Have you ever been playing with your kids and been totally surprised by them? Well we were playing hide and seek and I was a bad father and forgot what I was doing!

A few minutes later I was heading upstairs to try and find them and I looked in the bathroom and saw nothing. So I turned the light off and looked a few other places and heard some giggling! Well it was coming from the bathroom. The kids were hiding very effectively! This is what I saw…

They had hidden in the bathtub and pulled the curtain closed. If they hadn’t giggled it would have been a very long time before I ever came back to look again, the kids definitely won this round!

We decided recently that we wanted to build a little playhouse and sandbox for our kids. The thing was that we thought we should probably just wait a while to actually do it because of a few different reasons. Then we realized that our kids were the perfect age for some thing like this right now! So we decided to not wait.

The first step was clearing a place for it. We new we wanted it in the corner, but there was some concrete and a really “nice” old deal going on there already. So we needed to do a bit of work. You can see Josh and Zach happily at work, not quite suspecting what is actually in store…

This is really a good example of how easy it is to wreck something. What you see below was created from above in just s few swings of the sledge hammer. Clean up took a bit longer, but we had a much better looking home for our playhouse to be. Concrete about 3 inches thick had to also be ripped out, but it was easier than I thought it would be!

At this point we needed to go and get the supplies for out playhouse. We ended up needing 39 2×4′s, 12 2×6′s, and 3 4×4 posts along with about 400 screws (this was way more than I thought, we had to go back for more screws a few times). Then a late night bit of work left the kids waking up to this the next morning.

The above picture is actually taken after we have about half the deck boards down, but it is still basically needing some work. On one trip to the hardware store they had a kids workshop so we stayed and had the kids build some cute plant holders, and of course they had free aprons for the kids. I bet you can’t guess what store we bought most of the stuff for this project at!

After a lot of patience on the part of my kids, and a little on the part of the father the project was done and it turned out pretty well!

We really like the play area on top and the digging area underneath. The original plans can be seen here, but we aren’t sure how we want to proceed from here because we don’t really like the idea of the little house getting super hot in the summer here in Vegas, so we are thinking about adding a pagoda style roof and perhaps a swing set and slide off of it in different directions. We are waiting a bit to see what seems best overall after a while of enjoying how it is. What do you think we should finish it with?

I also have to thank my friend Marcus Schott for helping out big time with the main frame construction. He really is a great carpenter and easily saved me 10 hours, and helped to make it much better. This is my first real carpentry project and since I usually just jump to more advanced things when doing something for the first time it was nice to have some great guidance!

This project also counts as our first real yard improvement effort that involved building, not just tearing out and throwing things away!

Tonight for Family Night we elected to work in our yard. Yes by the picture it really needs it. The great part was that the kids really just wanted to pitch in and help. Josh bless his heart wanted to be just like us!

So he made it happen, grabbed a shovel and started digging. He even got quite a bit of dirt into the wheel barrow when I was using it! He just had a bit of trouble with efficiency overall but he will get there by raw determination for sure!

He really is a busy little toddler, but he is just so happy and joyful when he gets to be around his family and do what we are doing!

Okay so this post really isn’t about any people or us except for some fun things I saw hiking this weekend.

First off I had never seen one of these before, have you guys?

Okay that was so interesting I had to take a picture. If your wondering I didn’t check out what was inside to make it unique, but I wish I would have!

I actually found this little gem when I was out looking for birds. I did manage to get a few pictures of birds, but mostly I was really, really cold!

So here is a Mountain Bluebird.

And here is one of personal favorites, the Pygmy Nuthatch. This guy may look a bit plain, but just imagine the busy personality of a toddler that has 20x to much energy!

Have a great day!

We have had a sad few days at our house. We have seen a dear friend slowly bleed and die before our eyes. It has been so hard. So many fond memories and wonderful times. Cuddling, relaxing, and just enjoying life has always been a part of life with our dear friend the bean bag. We practically stole it from some other friends, and have enjoyed it ever since. Sadly some wounds are just to big to fix, and when you have 4 kids spreading your guts throughout the house it is time to say goodbye!

So enjoy a picture or two of the mayhem and joy that we had with our bean bag…

The foam wasn’t the real problem, the static electricity was. And yes if you can’t quite see it the kids are inside the bowels of the poor bean bag.

I guess the best and worst part about this from a dads perspective is that I missed all of the fun (maniacal laugh).

Here is one of the bean bag in action helping a mom feel much better than she should just 8 days after she brought a beautiful baby daughter into the world!

We are in a tight race. Who will come first?

Thanksgiving or the baby girl? We are coming down to the wire!

Come on baby girl! Make us proud!

So by the tone of this post you can tell that we still have no baby girl… Sigh.

You would think by the way this last update went we would have had her! I guess we will have to top that week!

Maybe I should make Alison do some sit-ups! Go rock climbing!

Or just run up and down the stairs 40 times like Josh tries to make her do on a daily basis…

We will keep you updated!

So we headed out to a water park Friday with some friends. The park I think was call the Western Trails or Western experience two or something. Or maybe desert exploration oddessy of Spartacus. Okay that’s not the name, I can’t remember it. Also if you haven’t been able to tell yet, this isn’t Alison. Okay so read on for all the juicy goods!

So there were these little ponies you could rock yourself on. These were a big hit with all our kids, only Andrea would pose for me. A side note, we went to a park in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and it was really nice but had only one of these in the entire park. It was like the designers wanted to see toddler death matches on a daily basis!

These windows were dearly loved by our youngest. He played around these, looked through them and played peek-a-boo for a few hours. It was really cool!

Here is another good looking shot of our Josh. He is 3 weeks away from being 18 months. It does seem like he is so much older than this! The hats were the most recent addition to our outdoor adventures and we really do love them. I am not sure if the boys do, but they can’t take them off to easily and the amount of sunburns we have experienced has gone way down!

This is a favorite with the doctors. It keeps up business. It is a a wiggly walkway or whatever you want to call it. It was really fun to see the kids play on it!

Here is one of my children’s favorite things to do. Watch other people. Actually unabashedly stare at them! So I am sorry if you have ever been subjected to the Williams stare!

Here is our new baby girl. Just Kidding. Though if our friends didn’t want her anymore I would take her. She is adorable! Perhaps I am also excited for our little baby girl that will be coming out so soon…

Okay so here is Zach finally. I corned him on the teeter toter. It was kind of cute. How many of you have seen these at parks recently though? I was amazed to see them!

Andrea playing in the water, and seriously loving it! She held my hand, dry clothes and all and pulled me through the water for quite a while for a lot of great fun!

More water fun!

That was awesome. I am really tired, and still totally wet. I love water parks…I think that sums up Andrea’s emotions at the time the camera clicked here!

This park besides having a fun water play area also had walkways low and high that were a blast, especially for our water shy Josh.

Also take note at how great Alison is looking at almost 8 months pregnant!

This little stage coach was a ton of fun for our kids as well. They played in here a lot! This also kind of shows the wade variety of design that they put into the park. It was laid out to be a lot of fun for kids and enjoyable for parents as well. I am impressed by the park for all except the wood chips on the ground. Oh well!

Here is another view of a different area of the park. It was lots of fun and I would need at least 20 pictures to show you all the cool parts of it!

Okay last of all here is one last view of a free standing tower that lets kids climb more than 3o feet in the air, and still be pretty safe overall. Nice place. If only we could get around the 40 minute drive to get there! Blows me away that we could almost drive to Valley of Fire faster than driving out to here. Dang.

For all you people around Vegas that may read this, the park is off of Durango and Blue Diamond, turn towards LA off of Blue Diamond onto Durango and you will see it.

Enjoy!

So lately our kids are enjoying the use of blanket statements.

Like these…

“I’m really sleepy right now.”

“Mom and Dad, I am really frustrated with you.”

There are several others. They are usually quite funny because they have no context and if you respond they don’t know what to say except for repeating it again…

Lately they say “I’m Serious!”

To which I respond “I’m Harry Potter!” They don’t really know what to say, so they will just say “I’m Serious!”

I just respond “Your my Godfather!”

They just give us blank stares as we are on the floor laughing…our poor children. We have so much fun at their expense!

I am not sure if we have posted this before, but it is just hilarious! So here is what we found Zach doing a while back…I will note that it happened after we had fed him!