Fencing – Days 3 and 4

Day 3: Gino headed out and finished up on the south side of the house over by the neighbors house. He would have been done sooner but then realized that the door was hung on the wrong post so he had to take down the completed door and redo the whole thing. What a bummer! It looks great though.

View of south side fence along neighbors property.

Inside view of completed south side fence and gate.

Outside view of south side fence and gate.
The patch of dirt in front of the gate will probably have grass.
As the day was drawing to a close Gino headed over to the north side to begin installation of that gate.

All that is left to be done…

Gino installing the hardware for the gate.

Showing Isabel how to attach the hardware.

Gino got all of this hardware installed and the wood attached and was ready to attach panels and be done; when he realized that the hardware wasn’t “square” and had to disassemble everything. Talk about frustrating!

Day 4: That next morning I exchanged the hardware and that night Gino finished the fence! Hurray!

Inside view of north side fence and gate.

Outside view of north side fence and gate.

Happy 1st Birthday!

Our friends the Wares little boy, Chris, celebrated his first birthday this past weekend! We know the Wares through Gino’s office and because their oldest son, Jimmy, is four days older then Isabel. So we headed north about an hours drive to spend the afternoon celebrating at the park. What fun!

The Wares: Jim, Val holding Chris, and Jimmy.

Cupcakes are so yummy – even more so when they are lemon flavored with lemon frosting! Yum!

Sharing chips…he wouldn’t take it. Jimmy was shy.

Isabel showing Chris how the toy we gave him works.

Happy birthday boy!

New park = loads of fun!

Swings! We don’t have swings at our park at home.

Jimmy was all over the playground; so trying to get a good photo was very hard to do.

Just one quick hug before we leave. Thanks for the invite Val, we had lots of fun and it was nice to get away from working on the home projects.

Dirty Girl!

Isabel loves to play in the dirt…but she doesn’t like to be dirty. Go figure?!?! This evening while Gino was finishing up the cutting of panels for the fence; we were outside just enjoy the evening together.

Isabel digging in the dirt. But later…notice that large rock in front of her; keep that in mind.

Dirty piggies!

Later while I was watching Isabel play; she was pretending to eat that large rock (see the first photo above) and when I asked her to show me. She plops down on the ground, bends over to the rock, begins to lick it, sits up and pretends to chew! GROSS – Isabel!!! Hence, the dirty cheeks and mouth (the orange tint below her mouth is from a sugar free Popsicle earlier). You so need a bath – dirty girl! :o)

Fencing – Day 2

How does it look???? We have had several of our neighbors comment on how good it looks. We even had one neighbor want to know if Gino does fencing professionally! It looks really nice. Gino did an outstanding job on our fencing project! Thank you, sweetie! :o)

Back yard view.

Just about finished with those cut panels.

Gino cutting up panels.

All finished!

Street side. Now we only have the “front” sides
(where the gates on either side of the house will be located) to finish up.
I’ll post photos of that when it gets all completed.

Fencing – Day 1

The rails are up and now it’s time for actual fence panels.

Looking south before the panels go on.

Our first panel is complete…we have a long way to go.

North side of house is coming along nicely. Gino used a nail gun to secure each panel to the fence. In a few spots, he had to cut boards to fit, which he did after all the panel were up on all sides of the house. My job was to remove all the pricing tags and staples from each panel and then supply them to Gino and to keep things clear for him to work (i.e. rake up stray rocks, move tree branches, supply cold water, keep Isabel out of the way…).

Speaking of Isabel…
Here she is and it appears that the air compressor needs some work.
So she’ll get right on it!

Helping wherever and whenever she can; so she needs to be safe.

This first day we moved along quite well and got the north side done and almost half of the back down.

Happy Birthday Bryndee Pearl

Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you, Bryndee Pearl!
Happy Birthday to you!

Happy 7th Birthday Bryndee! You were truly a miracle baby @ 5 lbs.!
(that was smaller then Isabel – and she was tiny!)
God has very special plans for you!
We hope you had a very special birthday with all your friends.
We heard that you had a Barbie cake! How cool is that!
We love you bunches and bunches! X X O X

Penne Pasta Pea Pods?!?

The other day, I happened to stumble across a build your own salad bar in one of our area grocery stores. BTW, this is our favorite thing to do – B.Y.O.S.! Yum! So yesterday for lunch we headed to the store to “load up” on the salad bar. Gino and I each got our own salads and Isabel had her own as well. Filled with pineapple, grapes, cottage cheese, a Penne pasta /shrimp salad (keep this in mind), kidney beans, peas and ham. After we load up, we think of heading to the park to eat our salad’s there but unfortunately the park only had one table (who designs a park w/only 1 table!!!!) and that was already occupied. So we headed back home. While we were eating, I got to my sugar snap peas that I had added to my salad and I hand one of the them to Isabel and ask her if she knew what it was. She held onto it and just looked at it a little weird; not saying a word. Then Gino says to her “There are babies inside” (and if you’ve read my previous postings you’d know that babies are important to Isabel!). So I take the pea pod back and bite into it and then show Isabel how to open the pod to see the “babies”. She was totally wowed by this! She grabs up the baby peas and I eat the pod. So back to eating my salad and talking with Gino when out of the corner of our eyes (we both see this at the same time) we notice Isabel is quietly working with her Penne pasta. She had managed to cut open the pasta and was filling the pasta with peas just like the pea pod I had shown her! Monkey see. Monkey do!

Post rocks!

Yesterday, Gino got down and dirty with getting the rocks out of the way for the last fence posts. The first rock didn’t take him that long to get out; a few heavy whacks with the digging bar (which Gino calls the “Intimidator”) and out it came. The second rock however took a bit more time, a lot more whacks and a great deal more sweat to get out.

The first rock. It actually broke – hurray!

The second rock; I’m guessing probably weighs around  20 lbs. or so.