Help Cleaning Up Our Property

We were so thrilled to have my cousin Ian and his beautiful family come stay with us over the weekend. Ian owns an excavator and brought it down from his home in Washington in order to help us clear about an acre of brush in our backyard. It was so much fun to see how quickly he could make significant progress! We got to walk parts of our property that we'd never stepped foot on before. He cleared blackberries, really tall shrubbery and saved many of our trees that were getting choked out by ivy. We were so, so appreciative of his help and expertise!

The kids had a lot of fun being together as well. They played a dinosaur game in the backyard along the creek, picnicked with chickens in the front yard, and built Minecraft worlds together on their ipads.

We adults played some games in the evenings, we got to celebrate Ian's birthday with cheesecake and cheese platters with family, and we stayed up late discussing the deep wonders of the world. Oh man, my tank was filled! I love spending time with these guys more than I can express. Josh and Ian were all-stars, working so well together on the land clearing and on some things we needed to wrap up as we partition our two properties, and Kaylene and I had so much fun shopping together, running kids around town, and cooking up a storm. What a memorable time! Thank you Lord for sweet family. xo

Little Foster is one smart cookie and was operating this thing quite impressively for a few moments. :)

Look at these studs!! They remind me of my dad and his brother Tim (Ian's dad). My side of the family has a lot of history with developing property and so many of our old family photos of my dad, uncle and Granddad often looked a bit like this. :) Plaid work shirts and heavy machinery. 

Ian pulled an old fallen, dead tree out of the forest so Josh could cut it into firewood for our fire pit.

The kids made a picnic lunch and took it outside, and the chickens found them. :)

Foster blowing bubbles with the chickens in the backyard one morning...

I watched all of the clean up fun with a camera in hand. :)

If you look at the ground that is not grass, that was all blackberries a couple hours before Ian took care of it!! 

We're looking forward to doing more clean up and allowing non-blackberry foliage to grow in.

Matt & Caleb came over to surprise Ian so we could celebrate his birthday.

I loved hearing all of the voices as we sang happy birthday. It was so much fun. 

Happy birthday Ian! It's always a joy to spend time with you and your precious family!