Construction 2009 - The Preparation

Well, we had about a year off from construction projects on the house and we were feeling a little bit of withdrawal, so we decided to do some more. In preparation for the project we had to take out the three big trees left in the upper yard. Two of them we took out ourselves, but the one that was hanging over the house we had to have removed. Then we had someone come and chip the stumps. The boys loved playing in the holes left after the chipping was done. This picture was funny because Grant looked like a groundhog sticking his head out of his hole.
Jacob's saying 'cheese' in this picture. You can see a little bit of what's left of the root of the tree in between the boys.They each had a tool that they took out of Jared's chainsaw case (I think they were sharpening tools) and were digging in the hole.
They were concentrating very hard on digging with their tools. So serious!

A little mischievious episode - one evening in April when Jared was working in the garage and I was visiting with one of our neighbors that stopped by, the boys found some trouble to get into. Jared was working on one of his bikes and gave Grant a bottle of talcum powder to hold for him. He made sure it was closed before he gave it to him. But.....well, you can guess that he was able to get the lid open from the piles of white all around the back yard.

Jared discovered them first and saw that Grant was just shaking that bottle all over himself and Jacob and the yard in gleeful delight. It was too funny to get mad at them. Neither of us could manage it. I was laughing when I took this picture, which is why it's fuzzy, but it was too cute.
Here are the little culprits before we took them inside for a bath. See how hard Jared's trying to be straight-faced?