Oh What A Weekend!

We had a great visit with Aunt Kiki, Uncle Nail Bag, and cousins, A and M! They arrived Thursday evening with Tater in tow - straight from her extended visit with Mimi and Papa. We enjoyed some great cousin-time, rowdy game playing, productive yard sales, exploring the nature of the area, and - of course - deck building! Uncle Nail Bag is a very talented builder and willingly helped Daddy build a large deck in our backyard. Amazingly, they were finished in a day and a half - and that was with lots of help from the little ones! This entry is dedicated mainly to the deck process but there will be many more posts of the fun-filled weekend

to follow!

"The cousins out with the Mommies at the zoo"

We may have thought about leaving them there at certain moments - we definitely spent the weekend with a bunch of wild animals!

This is what we saw when we came home from the morning at the zoo. There was probably a bit too much analyzing going on! We were quick to demand - "Build a deck, already!"

Moving some dirt to make room for the under-decking.

The under-deck is almost finished (at about 4pm Friday!)

Here comes the decking! We decided on a decorative border which provided some tricky math and made the task a bit more complicated - Uncle Nail Bag handled it well!

It was all hands on "deck" to finish the first half of the decking (at about 7:oo pm Friday)! Bruiser loved all the manly stuff that happened this weekend!

Was it all fun and games for the grown-ups too?

Almost finished!

We still need to lightly sand it and stain it - but WE LOVE OUR DECK! I know it looks a bit crowded in this picture but there is a bit of extra furniture in preparation for G-Baby's baptism next weekend. (Oh, the blog entries I have planned!) It is hard to see in this picture but there is a very distinctive trim all around the edge and running through the middle that we plan to stain a darker color than the regular planks. We can't wait to finish it and enjoy a nice long summer in our back yard!

Thank you, thank you, thank you , Uncle Nail Bag!

This never would have happened without you, so thank you for all the hard work and for working away your long weekend!

We love it!