The Wales Family

Okay - so we are doing some major work on our yard this weekend. I’ve been prepping for it all week. Today we had 5 tons of topsoil, 10 tons of mulch, 2 yards of playground chips, 3 pallets of sod, and 14 rail ties delievered. Whew! I was going to take before and after pictures, but I forgot to take them before, so here is kind of a ways into the project, then we’ll see how much of this we can actually get done this weekend!

Here you can see some of the sod we’ve laid (just where the coloring is a little different). We are adding more sod to increase our play area, and our seed we did last summer never worked. hey- at least we tried.
Our big vegetable garden is going over here… (in the background behind the fence you see our nice neighbor’s yard… so jealous of them).
And we are also laying more sod and playground chips around the playground to make that area nicer… Wish us luck! I’m already sick of doing yardwork!

Okay, so I’ve been busy and got behind on my posts, but we did have a great Easter weekend! The girls were able to do an Easter Egg hunt at the library here in Chapin last week, then on Friday night we had a Flashlight Egg hunt in the dark with our good friends, and on Easter Sunday we also had a blast. It was so great having Craig home for 3 days in a row too!!!
Here are the girls in their dresses. They looked so adorable! I can’t believe they wore white for four hours and stayed clean!!!
And here they are with their Easter baskets. Jaycee got some Sleeping Beauty princess dress up clothes, which she absolutely loved.
Rylee got a bucket of potato head people (including a potato head easter bunny). And they both got lots of books, coloring and art supplies, and some other cool stuff.
And here is a good one of Rylee theifing an egg from Jaycee while she has her back turned. Rylee is a smart one! This was during an egg hunt we had in our backyard on Sunday.

This morning we awoke to find a Leprechaun had snuck into our house leaving a trail of footprints that led to a rainbow and a pot of gold and treasure! Jaycee was so excited to follow the footprints as they entered the house, ran around the wall, climbed up onto the piano bench (where the Leprechaun must have played a tune), then over the dinning room table, into the kitchen (where he stopped at the refridgerator), and then over the couch in the family room to a rainbow in the corner! The pot had some chocolate coins and little prizes for the girls!

there is more fun to come today, so we’ll keep you posted…

Well, we’ve had a great visit with Grandpa, and we are sad to be seeing him go in the morning…

Here are some pictures of things we have done with him in the past few days. We also went to Story Time at the library, went to the merry-go-round and rides at the mall, and had fun at the park. WE WILL MISS YOU!!!

Here are the girls playing with Grandpa at the park. They played on the playground, then went on a walk on the walkway and Jaycee scared the squirrels!
On Saturday we went down to Charleston. We visited Patriot Point and Fort Sumter, here we are on the tour boat below…
And at the fort…
We also went to Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. for dinner and walked the Market as well as touring some other places around town. It was a great day!!!

And we left just in time… the weather got bad on our way home. We drove through a lighting storm that was insane. We couldn’t even count 2 seconds between flashes at the sky just stayed lit up as if a light was on. Tons of rain too. But, I guess it was even worse at our house as there were tornados near our home and you can tell by the way our backyard looked this morning that there was some strong wind and rain.

Rylee is one tough cookie. By today you couldn’t even tell she had had surgery except for the large bandages on her leg. But tonight we were able to give her a real bath and take off the exterior bandages. Here is what her battle wounds look like now…

And here are the plate and screws they took out… (the plate is 1-1/4 inches in length, and the longest screw is 3/4″ in length)

Rylee is doing great today! She has been off any pain meds and is doing fine. She did better this morning than this afternoon - perhaps from putting weight on her hip while playing this morning? - just a guess. Here are some pictures of her battle wounds.

And here she is playing less than 24 hours after getting into the recovery room. She is already walking short distances (only 3 or 4 steps at a time) then she starts crying after that.
The surgery went so well and she is doing so much better than we expected. We couldn’t be more happy - she has truly been watched over. We are so blessed and we are praying this will be the last surgery for her. This girl has been through enough!

The men’s fishing was cancelled Monday, so we decided to spend the day at Congaree National Forest in the swamp forest. It is a really cool place. We did the 2.5 mile boardwalk loop through the swampy forest and had a blast. There are so many neat things to see there. I have never seen trees like these before, and we learned all sorts of stuff, like what a Cypress Knee and Canebreak are.The girls had fun taking turns sitting on the big knob on this tree.
And Jaycee stopped to take a short snooze…
Rylee just had a blast running along the boardwalk. She didn’t slow us down too much as long as we kept her walking in the right direction.
The kids enjoyed the fresh air and the time with their Dad and Grandpa.

As I’m posting this Craig and I are waiting for Rylee to come out of surgery. She is having a double-surgery, the first part, getting a big mole removed, is already done and went well. Now she is in there getting the hardware removed from her hip. It’s hard as a parent watching your child go through things like this, but we are so thankful that she is such a trooper. She has always got the biggest smile on her face and she deals so well with the pain and discomfort - she doesn’t let it get her down! We are glad we were able to have some fun this past weekend before this ordeal. Hopefully she will recover quickly so that we can enjoy the rest of our time with Grandpa, it goes so quickly!

With the little time we had with Juli and Jenni we decided to spend the day Sunday at the lake on Dreher Island. That is only 5 minutes from our house and it is one of our favorite places to be. It was so nice being with my sisters and my Dad, and the girls absolutely loved it! We miss Juli and Jenni already, and we are glad Grandpa will be here until next Monday.
Jaycee had fun throwing sticks and rocks into the lake. (I’m sure the guy fishing loved that)
And the girls were pretty much lazy! We enjoyed our picnic, then pretty much sat on the blanket and talked enjoying the warm sun beating down on us. It felt nice on the cold day (well, cold for here anyway).

We had an absolutely wonderful weekend! Friday night Grandpa House, Aunt Jenni, and Aunt Juli (my father and sisters) all came to visit. We went to the temple on Saturday and had some good ol’ southern BBQ afterward at Farm Boy’s BBQ, here in Chapin. It was such a nice day, if only it wasn’t so windy we might have some decent pictures.

Here’s so more fun on the trampoline!