A yard of their own

My children have sadly only known life in an apartment. They've never had their own backyard to play in. And while we've had some good times at some of those places, there is nothing like your own yard to play in. Our new place has a decent sized back yard that was 3/4 of the way fenced. We took part of our tax return and bought fencing to finish it off and then added to the kids' birthday money to buy a swing set. I found a baby swing at a used kids store and we're all set.
Dave assembling the new swing set. Notice Greg already hopped the swings, he was just too excited to wait. My sweet husband has spent many a day off working in the yard getting it ready for the kids to play.

This is Greg's "helmet". Whenever he goes out to play in the backyard he puts this kachow hat and matching mittens on and calls it his helmet. (he has a real one for the bike) He's such a goof. Of course it is still unseasonably cold here so he probably legitamately needs it. we'll see if he still wears it in July.

The kids giving the new swing set a try. McKenzie was just so excited to have swings in her backyard. The kids love it. And I love having a place for them to play.

Their other favorite new toy. The box the swing set came in. There were two of them. One was a "car" and the other their "house." They played in them for a good week before the rain wrecked them. I was not dragging seven foot long boxes in each time it rained. Sorry kids.

Everytime McKenzie runs out to the swings to play, my heart swells a little. Its a little sad that the kid was 8 before she knew what it was like to have a yard of her own. Hopefully in a few years we will move to a house that really is our own. But in the meantime I am just extremely grateful to Heavenly Father that we have been blessed with this place. I know it sounds a little lame, but to us having a garage, basement, and a yard after all the years in tiny apartments is huge. I finally feel like we can breathe. And for Hailey to be able to go out and jump and run whenever she wants has made the biggest difference. I no longer feel like I'm yelling at her all day because she is driving me nuts. You know I don't cry, but sometimes watching the kids play in the big mud hole in the back makes me tear up a little. That's pretty big.

As I promised the girls here's our matching bags from our girls night. After some awesome Thai we went bra shopping at Kohl's (good times) and found these matching bags for a steal. well they were cute, and there just happened to be 3 so we just had to have them. And they hold a lot! I was so lucky Da sent Nik out for Kenzie's baptism. It was fun to have the girls back together (minus a few).