It's been awhile

Been awhile since I posted (do I say that every time?).  But we are always busy doing something, so here are some pictures (but not nearly as many as I wanted to post).  Ethnie is as cute as ever, so I will start out with her.  Here she is sharing a fat boy with Leisel.

And here she is checking out the cookie dough. This girl LOVES food.

One day Lila was whining at me that she wanted monkey bars, so I said, "well let's build some them."  I had all the kids pitch in some money from their piggy banks and I pitched in $20 and we all took a trip to the Home Depot and bought some pipe.  Then me and Luke nailed together some boards and drilled some holes and put in some pipe and voila!, instant monkey bars.  Well, ok it wasn't really instant.  It took about 4 hours to make.  Or maybe it was 8 hours.  I don't really remember.  But they loved them.  We will see how long they use them.

 

It is kind of a tradition now for me to take the kids camping on Father's day weekend and this year was no exception.  Grandpa Ellis likes to come with us too.  And I am glad because we like him and he makes breakfast.

Lila and Leisel spent most of their time hiding up on the side of the hill in their "secret hiding spot."

The kids love being out there.  We like to go up to my dad's property in Mantua.  It is nice and shady and private and there is a little river that is nearby.  It is great.

Fathers day was pretty good this year.  Molly decided to go big and bought me a big tv.  It is a nice 50" LG and it came with a blu-ray player and surround sound system.  It connects to the internet and we can watch netflix movies, and it connects to my home network and I can see all of my photos and videos.  I love it.  We watched Avatar on blu-ray the other day and it was incredible.  Now I can't stop watching tv.  But the tv didn't fit into our old tv cabinet so I had to build a new one.  I started out with these plans and made the cabinet a little bigger and added a top piece that goes around the tv to protect it from flying balls or shoes or whatever.

Molly chose the paint color and painted most of the cabinet.  I think it turned out great.  Looks almost as good as the tv.

And I guess I will end with a picture of Leisel and the first harvested blackberry from the blackberry bush we planted this year.  It is actually the only blackberry we have harvested this year.  But we have our fingers crossed that their will be more.

That is it for now.  More updates to the fascinating life of the Ellis family in a few months.