Fun on the balcony

We've been hanging out on our new balcony alot lately - the views are great, the weather is perfect, and the access is easy - right out our bedroom. The kids love watching everyone that goes by out for a walk, we can watch and talk to whoever is at the park playing, and Toby likes yelling to everyone (especially the neighbor's dogs). I know we won't be up on top as much in the summer cause 1. it will be too hot, 2. the sun will be further north and the house won't shade us on the balcony - but I am hoping that having the covered patio will make it easier to be in the backyard in the summer. As you can see below, Toby has a doll that he takes care of - he is talking lots more and is also refusing his naps. At the bottom of this post you can see the awesome view straight from our bedroom!

 

Saturday Morning Bike RIde while Mommy went to Leadership Conference

TJ is an excellent driver now - he gives his siblings a ride.


The entire exterior of the house was freshly painted last week - can you tell?





Toby was sure excited about the new park we rode the bike to . . . even though he was just in a diaper (at least daddy changed his diaper before going on the bike ride) 

Pinata Time

This is Jeffrey, the birthday boy, taking some swings.

This is Jeffrey's brother, Brian - he found a piece of the pinata to dress up with :)




Heather dove right in whenever the candy scattered and competed with all of those boys for candy - she gave me this tootsie roll! 

Friday Night at Park for Jeffrey's 8th Birthday

How many of you have seen this look from Susan before?
TJ and Heather were both invited to the birthday party - Heather was the only girl there! 

Swimming in February

This time we got mommy to join us! We gave the kids a choice between going for a bike ride or going swimming, and they chose swimming (of course, after swimming, they still wanted a bike ride instead of going to bed). Heather was really excited to be able to go straight upstairs from outside and into her bedroom. Hopefully the pool gets more use with this additional access point, now!

 

It's done

Here it is, the final product - a balcony with a spiral staircase. I'm looking forward to having some time to cleanup the backyard after all of the rearranging that happened - it's gonna be fun back there!

We also had the back fence painted - it looks better than I thought it would!



Of course we've been keeping busy otherwise, with superbowl family parties . . .



and going to the park since the weather is so perfect