Early Mother's Day present!

So last week I came home to my husband asking me to take a picture of him with his new firefighting gloves on... I thought he was weird, but not too uncommon a request for the Firefighter nerd that he is. So when he brought me my camera bag I opened it to find a brand new camera!!! It was my Mother's Day present a little early, considering I've been trying to work with a broken camera since February. So... what have we been up to? Well, in addition to all of the normal stuff - work, school, chores, church, etc. - I have attended 3 births in the last 3 weeks, Kialaia was sick all last week, I learned that white spots on your throat don't necessarily mean strep throat, and I also learned that just because you're vaccinated for HIB doesn't mean you wont' get it! We also woke up to an inch of snow on the ground one day, and 3 days later it was 70 degrees.

Here is a picture of my BABY at Kindergarten Registration! She didn't want her picture taken at all so I was lucky to get this shot. Kialaia did so well registering for Kindergarten and she is SO excited to go to the big kids school, because (in her words) Preschool is boring!
Enjoying the wonderful weather this weekend, we finally replaced our Apple tree that got knocked down by the neighbor kids last fall. Bradley had fun filling the dirt in around the "Happy little tree", as that red haired painter on PBS would say.
Okay, here is my pathetic excuse for landscaping in my backyard. It actually looked kind of good last summer, but our neighbor's yard slopes into our yard, and they water way too much, so all of our vegetation rotted and died. Sigh. So we decided that we need to build a retaining wall, and do some other stuff to protect our yard.
Here is the start of it. It will probably be a 5 step project, as the money is available (because credit cards are evil!). The blocks are 3 high, and we will back fill it all in with some nice dirt. Then I am going to plant bright flowers on each corner behind the trees, and the whole length of the back fence will be our garden! I am so excited - I'll let you see when the project is finished.
My new camera takes awesome action shots - here is Brad in the middle of a knee flip. No, he didn't land on his neck - thank God - although the picture makes you think so!