Memorable Memorial Day Weekend

This weekend was insanely crazy in a great way! It was like the weekend you always imagine when you think about having a family with small kids someday.

We started out Friday afternoon by finding out our climber had come in so the plans were to pick it up and do that Friday night. But at a little before 5:30 some church/neighbor friends (we have a lot of those) called to say they were letting all the neighbors and some folks know that they were camping out in their backyard and would be outside all evening grilling hot dogs, roasting smores, etc. for whoever wanted to drop by. So Ryan "ran" to go get the climber and then we would head over there. Well I headed by myself after a very frustrated call from my husband who was having to remove the backseat of our van (by himself- a near impossible task, mind you) and car seats and figure out how to keep all this plus the over sized box in our car. Woops. Anyway, he was a little frazzled but a trooper and he got it home and was able to join us at the neighbors to hang out and let all the kids play. We feel so fortunate to have so many young families from our church right here in our neighborhood!!

Since we spent the evening on Friday doing that, you better believe we were outside at 7:00 Saturday morning putting up our new sweet "Woodland Climber". We had the kids out there in their PJs and all. I think they are going to have loads of fun on it- what do you think?

Here is the mother ship...

And look who's drivin' it...

Bennett was awesome playing on it! It took him a few tries to figure out not to lay back on the slide, but after that he had it mastered.

Climbing up the ladder, until daddy showed him the much cooler more challenging way to get up there, the rock wall...

Having a ball!!

.

Step 2 Naturally Playful Woodland Climber: $200
Canon Digital Rebel XTi: $500
Capturing this moment forever:

PRICELESS!!!

That was not all we did on Saturday. In the early afternoon we had a birthday party for a guy Ryan works with whose son was turning two! They had it at a pizza/game and rides kind of place here, and while our kids were a little young for most of the game and rides part, I think they really enjoyed themselves and were thrilled to come home with some balloons and a goody bag.

.

Saturday night, Ryan's parents dropped by to see the kids play on their newest toy and to bring us an addition to our backyard playground- a Sand and Water Table! The kids LOVE IT!!! They were so spoiled this whole weekend long! I hope they don't think every weekend from here on out is going to be like this- they will be greatly disappointed! We really are so fortunate- I think sometimes I am guilty of getting so wrapped up in the things "I wish" we could do for them, I forget to be truly thankful for all that they DO have and all that we CAN do for them!! I better get my act together so that they will learn to be truly grateful for all the wonderful things they have and get to do too- big and small!!

.

Sunday morning was church as usual, and Sunday afternoon was more fun!!! The Zoo was having a members only night, where they had music and free kids rides and the zoo stayed open late just for members. We had already planned on going with Grandma and Grandpa Braithwait, and then also found out a bunch of the young families from church were going to go as well, so it was doubly fun!! We got rained on pretty good at one point, but at least we had the free carousel rides to hold us over until it cleared up. The animals were very active and it was nice and quiet (not crowded) so we really enjoyed it and hope to attend some more of these!!!!

Again, it was raining off and on and getting dark, so we didn't take a ton of pics but we did snap a couple before leaving...

Very fortunate to have at least one set of grandparents close to get to hang out with!

Look how mature my girl looks in the above picture!! She is just getting too big!

Daddy and Hannah Grace. With every animal we looked at she kept saying "Go find MORE animals!" I think she would "go see animals" every day if she could! Daddy and her have found a new love of watching Animal Planet together.

Our family. I am one lucky woman!

And then, today was a good productive day. We had a project (I LOVE projects=)- we paved out a corner between our house and our patio with pavers. There was a tree there that was dug out and it was just dirt. We thought this could give us a nice addition to our patio space and I just love how it turned out!!! Here daddy is after a long day of working hard, playing with the kids and their sand and water station that we put on our new paved area! We cooked out tonight and loved every second of watching the kids run around and play- as I told Ryan, it is the life!

So if you can't tell, we had an awesome weekend and it was such a FUN and memorable way to kick off our summer. I hope you all had a great Memorial Day weekend as well, and spent some time being grateful for the price that has been paid by so many people for us to have the freedoms that we have today. It is something that I know I think of way too infrequently.