Sunday, September 27, 2009

One of Our Favorite Things To Do

One of our favorite things to do on Saturday mornings is go to the Farmer's Market in Downtown Davenport, Iowa. We often ride our bikes there, which takes us along the bike path on the Mississippi River. Beautiful! Below are some pictures from a couple of our visits to the Farmer's Market. The first two photos are on a glass walkway that crosses River Drive and looks out over the river. Judah loves to play on the playground at the Market as you can see. There is often a guy there who makes balloon "thingies" for the kids. Judah is sporting a "Britney Spears" mic and two sword-like shapes. I think one of them is actually supposed to be either a flower or a wand of some sort. I think he found those two on the ground. We don't let anything go to waste in the Meek family! :) Lastly, I wanted to share a short video of Judah enjoying some live music at the Market. The trio are playing Django Reinhardt, who is one of my favorites! Judah just plopped down in front of them--right in an area that people walk--and sat there listening quietly for a good 10 minutes. The funny thing is that, once Judah sat down and listened, lots of other people stopped what they were doing and stood there (and some even sat!) listening too. Judah's our little trend setter.


Sunday, September 13, 2009

Making Our New House Our "Home"

We are slowly working on making our new house our "home" and our first big undertaking was putting up a privacy fence in the back yard to keep our little rascals (Cassidy and Judah) contained. Steve's parents graciously took Judah for a whole week so Steve and I could put the fence up. I say Steve and I but really it was all Steve. I was merely the post-holder/leveler and I hammered a few nails. Steve was the mastermind and muscle behind the entire project. Might I add that, for a couple of amateurs (and for how steeply sloped our back yard is!), the fence turned out pretty well. Here are some before and after pictures.

















Our next big project was creating a walkway at the bottom of our deck stairs that lead to the back yard (our deck is on top of our garage if you were wondering why it is so high off the ground). We decided to create the look of paving stones using colored concrete poured into a cobblestone-look mold. It turned out pretty well too. We will need to put some shade plants in the mulch alongside the walkway to complete the project but, for now, it serves its purpose of keeping the mud and dirt from coming inside. As you can see, Judah thinks its purpose is to serve as a road for his trucks and diggers. :)












The rest of the pictures are of the living room, dining room, office, Judah's room and foyer window seat. We still need to paint, replace all of the screens in the 3-season room, etc. etc. etc. but we're well on our way to feeling like this is home and we're meeting lots of our neighbors, which is great.