Now We Won't Fall Down the Stairs!

The railing is finally installed!  This area has gone through quite the transformation since we first saw it over 5 1/2 years ago.  Here are just the recent photos of this space - the railing really makes it look finished.  Chris did a fantastic job (now I just need to finish caulking and touching up the paint).

Before the riots in Baltimore, I took the kids to the zoo on Monday.  We had a nice day and plan on going back often since we now have a membership.  Here are a few pictures of the visit:

The kids are generally pretty good about playing together.  Here is a picture of them playing with the rice sensory bin.

Finally, Josh is so close to walking but doesn't realize that he can do it yet.  Here's a video of him using his walker and every time he runs into something, he picks up the walker to head the right direction. 

He's fast so I'm sure he'll be running before we know it!

Carpet and Critters

It's been a couple weeks since I wrote - we've been doing a lot! 

The big house news was the carpet installation upstairs.  What a difference some carpet makes in this space.  There were quite a few different tiles on the floor up here so it was nice to have a consistent flooring! 

We still have a few things to finish up here - installing the railing, caulking the bathroom, installing the bathroom fixtures, and painting the stairs.  Of course now the weather is warming so we're spending more time playing and working outside instead.  Maybe a rainy day will force us to finish so we can post some real before/after pictures.

I took the kids down to DC last week with some friends to look at the cherry blossoms.  We had a good time with a picnic and even stopped by the Air and Space Museum too.  It was great!

One thing that comes with warm weather is critters (and bugs and snakes) coming out.  Unfortunately, a baby rat snake found it's way into our basement.  I was able to take care of it (and in the process probably made Chris happy I'm not squeamish). 

We also had a lot of ants show up on our porch and patio - at least they're staying outside for now!

One other fun thing we did was to travel up to Penn State for the Blue-White game over the weekend.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures of the day but the kids had fun (particularly the Creamery ice cream!). 

Hopefully we'll have a lot more to show next week!

Josh's First Birthday and Happy Easter!

We had quite a day of celebrating on Sunday.  It was not only Easter but also Josh's first birthday.  We traveled to Ohio to spend the weekend with Chris' family. 

The kids had a lot of fun being with cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.  Not to mention the Easter baskets and egg hunt!

 

Josh had his first taste of cake.  Initially, he wasn't so happy about it but it grew on him.

 

During our trip, we visited the zoo at Oglebay for an Easter treasure hunt.  Samantha had a great time!  Of course the only good picture of her we got was with the goats.

One other thing Samantha enjoyed was playing with toys that Chris played with as a boy.  Here she has lined up all the dinosaurs on a "sidewalk" she built.  

 
A couple things at the house this week included getting (and spreading some) mulch...

...and removing this lovely railing upstairs.

Finally, our church hosted an egg hunt this morning and the kids actually went for a photo with the Easter bunny.