The most planned plans....

Often don't happen....and that is a bummer!
We had planned for months for this weekend...our friends from college were going to road trip to WI for a long weekend...it would be the first time in 4 years that ALL 10 of us would have been together. We planned almost every detail.....and then sickness struck our friends' home. BUMMER!

So....we were left with a super clean house (not all that bad!) and lots of food (again, not bad!)...but the funny thing about that is that for each meal, our friends were bringing a key ingredient to make the meal "work"! We got quite the laugh when I went to fix a meal and said "Oh yea.....Karen was bringing the taco shells...or chow mein noodles..."!

So what did we do?
Andy took the girls to Lowe's for their kids project time on Saturday morning--and now we have 3, yes 3, table top basketball hoops. Our friends in Iowa also attended their Lowe's for the same project, so had they been here and attended together, our home would have 5 basketball hoops on the dining room table! ☺

Saturday afternoon, the girls played in the gigantic "lake" just past our backyard...they have spent hours in their rain boots, in the water and on the swingset. Current play of choice is "Little House On The Prairie"!

And...Colin helped Andy put together the above pictured bench! (Is it just me, or does Colin's smile at Andy just put a smile on your face? Priceless.)

Colin loves Andy...he loves all of us, but he REALLY loves Andy. Any project Andy is working on, Colin is right there, invading Andy's personal space. Last weekend, Andy was painting and bam, Colin was in the bathroom, right next to him. Yesterday, same thing happened....Colin just pushed his way into Andy's lap and pretty soon was helping screw in screws! It was quite darling.

Now that bench....it was FREE! Amazing. When we closed on our house, our "loan dude" told us that just because Andy worked for KC, we qualified for a free gift. We thought it would be something hokey. Not the case. When we went online to chose our gift, we were faced with so many neat options. We chose the bench because....we now have a front porch and need seating!!! Very neat.

Below: pictures of Colin helping on the bench project and the girls walking in the water...
Here are the girls painting their hoops from Lowe's....they love going to these projects with Andy and then equally love using craft paint to "pretty" them up! Funny story: when we told the girls our friends couldn't come, we said "But, Daddy is going to take you to Lowe's to do a project on Saturday morning instead..." and Ava just cried....."But I don't want to go to LOWE'S, I only want to go to HOME DEPOT!" and then it turned into "I only want to do a GIRLY project...not a basketball hoop!" As you can see, she got over those issues quite fast.

And the finished project:
Happy spring weather, everyone....we're sure you're enjoying it as much as we are!