building a shed

Nick and the boys started building our shed two weeks ago. This is something that Nick has been wanting to do for a long time and now that the new fence and retaining wall are completed, he has begun. Oliver loves building it so much that he has been asking to build another as soon as this one is finished.

This is what it looked like when they started.

Here it is a week later:

At the start of this weekend it looks like this:

The boys use it more like a playhouse. For them it's a secret secret fort where they can't be easily supervised because of the tarp and lack of windows. Here is is their train (Oliver has gotten really good at using a hammer):
And here they are painting the walls:

Ev's visit - his photos

And here are a few of Evan's picture from our visit. He didn't have his camera out much because he was so busy working on our beautiful fence, but the ones he did take are great. I especially love the ones of Oliver and the merry-go-round.

our handrail, the original project

our fence, thus far

more fence, with our existing handrail on our lower stairs. this will eventually be replaced to look more like the new one.

Nick is currently working on building the gate

O

"motorcycle man", as he calls himself

love this one!

bike parking: Oliver parks his bike on this same tree every day at the playground

Uncle Ev's visit

Uncle Evan's visit was short and very busy. He flies home early this morning, much to Oliver's dismay. Fortunately, I'm heading back down to California next week with the boys so Oliver will get to see his favorite uncle in about nine days.

Evan's original goal in coming up here was to visit with the boys and build/weld us a hand rail for our upper front steps. Thanks to his love for welding and my begging for a gate and fence for our upper yard, the project quickly morphed into just that. On Saturday the boys (minus Elliott) headed down to a steel shop to pick up a ton of steel (turns out they over estimated how much material they would need and Nick plans to use the leftovers to build Oliver his first go-cart). Nick, and especially Evan, have worked incredibly hard for the past few days trying to get as much of the fence completed as they could before Evan flies out. The fence is up, and looks great! Evan has better pictures on his camera so I'll post them when I get them from him. Nick still has a lot of work ahead of him though, including building the gate and sanding/galvanizing/painting the entire fence before it rusts. I am so thrilled to finally have a fence and soon a gate, as the concrete stairs leading down to the street have made me so nervous ever since Oliver first became mobile two years ago. Now the boys will be able to play more safely in our front yard, and Penny will get to enjoy it more as well!

masked men

welding

the welding mask quickly became Oliver's motorcycle helmet!

assessing the situation

Oliver will kiss his favorite uncle any day, even when he's wearing a huge mask

Uncle Ev and his cutest nephews! It's amazing that everyone is looking and smiling for me!

trying on the earplugs

little boy in a clover patch

preview

Here's a sneak peak of what Nick and uncle Evan have been up to all weekend!

garden friends

I took the boys to Swanson's Nursery today to pick up a two plants for our front yard, we needed another blueberry and rosemary bush. I've been wanting to get some little garden friends for a while, so I let Oliver pick out a few. I love them! I put one gnome by each of the boys' maple trees.

this little gnome is hanging out by Elliott's tree

and this is the one Oliver wanted for his tree

and some geckos eating the clover

Later on, this little guy helped me pick basil for the delicious Zusketti I made for dinner.

he mostly ended up with handfuls of cilantro and dirt

rock wall

The rock wall that we built last spring has grown up! It's amazing to see how much everything has grown in a year!

today

last July

planter box

The pictures of Oliver below pretty much sum up his day!

First time riding in the dump truck AND facing forward in his car seat. Lucky Oliver.

The hat was a souvenir from the dirt and rock yard.

He wears it well!

Might as well bring out my own tractors with all this fresh dirt to play in!

Loading dirt and rocks into his wheelbarrow.

I'm not sure who was supervising here!

now we just need some vegetables!

downstairs bathroom, part 2

Nick and Oliver made a little bit of progress on the bathroom over the weekend. They worked on gluing the floor tiles down. You can see Oliver was a big help by stacking spacers on top of individual tiles :)

downstairs bathroom, part 1

I've been lagging in my home remodeling posts lately, but here's an update on the new bathroom Nick is adding downstairs. Two weeks after Elliott was born, and since he was off work, Nick decided it would be a good time to dig a large hole in our basement to add a sewer line for a new bathroom. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed having a pile of dirt sit in the laundry room for a month! The plumbing is now finished and Nick poured and leveled a new concrete floor earlier this week. This weekend, Nick and some friends worked hard to get the drywall mostly complete. Next up is building a shower pan and tiling the shower, floor and walls. Oliver has loved this project because it's the first time that Nick has let him help out for most of it. While the hole was in our basement Oliver always wanted to go downstairs to dig more holes! It's not every day that a little boy gets to use his shovels and wheelbarrow inside the house!

new plumbing inside the bathroom

new sewer line

yesterday Oliver did some prep work

wearing Jim's pink hard hat

he wanted everyone to notice his tape measure clipped to his pants

this morning, mixing drywall mud with Jim

mudding with an expert

obviously enjoying himself

and proud of the mud caked all over his hands!

Elliott's maple tree

Oliver received a Japanese Maple tree when he was born, so we saved a place in our front yard for a similar tree for Elliott. Since we have them planted in the front of our house, Nick wanted to get the same type of tree. So I thought, no problem, Oliver's is a Japanese Maple, we'll just go pick up another one. After calling the nursery, it turns out there are many, many variety of Japanese Maple trees and the only way to tell them apart is by their leaves, of which Oliver's tree has none since it dropped them all for the winter. I was disappointed and thought we were going to have to wait until spring to get Elliott his tree. A few days later, while scrolling through some of Oliver's baby pictures, I happened to find this picture of Oliver's maple tree when we first received it, and by zooming in, I was able to clearly read the variety, Hogyoku Japanese Maple.

What a lucky find! I called the nursery back, and it turned out they had just one left since they don't stock them in the winter. Thank you to grandma who went up there and picked it up for us! Because it was the only one left, we didn't get to select the size, and it turns out the tree is much more mature than Oliver's tree is, standing a good foot or two taller. Hopefully Oliver's will catch up soon :) Here is the family with Elliott's tree below and I'll take an annual picture of Elliott and his tree like I do with Oliver.

Elliott's tree, and Oliver's behind it, in the snow and decorated for the winter