Nilsson News

It was so very fun to spend the 4th with the Joe Belliston's, grandpa and the Hart's!  We missed grandma who was anticipated a few births.  We began the morning with a delicious pancake breakfast provided by Elise and from there we went to the parade.  The weather was perfect and we didn't get fried too bad.  There were about 120 floats.  It was fun but I am still looking for the stunt skidsteer driver.  I think it would be a big hit up here but nobody has caught on to that one.  We may have to visit Snowflake again if things don't change in that category.
We enjoyed having everyone come visit our place for a bit.  You can guarantee that something will look different than the last time you came because things are changing on almost a daily basis.  In fact, things already have changed since Wednesday when everyone was here. 
Our neighbor who owns a lot of very useful equipment came over to to drop off a little tractor for us to use.  We mentioned some stumps we had and he said he would run back home and grab his back hoe and have them out in no time.  I wasn't planning on this at all and had given our lawn a good soaking the day before.  Not a good thing.  Our yard is now in shambles and the terrain has completely changed due to the fact that the back hoe was sinking into our lawn.  When he tried to dig out the stumps, he slid all over trying to get some traction.  Oh well.  The price that must be paid to do things that must be done!  One stump in particular was a beast to get out because of its ginormous size.  Our friend said it was probably the hardest one he has ever worked on (and he has been doing this for years).  It kept pulling the backhoe off its tires.  He said it weighed about 2,000 pounds!!!  And weren't we silly to think that we were going to hack it out with an axe and chain saw.

 This stump is about four feet across and took him about thirty minutes to dig out.  Oh my poor lawn!

 Henry loved watching this big tractor tear things out of the ground.

Now we have three huge stumps on the ground in our front yard that we can't budge and have no idea what to do with but at least they are not in the middle of our lawn!  Yay!

I got distracted with projects before I finished the 4th of July!  We of course ended the day with the incredible firework show.  If you have never seen the fireworks up here, you haven't seen fireworks!  There is always the invitation to come up here and see them and visit us!  Last year after the fireworks, we got stuck in traffic for a long time, so this year we thought of a better escape route - so did everyone else.  It still took us an hour to get home.  So fun!
Other pictures:

 This is the cute little rabbit that decided to live in our junk heap on the side of our house.  The kids named him Rascal and he was so cute.  Sadly, he had to find a new home because we finally got rid of our junk heap!

The kids helped me paint the chicken coop.  What an adventure!  It's a good thing I planned to give Henry a haircut because that is the only way I could get the paint out of his hair.
Life continues to press on.  The summer is going by way too quickly but we are enjoying it.  Have a terrific week!