Hester Happenings

  As I've told you all before--my father-in-law is a master of power tools! So he came up this past weekend to help Jeff and me with our yard. One job we wanted to get done was knocking down some trees and limbs. He brought this very cool weed eater attachment that turned it into a mini-chainsaw. After cutting down limbs and tree stumps we had to trim the branches so we could trash them. As you can see...we cut down a LOT! We got rid of a total of 3 trees and several tree limbs.  Thankfully my father-in-law let us use his truck so we could take all of these limbs to the dump. Here's a before and after-picture of our back yard. It looks so much bigger than I ever thought it could! Eventually some more trees will be gone...we got some tree cutting people to come out and give us an estimate. So that rose bush will be moved and the tree behind it will be cut down eventually. Then the pine in the very back (that is dead) will be going bye-by...

We finally planted some flowers in our dirt pit! Here is a before picture to re-jog your memory: Here is the after: We first went to a garden store completely lost. A wonderful lady helped us plan what flowers would look good around our dirt pit. Once it warmed up we were able to buy and plant all the flowers we picked out. Because it was a nice day when we planted...the bunny joined us: Here is an in-progress picture:  The bag on our sidewalk is very  important for North Carolina. When we dug holes to plant our flowers we got a ton of clay. Most plants don't thrive in clay so we got some soil conditioner. Basically you dig a hole, mix the soil conditioner with the clay, plant the flower. Then you mix the soil conditioner with the dirt and put around the rest of the hole and plant roots. So far this has really worked because all of our flowers are doing really well! Here is a picture of one of the flowers that is currently in bloom: Cheddar ...

Last Spring Jeff and I spent several hours weeding our back yard because the weeds had gotten so out of control! We said that we were going to stay on top of spraying the weeds so we would never have to do that again. Did we spray all winter...NO. So here we are again...weeding the back yard YET again! I started over track-out. I unfortunately didn't take any true before pictures...but you can use your imagination! The first two pictures are what I got accomplished before using all 10 bags that we had. So I went to Home Depot and picked up another 30 bags....just to be safe. This is what Jeff and I accomplished another day. Now, I know what you're saying to yourself...."Why is it taking SO long?" Let me answer that for you. In the fall we plan on seeding back there to extend the actual lawn area. So while we are weeding we are also picking up YEARS of pine straw, branches, dirt, etc. This is also why it is taking a TON of bags to get this task comp...

This past weekend Jeff and I went to his parents house to hang out. My father in law also said that he got me a rocking chair and we could fix it up when I came. Little did I know that I'd get to use power tools!!! Here is what the bench started as: It had really old wood that was in bad shape. So the first thing we did was to sand it REALLY well.  The next step had to do with the bench arms. They were worse than the rest of the bench, so we made new planks for it. This is where the power tools came in. My father in law taught me how to use a table saw and a jig saw. I didn't get any pictures of this, well...because I was having too much fun cutting wood! Here's the before: And the after: Next, we spray painted the metal bars. So far it looks a LOT better than when it started! The funniest part about this bench is that my father in law ended up cutting new planks for the whole bench...so all that sanding for nothing! It will look much ...

Easter Sunday was spent with my family. We first had to take our yearly Easter pictures with everyone dolled-up.   They couldn't all be pretty pictures... Then we had our yearly full-contact Easter Egg Hunt. We had to hide in my mom's room and wait for the bunny to come... Then the hunt began! I won this year! Last year Jeff won and Anna won the year before. As you can see Lauren isn't too happy about this... :) We ended our Easter festivities with an Easter dinner of ham, cheesy green beans, scalloped potatoes, and 'homemade' rolls. Because Katie couldn't join us for the day we Facetimed her! The biggest reason for this celebration is the gift of eternal life that our savior gave to us. Thank you Jesus!

We started off our Easter weekend with a celebration at our church. We invited our adorably cute nephews to join us! We played basketball, jumped in bouncy houses, got faces painted, ate cotton candy, and so much more! Next a very funny moose presented the gospel to us. He told us why Jesus died on the cross for us. After this presentation we went egg hunting. I think this is one of the cutest pictures of the day! After all of this excitement Jeff and I were both tired! This was a great way to start the celebration of our savior's resurrection!