thing is that the swing is about 5 feet off of the ground when it’s hanging in our garage. I can only imagine what people think when they drive by our house and see her swinging up there!

On one of the many, many hot days we’ve had in the last few weeks, Aaron had the sprinkler running in the front yard. Kayla thought this was a perfect opportunity for playing. She had a dress on, so we just pulled that off and she went to town. She liked putting the beach ball into the sprinkler as well.

We hope that you are all doing well, and have a great 4th of July. If you look below, I have added another entry about the house progress. Enjoy!!

Building a House

So here are a few update pictures on the house building process. In general, things are going well. We had one minor setback when major storms rolled through and blew over the trusses over the garage. Fortunately there wasn’t too much damage, and once they were back up, things were moving quickly again.

Trusses go up...
...trusses come down.

This is a view of the trusses from inside the garage.

This is a shot from the family room, looking into the kitchen (with the master bedroom behind that).

This is the dining room, just to the left of the kitchen picture above.

We'll keep you updated as more gets completed!

Delinquent

As my good friend Cathy so accurately pointed out, I am horribly delinquent on updating this blog. Since Kayla usually rules the subject matter, and I haven't really had any good/exciting photos of her recently, I hadn't felt compelled to make an entry. Well, procrastination no more, here is a new entry! Can't say it will be too meaty, but it's an update none the less.

For those of you who don't already know, Aaron and I are in the process of building a new home. Well, we're not actually building it, thank goodness. Fortunately we found a wonderful builder who is a strong Christian, and receives rave reviews from anyone we run into who has worked with him or knows him personally. And his wife always pulls out a little rocking chair that Kayla loves, anytime we have a meeting at their house.

Currently we are finishing up the framing of the house, so I'll post some pictures of the progress. Also, I just realized that I never put up any pictures from Easter, so Kayla won't be left out.

Right now we are enjoying life. Building a home has taken up a lot of time, but the end result will be worth it. Kayla continues to add to her vocabulary and get more and more daring. You never know what she will try to pull next. Anyway, we hope all of you are doing well.