Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Swing Set Extravaganza

Grace got a swing set for her birthday!! We were so excited about this. Jeff and I, and really the entire family for that matter, did a great job keeping it a secrete. I will say, this swing set was an ordeal to put together, 10 hours, a sunburn, and a few cold beverages later and it was done, but my goodness it wasn't easy, in fact it was a pain in the rear and I'm hoping I never have to do that in my life time again. In between holding boards and getting screws, bolts, lock nuts, drills, hammers and being Jeff's go to gal  I snapped a few pictures. Here is the building of the mighty swing set.

All the plastics, slide, swings, windows, etc....

All the wood after we separated it and got it in groups.

Yup, that's all the hardware, screws, bolts, lock nuts and whatever else they wanted us to use.

Jeff putting the slide together

The club house, sorta put together

Jeff doing the decking of the clubhouse



And FINALLY the pay off!!



Of course Grace gets hurt the first 5 minutes she's on it. :(


So That was the great swing set build, super hard but super fun for our sweet babies!!

Update #2

So, I missed yesterday's post, but here I am bright and early today. :). Jeff took another test this morning!! Got a 91. He only has 4 more and than 4 years of working and test taking will pay off when he gets his journey man license!! Good job baby, I'm so proud of you!!!  So now I'm going to share some more pictures of out outings. I'm noticing I'm not in ANY of these pictures, I should probably do something about that, but in all honestly I won't.  So let me share my girls and hubby.


 Randi and Grace enjoying some park time

 Grace waiting on Randi to get out of school




These pictures are of the girls at the Pratt public libary. They love going here and checking out the books and playing on the computers. 






The kids and their cousins enjoying Mom's hot tub.
 Kaden and Mason staying warm after the hottub


Kalesha is fostering some puppies for the Humane Society and Grace is in heaven. Grace LOVES puppies

 We spent the day at the Great Bend Zoo. It's a great place, the girls love seeing all the animals and Jeff and I have fun too.;)






 



 Well I have EVEN more but it will wait till tomorrow. I have to get off here and make it to Grace's Easter party for preschool!.




























Sunday, April 17, 2011

Long Over Due

     My O my have we been busy. The funny thing about being busy is you always think that you are sooo busy, then something else gets added to your plate and your even busier than you were before. Then, and only then, do you realize you weren't really all that busy. As of right know I think we're busy.

     So, I've been thinking about this blog and why I do it. I'm doing this because I can print it out every year, pictures and all, and have it made into a book. I don't scrapbook so this is PERFECT for me!! This blog will document our lives, it's for my girls and for us when we are old and forget how amazing these times were. I want to know what we were donig and how we were doing it. I want  the girls to have some sort of idea on how they grew up and the things we did. Soooo that's what this is.... a documentary of this Hoffman clan. :)


     I have two more weeks left of this semester and I'm doing great, but it takes up so much of my time. I'm bound and determined to not allow my school work interfere with my girls and their activities. I'm struggling. I want my girls to be able to do everything they want to do. Dance, swimming lessons, t-ball, track, basketball, cheer, science fair projects, special events. I still volunteer to make snacks and work the school carnivals and do extra's for the girls and their activities. Furthermore I want to be there, at all of it. I don't want to miss a single school party (I know most mom's don't get to go to these, but I can, so I don't want to miss them.) I want to be able to "do it all". So far we've been doing it. We do everything extra we can get our hands on and the girls LOVE IT!! I don't want to be one of those mom's who push their kids into stuff, so they always have the final say whether they do it or not, but they thrive being out and being apart of the community and so do I. So we carry on!! It's a struggle for me. I'm always busy and always trying to do more. Really, I just want to make the best of it. I know I'm blessed beyond belief and my life is very good right now. In fact it's perfect. I don't want to someday look back and think.....WOW, I could have done so much more had I only tried.
I just don't want to waste this time. I want to have fun, be active and make my kids happy. I want them to have the kind of childhood that after they are grown they can say Yup, my childhood ROCKED!

Well, enough about all that. :) Here are some pictures of us being us and all the fun stuff we find to do. So much has gone on so I'll do my best to catch ya up!

Wildlife and Parks Museum-The kids had a blast, they love looking at all the animals and stuff there. Randi was in school so these are of Grace, Kalesha, Kaden and Mason.










 At the park afterwards, Grace is so sweet and so much fun to be around.
Randi with her Abraham Lincoln she made at school. She really is such a doll!! I love my Randi Candy
Randi at the Skyline game with her bestie Ashlee
The girls getting ready to go check out Nana Toni's hot tub for the first time. 
 Nana Toni and some of the Grandkids


I have soo many more but I'll do another post tomorrow to catch ya up even more, hopefully then I can update our blog a little more often so I can avoid these catch up posts!!

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Valentine's and Bear's

We recently went to Build-A-Bear again. The girls love this place and I have to admit it's so stinking cute and whoever thought of this has got to be rich! The parents and kids just file in there!  The girls got to choose which animal they wanted, stuff it, pick a heart for their bear, make a wish on the heart, bath them, and dress them. Here are some pictures from Build-A-Bear.






Valentines Day was great!! Randi is so big now and was able to write who her Valentines were for and sign her own name!! I just gave her the class list and she went to town.  Great job Randi, We need to get you a pin pal sister!! Your awesome at writing.
Here Valentines party was blast! They all had fun too! Here they are playing hot valentines heart (kinda like hot potato)

Grace writing her name on all her Valentines, she was done after about 3 but managed to hang in there for the rest of them, It was great practice and she did awesome!! They were even readable! :)

Grace's Valentines party was great too! I love how little kids get soo excited about their parties and the simple gifts they get, suckers, pencil's and balloon's are enough entertainment for an entire day!


Can't forget my sweet Valentines gift! I woke up to this on our fireplace Valentines Morning- Thank you Jeff, your still the sweetest guy around!! So thankful to have you as my Valentine!

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Winter Fun

Out little town is covered in 12" of snow today! Good thing this little family loves snow. We had a blast. We made snow ice cream, which was awesome. I found a great recipe and it tasted just the the home-made kind that Jeff churns. We also went out and went drift jumping, some of those giant drifts were way taller then Randi and Grace. Here's some pictures of my girls enjoying some of the white stuff.
My snow angel's

Sweet Grace

Sweet Randi

Grace drift jumping

Jeff having fun too!