fort building and other random activities/photos...

SOOOOOooooooo, I don't know if you noticed...but there was no signing in when you came to the blog!  I know, I know....what's with the back and forth?!  Well, honestly, I truly hated having it private!  It's always been public and it always made my heart smile a bit when I would get such positive feed back from distant friends and family that were turned on to it.  Friends and family that I rarely have contact with {or sometimes have never actually met in person}.  I know we have{had} a fair amount of readers from other friends blogs as well and going private pretty much cut everyone off :( . I didn't like that.  And neither did Garrett.  And signing in is just a pain in the butt, don't you think?!    So we're public again, YAY!  As always I'll remain rather generic about our personal information.  It's no secret we're an Army family, but we'll just leave it at that shall we.  Obviously, if we feel there is a real and immediate threat to our family due to the blog I won't hesitate in locking it down again :).  

Anywho.......

SPRING is here!  Glorious Spring.  The windows are open, the pollen is flowing, and picnics are abound!  We've had quite a few actually but this one has been the only one my camera was along for the ride.

We've washed cars too.  But only once because about 12 hours after this both cars were all ready coated in a fine layer of yellow pollen!  I think we'll just wait until May to wash them again!  The kiddos had fun though!

Kayla had a little freak out moment because she didn't want her soccer shirt to get wet...

Gavin could care less about the wetness!

*TEAMWORK*

NO!  Garrett is not actually shooting Gavin in the face with a high powered hose nozzle!

For the past month or two Gavin has become obsessed with these 'look & find' books!  His big sister has been a big fan of the Hidden Pictures Playground magazines by Highlights for quite some time and when I realized he was showing some interest in finding the pictures too I got him some more toddler friendly books.    This one he mastered fairly quickly; we've got another which has much smaller objects to find and he has amazed me at how fast he can find them!

The other night we had a Ball to go to!

The kiddos wanted in on the picture taking :)

*blurry cell phone pic ~ and I think it's my favorite of the three!

We had a lot of fun at the Ball.  This was #7 for us!  wow.  Our first was way back before we were married and Garrett was a Private.  Now, all these years later, it's fun to see all the young women in their prom style dresses and the excitement in their eyes as they experience this fun tradition for the first time.  It always instantly takes me back to our first Ball and all the great memories.  The thing I'll miss most about the Balls at this duty station is the 82nd Airborne Division's All-American Chorus!  This group of soldiers are truly awesome to watch/hear.  These videos were taken on my cell phone and are really terrible, but hopefully you can get an idea of just how great they are!    

A few weeks ago a good friend of mine organized an online silent auction for her charity and I bid on/won a super awesome deluxe fort kit!  It includes a giant sheet with tabs, rope, suction cups, clamps, clothes pins, and even a lantern.  How cute is that!?

Over the weekend as I was heading out to our church for a missions project I overheard Garrett telling the kids to get dressed because they were taking a trip to Lowe's.  The kids love going to Lowe's with daddy and Kayla immediately asks 'what are we going to build daddy??!'  I poke my head in her room, also wondering what he's planning, and he says they're going to pick up some PVC pipe to make a REALLY cool fort with.  The funny thing was that I had 'pinned' this idea on Pinterest about a month ago in preparation for our soon to be fort kit....and never showed Garrett!  I told him he could be a professional pinner!  We all got back home around the same time {they also had a lunch date at subway while out and about} and the fort building commenced.

VOILA

They are having a blast in there!  The beautiful thing is that it all comes apart and stores easily when we're ready to have our living room back :) .