T and Finn visit the doctor. And, my manly man husband builds a deck.

I took Teresa and Finn to the doctor last week for their 5 year and 9 months check ups, respectively. They did great, and were quite relieved that neither of them needed shots this time. Teresa was so funny and was just very solemn and serious the whole time. She failed her hearing test the first time through, because I was chasing down Finn while she put the headphones on herself, and she didn't bother moving her hair out of the way. Once we got her hair properly out of the way of the headphones she did great. She was 46 1/2 inches, so just shy of four feet tall. 

This girlie loves to read. She's started reading on her own quite a bit, she's getting very good at it. Still needs help with a word here and there but can do it herself for the most part. One night the girls were being a bit too loud after they were supposed to be in bed, so I went upstairs to tell them to quiet down, but when I opened the door I saw that they were snuggled together and T was (very boisterously) reading Nora a book, so I just quickly backed out of the room. It was such a cute sister moment. 

Finners was a rascal and wouldn't hold still while he was being weighed. He's just about exactly 20 pounds, which was bad news for him, apparently. He's down to the 50th percentile for weight, so the doctor was not too happy about that. He was 31 1/2 inches, though, and still off the charts for height, so he is at least growing in some directions. He is practicing walking as much as he can, he loves to play with the little walker we've had since T was a baby. He's taken one and two steps here and there by himself, but nothing too significant yet.

Anyway, here are some pictures from recently...

Marc completely rebuilt our deck. He did such a good job, he had some friends come over to help a few times, and then did lots of work on it in the evenings after the kids were in bed, too. The deck was a mess when we moved in, the boards were all splinter-y and the railings would just pop out if you put any sort of weight on them, so we had to keep the kids off. Luckily the support boards were in good shape, so he didn't have to replace those, but he ripped out all the rest of it down to a skeleton. The girls were quite concerned when he was doing that, they were just sure he would pull up too many boards and fall off and die. 

We had this lovely and safe pile of old deck boards (full of rusty nails) in our yard for a while...

Since he was rebuilding it anyway, we decided to put a slide and some stairs in, too. It turned out so well! And he just figured it out on his own, with help from the internet, the workers at Lowes, and his friends. The girls LOVE the slide, of course, and just wear themselves out going up the stairs and down the slide over and over again. We still need to decide if we are going to stain it, and then seal it, but the hard part is done, for sure.

  

Teresa loves to take pictures and videos with my phone. I found this cute one of Finn that she took.

And here are a bunch more from the 4th of July. We had a bunch of friends over to eat some good food and celebrate the 4th, and Marc finished the deck just that same morning.

I love this boy so much! His hair gets pretty crazy.

Enjoying the slide. Finn doesn't love going down it just yet, but he sure likes to watch his sisters.

He keeps trying to slip himself through the bars, little rascal. He doesn't fit, but still makes my heart jump a little bit when he flings himself forward.

Love these two girls, too.