My Little Girl Is Growing Up

So they other week I found myself shopping for my oldest in the "Little Girl" section at the store for clothing. I realized I will no longer be shopping in the toddler section for her anymore. It kind of made me sad. I have been shopping in the toddler section for her the past 5 years and it just seems crazy to be shopping for her in the little girl section now. Everything in that section seems so grown up. I can't believe in 3 months she will be turning 5 years old! Where's the time gone..seriously? Thank goodness I still have one left to shop for in the toddler section.

Papas Birthday "Heart-Attack"

This morning most of the grandkids decided we would go to my Dads work and give his car a "heart-attack" for his birthday. It ended up being a very very windy day so most of the hearts started to blow off before we could even finish putting them on. So with that said instead of waiting for Papa to see this beautiful artwork the grandkids made on his car when he left for lunch we decided to have one of the employees who was out in the parking lot go inside and tell Papa he had visitors outside. He was very surprised!!!

Thank goodness Papa has long arms to hug all those grandkids ...because as soon as he came out they all went charging toward him to give him a BIG Papa bear hug!!! We love you Papa. Happy Birthday!!

I can see clearly now the rain...I mean, the tree is gone

So we started off with a great week last week. Our neighbors who live behind us FINALLY after 2 years of us calling and begging them to have their enormous tree cut down it finally came down at the begining of last week!!! I had a very happy husband. It meant he didn't have to rake up piles of leafs everyday during the autumn months, and it meant large branches weren't breaking off and landing in our backyard and on our roof ( kind of scary when you have kids playing in the backyard and a large large branch falls from the tree) and it means we can FINALLY grow the rest of our grass in the backyard since we couldn't before because there was too much shade from the over grown tree that covered our whole backyard and half our house. We have even possibly considered putting a pool in the backyard instead of growing more grass. Some of you may say.."well, why would you do that?..You don't have a very big back yard..and a pool would take up most of your yard"...right? Well...if you live in california you are pretty much looking for a pool to jump into and try to cool off half of the year anyway so why not have a pool right in your backyard? If we do end up putting a pool, that's a big IF.. what are your thoughts on where it  should go?..We are having troubles deciding for sure. Would you put it here(photo below) this is looking out from the kitchen and family room area. This is where I think it should go just because I would be able to see the kids in the pool.

Or would you put it here?**photo below**..Mike and Savannah like it here. Mike says, "so it doesn't look like the whole backyard is taken up by a pool." Savannah says "so we don't mess up the pretty grass." :)

Whatever we decide to do with this backyard,now that we can do something to it without it getting sooo messy from the tree...we are thrilled to do it and finally have a backyard!!! :)