Year: 2018

OMG. Alex is four! And boy does he know it. We’ve been counting down to his birthday since mid-January, that’s not even a lie. Since he is such a regular on the birthday party circuit, he was oh-so-aware that his turn was coming. Luckily he did not have any huge requests so I did what I wanted to do which is invite MY friends over lol. Between us we ended up with 8 boys ages 4-6, from 5:30 – 7:30 pm on Friday, March 16. At our house. Accordingly, I sustained what I’m certain was an alarmingly high blood pressure the entire time.

So let’s talk about Alex’s day! He went to school with his Birthday Boy shirt on and some brownies for his class and came home wearing a crown. Naturally.

Then he got to open some presents with Jen…

He took a nap to recharge and then we set up the party.

You know what is funny? Hysterical, in fact. Somewhere in a deep part of my brain I was like “Oh, I wonder if all the boys will want to do a craft together. Let me just set some markers out so they can sit and color when they get here.”

BAHAHAHAHA! Even I can’t believe I ever thought that. I’m embarrassed to admit it. No, what happened was, the boys all tore around the house, wielding swords, fighting, hitting the balloons, rolling around, pillaging the toybox and it was chaos in its purest form. Each kid cried at least once, the moms refereed between precious sips of wine and if that doesn’t sound like the perfect party I don’t know what does.

and then it was over! People started to get their shoes on and guess what happened. The goodie bags came out and all hell broke loose for the 34th time that evening.

Shoes came off, playtime started again, and the moms were like, welp, guess we should have more wine 😉

Overall it was just what I thought it was going to be (madness) but also the perfect thing for Alex. He had everyone’s attention and was so, so happy. We did family time afterwards,

and by the time I cleaned everything up I felt like this balloon.

Just dead on the floor.

Alex’s pediatrician appointment is next week so I’ll do the nitty gritty stats post after that, but for life as we know it going forward, Alex is…

Sing it with me: WE FINALLY HAVE OUTSIDE STORAGE!! Oh but it is sooo cute too! I have a bunch of before and afters to post in the next week or two, but this one is the newest and quickest.

The gist is, our house does not have a garage. Jason and I have stood in our driveway and in our backyard many times pondering how we could add one and the truth is, with our space configuration, we just can’t. There is no sensible way to do it, even if we had an unlimited budget. As a result, we have been using our screened in porch as a dumping ground for bikes, scooters, yard equipment, the snowblower, etc! Poor screened in porch. Definitely not living its best life.

So then we were like, what about a shed? And not just any shed, those nice ones that match your house with shutters and window boxes? Yes. But then for awhile we couldn’t figure out where to put it. We have a pretty squared off backyard with two distinct corners and they looked like this.

When you walk out our back doors, empty left corner with lone tree, and right corner = swingset. Here’s another view where you can see the swingset canopy in the backyard (to the right of the house).

I’ll save you the suspense. We moved the swingset to the other corner of the yard and put the shed in its place! BOOM! On a random day last August, our neighbors were helping us disassemble the sandbox (don’t get one) and all of a sudden…liiiiiightbulllllllllb! The guys took off the slide and used PVC pipes on a rotating basis to slide the whole swingset across the grass. They just rolled it right over.

Behold! The perfect spot for a shed! But we didn’t order it right then, no we did not. We had to make sure the color was going to be right, that the size fit within our setback guidelines, etc. Plus, if you wait until the winter you get 10% off (which I immediately spent back by adding the cupola option 😉 ).

So for a few months there, the spot stood in wait. Along came yesterday…

YAY! Welcome home shed! (Ignore the remains of our ice rink – it was more like a puddle filled with leaves and pine needles by the end. It came down yesterday after the Reeds Ferry guys left.)

Now we just need landscaping, a weathervane, perhaps some flowers…come on Spring!