Sewer hookup and James turns 3!!

Spring is finally here and Summer seems to be right at the door as well.  We are really enjoying getting out and about with the recent warming trend and nice weather.  I seems that every portion of the country you have to get used to the local weather personalities.  Here is Spokane they have been saying partly sunny with a 20% chance of rain for about two weeks now and we have not gotten anything.  Kind of depressing when you look at the 10 day outlook and there are clouds with some rain.  It almost always ends up being awesome weather.  If these same forecasters were over on the Seattle side of the mountains I think they may get shot because the weather we have been having is about as good as it gets over there and is plenty sunny for my taste.

It took a lot for me to get James into this helmet.  One year ago he did not even like to see me with the helmet on, but here he is on a rare day wearing in and laughing his head off.

With the spring and sun comes thee ever hated dandelions...and if you are me they move into your yard and bring their 30 million half step brothers to set up shop and call your grass their home.  James helps to pick them, or about 5 of them anyway.

We have yet to give Matthew a haircut and his curls are truly adorable.  Who would have thought a toothy smile could be so precious.

It is a great day when you can sit next to the sandbox and not have to actively play with your kid but can sit back and enjoy the imagination of a child.  He loaded his little matchbox truck with sand and drove it to the other side of the box and them dumped it and drove it back again.  I could only guess at what he was thinking and building.

This is a dangerous site for any parent.  A kid with a near empty bowl means he is still hungry, so what to do?  If you live in my house you take your child out of the high chair, shake them over the tray to ensure all the food stuck to their clothes and hair falls off back onto the tray, and put them pack in the highchair.  They now have seconds and usually plenty of food.

Hanging out on the front swing having a great time.

This year I got back from being out of town for a week just in time for Bloomsday.  We were in the stroller division which has a time limit for how fast they allow you to go.  You hear it right, if you go faster that 1hr and 40min over the 7 mile course you get disqualified.  Now that is a race I can agree with.  We took our time and had fun and ended up taking about 2hrs and 20minutes or something.

After the Race we went downtown and fed some ducks....well..we fed the ducks, and Matthew fed himself.  It must have been so hard sitting for the last 3 hours for poor little Matthew, he must have worked up an appetite.

Spring blossoms on the Asian pear tree.

 

Then came the day I was dreading.  I was scheduled to be out of town for a lot of time (which has since proven to not be the case), but I only had one week at home and a lot of stuff to do.  I have to connect to the dreaded Spokane sewer system because some money hungry politicians decided to build a huge sewer treatment plant and then after the fact found out they did not have enough people to pay for the bill.  Once they figured this out, they then decided to require rural people to first --pay for the sewer to get brought to there house (cha ching $7000), then--pay someone to connect them to the sewer system (cha ching usually about $3200 on the lowest end), and finally- pay a monthly sewer fee for the rest of eternity(cha ching $750/year).  Funny how they have to do relatively nothing except make decisions on how to make me spend my money.  My septic was working great and some desk jockey decided they needed more money and I needed to give it to them....awesome.

 

Being the cheapskate I was I had a couple of contractors out to bid on the connection from my house to the street.  Knowing what it would take to install the line and then looking at the bids I had the option to take it in the shorts, or do it myself.  I ended up deciding to do it myself and saved about $1700.00.  I ended up hiring a friend who just so happen to be in town and without gainful employment so it was nice to have a hand doing the work.

We only tapped the house twice and that was during backfilling.  We hit no irrigation lines and had the connection done it about 6hrs.

Backfilling the trench and grading the area to look up to my specs took about 8hrs or so.

James and Matthew each got a chance to run the big digger.  James' birthday is around the same time as a couple other friends so Brenda invited a bunch of people over last Wednesday and had a impromptu digger themed birthday party.  We were also supposed to be out of town for his birthday so we had to have a party sometime, and had a digger in the front yard, so why not.

Mudpie cake and digger...I was even jealous of James.

James, Noelle, and Liya had a great time.

Our friends Jim and Jan have been out of town for the last three weeks visiting the great parks and sites of southern Utah so when they got back we had them over.  They brought James some exciting presents...500 stickers among other things.  Apparently Jan also likes stickers.

Today is James's official birthday and he is now three.  We took the evening and headed out to Manito Park to have a picnic and see the Lilacs in bloom.  What kid does not want to do that on his birthday.

Matthew is such a cutie.

I try and remind James that life goes by so fast and he needs to stop and smell the flowers as he grows up.  Looking at this picture I need to remind myself of the same thing and that these two young boys are going to be growing into young men faster than I think they will.  James has been so fun to teach, learn from, and raise over the past 3 years that Brenda and I both count ourselves among the most blessed people in the world to be given the honor of raising them.  James, Mom and I both love you very much and pray that you grown to be a man who seeks God and is a witness for God in this world.  We know you are going to accomplish great things and cannot wait to see what He has in store for your precious life.