Hope Chests

Awhile back before we had kids, so really years ago Doug Decided that he would like to make a gift for all of his nieces he has this dream of making furniture for a living, even though HE LOVES what he does, if he was going to do something else it would be make furniture. So we decided that he would make each of our nieces a Cedar or Hope chest for their 16th birthday, Our oldest niece received hers and then we had a little gap before our next niece turned 16, but it was during a build year for us, so her cedar chest didn't get done until this year along with another nieces cedar chest.  If he succeeds and makes a cedar chest for all of our nieces and daughters he will make at least 15  ceder chests maybe more should more nieces come?  Anyways he did a lovely job on these two, they turned out beautiful just like each of the nieces they went to. Both are made of Cherry and lined with aromatic cedar. The top one went to Bryn and has a more simple clean design, much like her, the bottom went to Aubrey it has a bit of Asian feel to it as she loves the culture and tile in lays with arches Doug stained this one the other is natural. Both turned out so nice. He does such a nice job, not that I want him to change professions, but at least I know he is talented enough to make it should he ever come to that decision.

 The girls with their cedar chests So cute, both of them we love and adore them both for the wonderful girls they are and all that they add to our family. We feel so blessed to have gotten to know each of them a little better as they have visited us. We hope our girls turn out as well as these ones have.

Randoms

 Before we left for our last major vacation for the year, we found these in our garden! I was very excited we at least grew radishes, I planted radishes for Doug, since he likes them, the kids both tried them but didn't really love them so he ate a lot of radishes in a short amount of time, our spinach is also on and doing great, while we were gone our garden took off and everything but my peppers looks like we might actually get produce from! This is our first BIG garden so we did some experiments to see what will and won't grow here as well as what is strong enough to grow through my lack of green thumb. The story behind the radishes make me laugh though, I was out pulling weeds, our garden is planted in peaks, with valley's as walk ways, however right after we planted we had rain and a lot of it, 6 days of it, on one of those days we got more then 4 inches so lots of rain, which washed out and redistributed my seeds, so they are kind of all over the place particularly my pumpkins, the radish's were in the valley I thought they were weeds until I discovered the radish itself, should be an adventure....

 These are the boxes I sent out to our three winners, PINK, PINK, PINK Addy was talking to the baby this morning and said I think she just told me she loves pink too Mom, Yes I am sure that is what the baby was thinking addy, she is so cute and loves the baby so much already. I had my 24 week appointment yesterday, all is well baby is doing great, she kicked the Dr square on and let her presence known, I have to do another Blood sugar test which was a bummer to hear, but better safe then sorry, since I am insulin resistant I always fail the one hour, and have to do the three hour, knowing this though my Dr. is going for a 2 hour test which should be much better and hopefully won't make me as sick.

 We had a friend day before we left on vacation, it never fails that we get on vacation and the kids start noting that they miss their friends, they do have some good friends that are just adorable, but I thought I would head it off with having play dates with some of their closest friends before we left, it worked out they could all come over on the same day so 2 came over in the morning, then two mid day after naps and the other two for dinner and activities, it was a great day we had the water up all day and the kids just played, played played, that night they SLEPT! It was really relaxing and fun. we had two pools and a sprinkler set up making their own little water park, we also set up the bubble blowers so there were bubbles all over, lots of entertainment.