Father's Day, road trips, friends visit, last day of school, and trips to the dentist!

Here Shawn models his sticker. If you can't make it out is reads, "Best Dad on Land or Sea - Aye, Aye!"

We've been pretty busy these last couple of weeks. Conner is now officially a first grader and Grady is minus one front tooth. Long story short, he bumped his tooth a couple of times and the dentist said it had to come out so it didn't hurt the adult tooth.

Shawn's friend Joe visited a few weeks ago before he moves out to Seattle to join the faculty of the University of Washington. It was a rainy afternoon so the guys got out the big paper and drew castles and dragons. We'll miss having Joe down in North Carolina but Seattle will be a great place to visit!

We got a chance to get back to PA to see Shawn's grandparents for the weekend a couple of weeks ago. Grady and Conner spent all weekend with Grammy and Pappy going to McDonalds, playing, and fishing. We don't get back as often as we'd like so the boys tend to monopolize their time when we are in town.

Our neighborhood has a fishing derby in the spring. This year it was rainy, go figure, but we fished anyway. Conner caught an 8 inch fish - no clue what type - and the boat that was next to us hooked a huge snapping turtle. All in all, it was a great 10 minutes on the pond. When Grady had had enough he proclaimed, "I don't want to be on the new boat anymore, I want to go home." He was soaked to the bones and that dude does not like to be cold.

So that has been our life these last three weeks. We've been working like dogs on all of the landscaped areas around the house and have just about tamed the beast. Our neighbor, bless his heart, has hauled 2 trailer loads of yard debris to the dump and we have another load ready to go. (Another friend of ours helped Shawn take 2 truck loads away earlier this spring.) The 6 yards of bark mulch I had delivered is now gone and I think we'll need another 6 once all of the prep work is completed. Despite all of this work, we are loving the new house and it is looking great.