Surprise guests!

Zoé
Raph and Kayla, 5 months today
Rebecca
David

the desserts
Tiana Jaxlyn

Kaioa

Surprise guests are the best kind! We had a fun afternoon/evening with some friends from around here..a beautiful chocolate cake and a fruit tiramisu kept all of the bellies satisfied. It is nice to have some good friends. I think I will keep having birthdays and getting older after all.

birthday Sunday

After a wonderful brunch prepared by the boys, we are all full and happy, it is beautiful and sunny out...what more could we want or need. My presents this year were some great drawings done by local artists (very local, like in-house) and some of my own clothes packaged and wrapped up and a few other things. Mostly I am happy to be alive, to have a loving family and health. The paver project is mostly finished, just a few more details to wrap up. It looks great and I will take a pic or two when we get it all done and cleaned up. Wish you could be here to share in all these fun things with us.

September's almost gone...

I got an attack of the conscience or whatever you call it today when I saw on someone else's blog that I updated my blog 3 months ago....argh!!! So here is a brief post...I won't go over what we have been up to in the last three months, too long and actually pretty interesting but no time now. Here is our most recent project, an awesome re-do of our messy, muddy, grassy parking area next to the house. It has been taken on by a very generous person, won't give his name out here for fear that you will all want to invite him to stay with you and help you tackle your project list!! He mentioned some previous experience laying pavers so we figured that it wouldn't do for him to be bored so he started right away. It is getting cold here so I guess that means that winter is coming up...I am kind of looking forward to getting out the hats and gloves, tights and turkey. Looking forward to lots of snow and some chances to build snowmen!

cookies

Cookie making on a rainy Friday

It has been very rainy here of late. Somehow the flowers are growing though! They are looking so pretty and I love to look out every morning and see what changes there have been since I looked last. We are hoping for some sunshine soon to get those blooms out there. Wednesdays the boy are off in the afternoon and we are going to take off for Bern as soon as they are out of school. We have to pick up a bed and frame somewhere and then it is a good shop while putting the kids in a supervised play area for couple of hours. I think Kim, Zoe and Kaioa will meet us there. Our play structure is taking shape and hopefully it will be done by Saturday. There were several things that needed replacing and most of that is finished. Hopefully it won't tip when the first kid gets on. We are gearing up for our summer event and trying to get our mess put away...good thing we have to do it once a year or it would be a hopeless disaster around here.

VIP

We had a VIP here for a few days...our newphew M. He is a very fun kid and he loves soccer which fits right in with the males in the family. I have never been able to get into it so I am somewhat of an outcast around here. The Euro 2008 is coming up this summer and Switzerland is one of the hosts, along with Austria and EVERYTHING has a soccer ball on it. He has vacation right now so he decided to spend a day in the office with Ralph to see whether an office job would suit him. It was nice weather off and on so we spent most of our time outside. We all camped out in the boys room last night and nobody got much sleep but it was fun. I lasted until the snoring drove me out and I had already thrown my last available object at Ralph. (I was on the top bunk and he was on the floor. ) Thanks to goofy Aunt Lisa for the 'staches!! The find of the day was an entire play structure that we found at the local dump. We will sand on it here and there and then try to put it back together. What a hoot.

big boy

Hopefully this is going to turn into something serious soon, but for now, it is just about getting used to the potty seat and choosing what to read while you go about it. Funny boy.