Here we go!

An eventful weekend, all in all. Art and Sara joined us again this weekend as we had planned on demolishing the back half of the house this past Saturday. Unfortunately, the guy who is bringing the big Trac-hoe(sp?) told us his machine is still in another town a few hours away and finishing up a job, so it wasn't available this weekend. That bummed me out. But we still managed to get a few things done. More on that later. Below, Sara joins Drew and Luci in a dress-up tea-party, babies and all.

Art stands idly by as Dean screws the deck down on his "new" trailer. Hee hee! Actually, Art drilled all the holes and had already finished.

At about noon on Saturday, I packed all three girls into the car and headed over to a baby shower for Julie's step-daughter, Brittany. I didn't take many pictures, and the ones I did get weren't great, so I won't post any here. At two, we had to leave the shower and head over to a birthday party for my niece, Sonja. Below, she looks absolutely surprised at her cake!

Later, Uncle Dan broke out the bouncy house and the kids had some fun!

I warned Dan that I was posting this picture! Here, he shows us his best impression of the knights who say, "Nit!"

Dan drives the kids around the yard.

Max having some fun.

Sonja was gracious enough to let Drew drive her birthday present, a Gator.

Ok, after the party, back at the house, we got to work. Here are some "BEFORE" shots of my lovely kitchen. I especially enjoy the chipped and broken floor tiles!

And of course, one of my favorite parts of the whole kitchen...the sink. Take note of the shims under one side of the sink cabinet, and the half-peeled Contact paper on the front. Also noteworthy is the huge gaping hole in the uper right hand corner of the wall and the superb "country kitchen" wallpaper that only goes half-way up the wall.

Here's a "BEFORE" shot of the back porch. It was completely enclosed with glass panels. Check out the funky disco tiles on the ceiling!

After the boys removed one of the panels, Art decided to do a little jig! Boys like destroying things!

We have a bee's nest underneath the porch somewhere and the more things the boys did, the madder the bees got, so they decided to do something about them. Art is double-fisting the bee spray!

Dean gets out the big guns to lift some sidewalk stones to get closer to the nest.

Apparently "the guns" weren't big enough, so Art hops on the back to give it more leverage.

Still looking...Dean breaks out a chainsaw.

He didn't find a bees nest, but I got my first glimpse of the old well that is under the back porch! I knew it was there, I just had never seen it. The water is about 15 feet or so down, but apparently it is around 45 feet deep! Dean made sure to cover it back up until we're ready to finish the demolition. Wouldn't want to have a dog or kid fall down there!

We banished the kids to the house since we were playing with the bees. Here, Drew peeks out from inside.

And now for something completely different...Monty must have chased this little guy up the tree and the squirrel turned right around and chattered angrily at Monty for a good 10 minutes!

So that was the extent of our weekend. Dean will be working tomorrow (Monday) but he plans on trying to take the rest of the week off to do some more house stuff. It's finally moving and I'm really excited! I'll keep you posted on the progress!