Valentine's Visit

The Griffin grandparents came to visit us last weekend. I made my first real pie on Friday night, and the homemade crust was totally worth it. On Saturday, Papa Wes made omelettes as usual. It was a cold day so we couldn't do as much as we normally do...walks and such. Matt & Wes did replace our kitchen sink faucet though. That night, we went on a date (yay!) while Papa Wes & GG took the kids out.


The pie

The Valentine's day treat spread from GG

Emma all dressed up to go to a Valentine's party.

"Shadows of the Home Place"

Some time last fall, Matt & I decided to buy each other our first real painting for Christmas. We wanted to start a collection of beautiful things to pass on to our kids some day. After researching new artsists online, we found Iris Scott's fingerpaintings. We looked through many of her finished pieces and had several in mind as candidates for purchase. But she had others that she had already sold that we loved even more. So Matt contacted her...one thing led to another...and we ended up commissioning an original painting. We told her which of her works were our favorites (we knew we wanted something with trees and shadows) and sent a photo as a starting point. From there, she sent digital sketches so we could flesh out what we wanted. We gave her some general ideas about the "feel" of the piece, and Iris took it from there. Now it is finally finished, framed, and hanging in our dining room. The name of the painting is "Shadows of the Home Place". We are so proud of our new addition!


The original photo

up close look at the painting

finally hanging up

The Treehouse

The kids have been begging for a treehouse for months and months. Finally, while I was out of town last weekend, Matt started working on it. I figured he'd buy the lumber and getting started cutting it. Imagine my surprise when he texted me a photo of a half-finished treehouse just hours after he began. After a second day of work, it was finished. The kids are enthralled, and now spend much of their time spying on the neighbors.




That's HOT

Look how high it is...yikes!

happy babies