Spring at Silver Lake

This was in May - lots of snow still up in the mountains. We went again this week - all the snow is melted :)

We tested out a new leash/tether for Max - leash attached to a Camelbak pack. Worked like a charm! The snow helped too. It was kind of slippery ;)

 

Just hangin'

Just hanging out on the porch.

More Randoms

The cell phone dump continues...

Mother's Day brunch at The Grand...

Piper loves the mini bottles...

Remember our huge sunflower from last summer? We planted a few of the seeds... They are now all planted outside!

Max - just digging in the dirt (Obviously before the sod)...

This was right after the deck railings were finished being built!

Randoms

We had dinner one evening with the awesome Sarah. She and her mom were in town for a quilt show.

Max tried to high-five her with dirty ketchup hands. She wanted no part in it ;)

I paid Piper $20 to crawl under the deck to hook up the backyard sprinkler pipe. Money well spent! The previous owner built the deck over the irrigation pipe - seriously! Grr.

Random after school line-up...
can of soup, sippy of milk, chips, mandarin oranges, pudding, pitcher, bike helmet, measuring cup, banana and a tomato ;)

Tennis

A few pictures of my nephew playing tennis earlier this year...

Summer is going to be looooong...

Max!!!!!!!!!! My head may just explode this summer ;)

He figured out how to use his play kitchen food, specifically, the plastic potato chip, to unlock the door to the furnace room. So he went in there twice before I got a temporary chain lock installed (he can body slam doors to bend and break those - time for a double door handle)... and while in there, he dumped a couple bottles of carpet cleaner out. No biggie - it's tile - easy to wipe up, but why is that soooo fun and enticing? It's a boring furnace room!

Anyway, the a/c stopped working two nights ago... Long story short, I spent all day yesterday trying to figure out the problem, replaced the capacitor (yes, again thanks to youtube videos - I will be a home repair man in my next life), and finally gave up and called a real repair man. I was sure it was the compressor (according the youtube video diagnosis I had made), which is the part that costs so much you might as well replace the whole a/c unit... we were bracing for a repair bill over $2000. Well, I went to change the filter this morning and looked at the wall to see that Max had switched the furnace switch (lightswitch panel on the wall) to OFF.

Seriously!!!???? I switched it on, came upstairs, and the a/c is now working fine. Moments later the a/c repair guy showed up.Um, thanks, but I guess we don't need you afterall;) He was nice and didn't make me pay the $60 service call fee.

Kind of missing ABA therapy... 

Back yard - Finally!

We've had a dirt back yard since we moved into this house just over a year ago. And the deck railings weren't all finished either, so it wasn't really a safe place to play. Our goal was to get it finished enough for Max to play in this summer. I've been working my butt off trying to get things done, but when you buy a house full of someone else's unfinished projects it can be a bit tricky, or more like a nightmare in many instances. It's taken a year to finish the sprinklers - grrr - but I'll leave that story for another day.
We finally have grass and deck rails! Yay!
So here's a few progress pictures:
When we bought the house the back yard looked like this:

After a year, it needed to be re-weeded. And we got deck rails installed (not really shown in this picture, but they are there)...

Fence and deck stained! Sprinklers in.

Retaining wall moved so a mower can cross the sidewalk easily ;) And the upper tier leveled for a fire pit.

Sod! and the fire pit.

Super hot - cheap sod. It's still alive though ;)

Slide off the deck! The grass is greening up, I think.

From the other end of the yard perspective.
Before: May/2016

After:

 A panorama just for fun. Still need flagstone around the fire pit. But next up is a splash pad for the lower deck tier, I think. And still looking for a jungle gym for Max. The we'll worry about plants and stuff ;)

*edit to add 6/21

Blue n White Day

The annual Blue & White Day at Piper's school. For the first time, her team won!
Next year she is switching to Max's school, so she was pretty happy about the win.

Crappy cell phone pics - better than nothing, right?...

Max had to watch from afar. He was dying to run over to the playground.

Finally!

The usual bribe of fries to get him back in the car ;)