I have balls

So as Porter approached 6 months of age (and has now passed it) I started to think about my thoughts of being a father for the first time. Sure, I have step father status, but that is different than this in a lot of ways. Porter has been such an awesome addition to our family. As he gets older, I am fascinated at how quickly he is changing, how much he is learning and how big he is getting. I spend more than one moment a week amazed that Porter is here and that we get to be his parents. The whole thing blows my mind.

Porter has really become quite the reaching and grabbing little kid. He rarely sits still. If you are holding him, he almost always will see something that he wants to hold and lean and pry his way in that general area, forgetting the fact that he does not know how to walk to get to the item. His crawling is slowly coming around, but at this point it is more of "lean, get up on my knees and push my face across the floor" kinda crawl. Not real efficient. He also sucks on everything. You really have to watch him, as he is an equal opportunity sucker, and will put your flip flop in his mouth if he can get to it.

Another thing that he has recently discovered that just kills me is he now realizes that there is something in between his legs and it is kind of squishy and he can reach and squeeze it. Every time he is getting changed, he immediately goes for his balls, grabs hold and starts wrenching. It makes me queasy. He seems to love it, while the whole time I am saying "soft hands Porter" (he has no idea what I am saying) in an effort to get him from tearing his nuts off his body!

Anyway, I had not written on this blog in quite sometime, so I thought I would just share a few thoughts of the changes Porter is making. He is a wonderful kid and we are really lucky to have him in our lives. Oh and he wanted me to say GO UTES!!!

Beautifying the Backyard

Our home has such a nice yard...mostly. The side, which is almost always in the shade, has beautiful shade plants and ground coverings. The front yard is really pretty with a nice flower bed in the corner. But the back yard didn't have much going on other than a bunch of junky trees and shrubs along the fence line and a really sad old apricot tree in the middle of the yard.

One of the first things we did last summer was turn a random dirt hill (leftover from a driveway expansion I think) into a small flower bed. This year we edged it with rocks and the plants and grasses have just gone nuts. It is so pretty!

This spring we decided to take out the apricot tree. It only took one season of an overabundance of infested rotten fruit, bugs, dead branches almost falling on our cars, and sticky tree mist on our cars to decide it was time for it to go. The tree was very old and half dead, which made it pretty easy for BCH and a friend to chop it down in about 15 minutes. Then, there was the stump to deal with...

 These are various bones and items found buried near the base of the tree.

 After it was all dug out, then the challenge was to get the stump out of the ground.

 Obviously it required more than the strength of two men...

 So then our other friend, Geoff, showed up with his Jeep and tow rope, and a minute later the stump was out

Friends with equipment and knowledge are good friends to have!

BCH cleaned all the debris away from the back fence and edged this area with random bricks we found around our property. We bought some little bushes, flowers, and bark.

Now the back fence area looks a lot nicer. We have a ways to go with the back yard, including putting sod down where the tree used to be (which we will do this fall) and trying to figure out what to do with our ghetto back patio. If you have ever been over to our house at hung out on the patio with us, we have most likely asked your opinion on what we should do. Hopefully we will have something figured out next spring, and a little bit of cash to be able to do something with it!