May 2009

Our house is currently ground zero for a road construction project. The city is adding a center turn lane, a right turn lane, a bike lane, and sidewalks to the street in front of our house. The project will last all summer and will take up a good portion of our front yard.
While the city is tearing up the street, the power company will be digging a HUGE pit in our front yard, ripping out the driveway and a bunch of 30’-40’ pine trees to get down to some gas lines buried in our property. They already replaced the gas meters, and found a serious gas leak inside our garage at the water heater! Despite repeated questions about possibly smelling gas, our home inspector claimed we had no leak when we moved in. This was the same guy that said the roof was fine. When the tree hit our house, the contractor saw the roof and said it was in such bad shape that he was shocked we hadn’t had serious leaks yet.
When Blake left the house with the girls during the gas leak, the car started having problems. It turned out that there were several problems, so the car was in the shop for about a week. That weekend, our air conditioner went out...needless to say, this hasn’t been the most peaceful couple of weeks.
The girls have been growing so fast lately. Laney’s vocabulary is huge, and she has done a great job with potty training. She talks about going to preschool in the fall all the time. She names everything Carly, loves jumping on Sydney’s trampoline, and love’s the kids club at Tri-State.
Hadley is pulling up, and has just cut her first tooth! She’s been crabby for a few days due to pink eye and a mild ear infection, so we didn’t even really know it was coming until it had almost popped out. She is still ridiculously happy most of the time, likes eating real food (like stewed carrot or cheese pieces), knows how to play peek-a-boo, and has lots of gibberish conversations with people now.
Now that the weather is nicer, we all love spending a lot of time outdoors. The girls love swinging on their swings. Laney plays make believe a lot now. When we are on the swings, she says “Bye bye, I have to go to work”, then she climbs up into her tree house, makes “working sounds”, and slides down to “come home”. I think our family’s favorite new thing to do is to go on bike rides. The girls have a trailer that attaches to Blake’s bike. It’s a great way for all of us to be together outside having fun.