August 3

Today was an exciting day for us. 

Standing tall in our back yard was a sickly, ugly blue spruce that desperately needed to be taken down. It was in poor shape, and it was in just the right place that a good storm could knock it over onto our power lines or our roof. Unfortunately, tree removal has been low on our budgeted priorities list. Luckily, our neighbor's niece's father-in-law (did you catch that?), who lives in Canada, happens to love cutting down trees. He is in town this week, so he and his son (our friend, Dan) came over this afternoon to remove that sad old tree.

How about that? Expert tree-removal, all the way from Canada? We're pretty fancy!

Caleb napped while the men worked, but Daisy was interested.

At least, she was until they broke out the chain saw. She did well for a while, but then she scooted inside to the safety of the air-conditioned living room. 

She wasn't content to just sit in there, though; she wanted to know what was going on, albeit from a safe distance. She sat in the doorway and watched the guys work their magic.

While his father hacked away with the chain saw, Dan pulled on the tree with a rope to keep it from crashing into the house or power lines.

Mission accomplished! The proud men with their felled tree. 

I can't even begin to describe how much I appreciate their hard work!

Speaking of hard work...

Right after I posted yesterday's blog, Amber sent me a message. She had already gone through all of our pictures. That woman is a machine.

She got some really great pictures; here is a peek at some of my favorites.

 

This one wins the title of "All-Around Favorite". Love it!

My handsome boy. He adores Amber.

My sweet girl. She was in a tree.

This is pretty typical of our family. The kids are silly, and we are happy.

 

I love, love, love this one, too. Daisy randomly decided to give me a big hug.

And then we turned it into a family hug. I know it's cheesy, but we have family hugs quite a bit. We call them "hug sandwiches". Can you see that the kids are even in on the game? Daisy has her arm wrapped around Daddy, and Caleb is holding onto his sister. Love it! 

How about some parallel shots?

Here's us at our wedding:

and ten years later: 

Us at our wedding:

and ten years later:

Pretty cool, huh?

Also, here are a few more shots of our tree: 

Chris almost ignored this bucket of flowers hanging in a tree.

It's little now, but imagine how mighty it will be in fifteen years, on our 25th anniversary!

(Behind us is the gazebo where we were married. What fun!)

Thank you so, so much to Amber for these lovely pictures!