8 months old

I sure wish she wouldn't grow so fast..

Birthday fun

28 must be a lucky year, because I was fortunate to have my brother and his family meet us at Disneyland for my birthday! Joseph was sweet to take off the entire day so that we could have lots of play time at the park. The highlight for the boys was "Jedi Training". It is the cutest show. They choose about 40 kids from the audience to be trained as Jedi knights.

Darth Vadar interrupts the training to try to convince them to join the dark force. As a side note, James is OBSESSED with Darth Vadar. Though he wasn't chosen to participate, he was definitely into the action as shown in his face:

David gets to fight Darth Mal... Can you guess? The dark side is defeated!

The highlight for Joseph and I was Club 33. I even got my own special dessert!

James enjoyed it the most:

The only thing that Ruthie got to sample were the crackers

My sweet brother and his family:

Here are the boys on the way home... I think they had a good time.

Demolition time!

The moment finally arrived last week when our front wall finally came down. Here's a series of photos that I emailed to Joseph at work. With in 20 minutes, our living room went from this:

To this:

James

Like the hairdo? James got himself ready for church. When I tried to give the handsome boy a kiss, he said, "don't touch my hair, mom!" Can you guess the reason for his meltdown during sacrament meeting? Someone messed up his hair. Fortunately, his sweet nursery leader came over and assured him that his hair looked good. All was well after that.

Progress...

We are starting to see more progress on the big project. The roof is finally in progress, stucco is on it's way, and we might get our front wall knocked down this week!

This is a view of the current family room. The yellow wall to the right will be knocked down so that the room includes...

this new room. You can see the framing for the fireplace, bookshelf, and coat closet. The window is adjacent to the front door.

This is (roughly) the new front door. It still needs stucco and trim.

When it's finished, the boys will have the safest room in the house. This trench will hold the footing for the 3rd "shear wall" in their room. The shear wall keeps the roof from falling and the house from twisting. The wall to the left will be knocked out as well to include more space.

The worst part of remodeling...mess!

Thanks goodness for this...

I'm glad that these guys know what they're doing.

Details

Ever heard of a drop beam?...

or a drag strap?...

It's amazing what you'll find in the details.

Progress...

Here is the update... framing will be finished tomorrow. Roof will go in on Tuesday! We are so eager to see the end of this project. I am sure our subcontractor gets tired of my impatience. Sometimes I sound like the little kid in the backseat who asks every 5 minutes, "Are we there yet?"

Still to come: windows, stucco, drywall...

Randoms

Here is my favorite flower: Jasmine. While we don't have it in our yard, we get to see and smell it over my neighbor's fence. It must be springtime in California, because the Jasmine is in full bloom.

I should mention that James has made some milestones this month. His talking has improved significantly. As a result, the tantrums have become fewer, and he is somewhat more reasonable. I love this shirt on him... perfectly fits his 2 year old personality.

One of the best things about motherhood is watching imagination in motion. James spends lots of time in this type of play. Here he is using leaves to "fight the bad guys".

Speaking of bad guys... for primary, David was spotlighted and asked what his one wish would be. His answer, "to fight in a real battle". Hmmm... must be a boy thing.

Milestones

It is amazing to watch a baby grow, especially when so much can happen in one month:

Sitting up:

Eating solids:

Sleeping better at night:

Blue eyes, just like daddy:

..and that that mohawk of hair is blond! I never pictured myself with a blond hair, blue eyed child, but here she is!

Here's one more... The profile from above is a closeup of this scene. While she was in the womb, Joseph took up the ukulele. I believe that she recognizes the sound, because whenever we pulled out the ukulele, she is totally absorbed.