The best Father's Day gift ever!

On Father's Day, the girls gave him a book...here it is below page by page. It's called, The World's Best Daddy...because that's what he is! To get a closer look at each page, just click on the image and it will enlarge on your screen, then hit the back button to get back to the blog. It brought a little tear to his eye! Hope you enjoy it as much as he did!

Happy Father's Day...

to the very best Daddy (and husband!) in the world! We love you! I'll follow up with another post after we've done the gift giving!

This, that and the other...

Last weekend, we headed to Jellystone campground to have a little fun. The water was warm...NOT! But the girls loved it anyway! Here, they get a tow from Daddy.

Luci was too cold to want to stay in the water, but the other two posed for a cool photo-op! Incidentally, I was working a wedding this day, so the photographer was Dean for this shot!

Working on their tans!

Luci's class held a Father's Day celebration at school. Here she is making her gift for her special Daddy!

Back to camping at Jellystone (2 differnt cameras means the photos got mixed up and I don't feel like rearranging at the moment!)

She goes nowhere without her doll!

Three of the prettiest girls you'll ever see!

The site next to us had this happy girl! What I origianally thought was a summer haircut turned out to be the short-haired version of a St. Bernard. Her name is Matilda.

Happy Graduation to Luci! She is now an official Kindergartener!

Receiving her "diploma" from her teacher, Mrs. S. (aka Sue whom we camp with!)

Both grandmother's attended!

Just after singing a song, not doing much, just being her usual cute self!

I apologize for the angle of this video. I have to learn not to turn my camera on it's side for video shots. It was cute though, so I included it anyway. This is the pool at Jellystone campground.

All play and no work!!

A couple of weeks ago, this little guy was caught meandering through our yard. Luckily, none of the dogs were out and it showed little interest in the kids who were playing outside at the time.

Here is the MOSTLY completed Kid's Castle as it is now being dubbed. We still have to add some grab bars here and there and we have to dig a couple of fence post holes to secure the bottom of the cargo net ladder into the ground. There is also still a clamp attached to the right upright support. We have to remove an ill-placed lag screw, but it has been rounded and Dean just hasn't gotten to it yet, so the clamp stays until he does. Another minor little cosmetic thing to do: cut off the 4 main 4x4 posts to the same height and add bright red ball finials on the tops of them. I also plan on adding 2 short flag poles on either side of the peak of the canopy and on either side of the Crow's Nest. This is the main project and we've got lots of plans to add to it, but everyone is pretty sick of working on it at this point, so when those additions happen is anybody's guess! But it's plenty big enough as far as the girls are concerned! The main tower deck is 5'6" up and the upper deck is approx 9' to 9 1/2' up. If I had to guess, I'd say it is 14 or 15 feet tall to the top of the canopy! My father bought all of the materials and we used a few reclaimed pieces that we had saved and we all worked together to get it to this point. All in all, we're very satisfied with the final outcome and the girls love it!

Oh yeah, we need to cut off the excess chain at the top of the swings!

Luci's UPK class along with a UPK class at another local school got together at a big playground here in town this morning. Here's Luci and her cousin Sonja.

Luci shows off for Meema.

We're off camping again this weekend. I have to shoot a wedding in Syracuse, so we're taking the camper to Jellystone Campground to have some fun! Until next time...!

Another episode of "Life is Good!"

After our last camping trip, we came home to the makings of a jungle gym in our side yard that my father had built! He had been talking about doing it for some time and when we arrived home we were pleasantly surprised! He had built a tower and a swing arm to hold a couple of swings. Dean helped him get it level and readjusted a few things and we've been hammering away at it since! I sewed a canvas canopy for it and it fits wonderfully. It now has a slide, a 4x8 rock climbing wall, a ladder, an 8x8 foot sandbox, a ramp, a cargo net ladder, two wooden swings and a really cool skateboard swing. There is also a sky bridge in progress that leads to a crow's nest. This past Friday, this is where we left off on the girls' jungle gym. The climbing wall rocks finally arrived and were installed. Here's Luci testing them out!


Drew tries the skateboard swing.

Then we went on our second camping trip of the year. This park is rather hilly and the Plasma cars we brought were a hit by young and old alike as speed racers! I got a video of Drew and Luci racing down the hill, but I turned my camera sideways and can't rotate the video, so I give you Alex (a kid from another site) and Nick (Jim's sister Nicole's 3rd kid) instead! (Nick is on his skateboard.)

It was another great weekend, as usual! This trip, we camped with Luci's UPK teacher, Sue and her kids, Jim and Julie, of course, Nicki and her kids, Sue and Randy C., Theresa C., Shan and Charlie W., and Shan's brother and his wife. My brother Thadd even came up on Saturday to spend the night with us! It was a party and a half! At one point, it was past midnight and we were hanging at Randy and Sue's site laughing hysterically at Sue S. I was concerned about being too loud and wondered whether someone would turn us in, but the park was sparsely populated and the families who were within earshot weren't complaining! My sides still hurt from the laughter!! We need to do that again!! Below, Hannah hangs from the monkey bars at the beach playground.

Luci learned that not only can she lean out and grab ahold of the fireman's pole, but she can also shimmy even higher on it to make the slide down more thrilling! Hopefully we'll have one of these installed on the jungle gym before long!

In order to put a set of monkey bars on their jungle gym, we'll need to add another tower as we're running out of room on the main tower for different accessories.

Drew's 2 inch fish, a little sunfish!

The girls have some strange fascination with glasses (they don't know how lucky they are that they don't need them!! Next year, I'm getting Lasik surgery!! :-D) Here's Luci with the frames from an old pair of mine. She actually looks really cute in them!

And here is what we came home to from our camping trip. Before we left on Friday, Dean and my dad had built the frame for the Crow's Nest and attached it in place. Papa had installed railings and balusters around the tower. There are tons of things being PLANNED for this project, so I can't really say it's almost done because as soon as we finish one thing, we'll want to add another I'm sure. But in the meantime, as soon as we trim the deck boards on the sky bridge and add railings and balusters, we'll be done with the main project. There are several accessories I'd like to add to it...a fireman's pole, a bucket and pulley, another swing arm to add their trapeze bar and a set of rings, a telescope, etc. I'll keep you posted on its progress!