construction zone and little ones

this is what my backyard looks like right now. on the far right of the bottom 2 pictures, you can see the cement wall that goes along the stairs down to my house. that wall is being extended, and will be the new view out of our living room windows! yay!!! i'm trying to be positive. for example: it will feel like we're living in some crowded city with but 3 feet between buildings. and there won't be a wicked glare on our TV anymore, which will be nice.

the addition is coming along quicker than i thought, but there's still a lot of work to do.

the whole point is adding on to the back of the house, the bottom level of the new part will be a work room/storage room and the top will just be an extension of my grandparents' great room, so the whole family will fit in there (we've been having family parties in the garage...)

i'm excited to see what it will look like when it's done. it will be interesting.

as for the rest of this week: it's been spent with lots of little ones:

here's some glimpses of wednesday:

finger lickin' apple dippers from mcdonald's

picking movie after movie after movie...

writing letters to Devin (they love him. a lot. and were very upset to find him not at home when they came over)

thursday:

sophia ruth

ben rockin' a pink headband

claire struggles with clothes sometimes, haha

ben!

and THEN the kids made the discovery of photobooth. and the result was hilarious. almost all the kids joined in. Claire, and her friend Sage, mostly. And then Claire's brother Lincoln, and his friend Jonah, and Sophie too: (there are so many, but they're all so funny!)

oh man. those are some cute kids.

friday: after football practice, and matilda, i took the kids to their house (from mine) and we had pizza and watched soul surfer (which was surprisingly really, really good.) devin was pretty tired so he stayed home, but had to run to the store for a wedding present. (he also surprised me buy picking up a cupcake corer (yeah, it's as cool as it sounds) and some ramekins! isn't he the very best? he is.

(love the girls in this picture. so funny! claire loves to be gangster)

I love these kids! It was a crazy week, but so fun!