The Kundin Family

Our patio cover is up, and we LOVE it! We went with an aluminum cover that is embossed to look like wood - it will require very little maintenance, and we were able to get it for an amazingly good price thanks to our neighbors (whose brother owns the patio cover company). It only took them a day to install it, and then it rained that night so we got to experience what rain sounds like on the aluminum. It's a little loud when you're downstairs, but it's really has a pleasant sound to it, and it's not actually any louder than the sound of the rain beating against the windows. We chose a color called cameo that blends nicely with our house colors, but doesn't blind you in the sun like a bright white cover would have. It's 10' tall so it doesn't block much of the view from the house, and it feels incredibly spacious when you're sitting underneath it. It's completely changed the way our backyard feels!


The boys love having a shady place to sit and play now!


This picture was taken before Mitch boxed up all the pre-wiring that we had them do - eventually some day we will add two ceiling fans and sconce lights on the posts.

These two are mastering the art of making goofy faces for the camera these days.

Sawyer bought himself a dinosaur "excavating" kit from the dollar store. It's essentially a big egg-shape made out of something sort of like chalk with seven teeny tiny little dinosaur bones stuck into it. It came with a paintbrush and a poker tool so that you can find the bones and then assemble them into a dinosaur. He was SO focused and into his work...

...it was pretty tough, so eventually he broke down and asked Daddy for some help. (Sutton took this picture)

After about an hour of digging and prodding, we were able to assemble the world's smallest T-Rex skeleton. Seriously, do you have any idea how long it took them to find those miniscule little arms amongst the chunks of chalk!?!

I love being able to go outside and pick fresh veggies for dinner :)

Sutton used the automatic juicer to squeeze some lemons for homemade lemonade. We discovered that the secret to making "the best lemonade ever" is to pre-boil the sugar with a cup of water to make a simple syrup instead of just trying to add straight granulated sugar to the lemonade. Good to know!


We stopped by Toys R Us and Sutton fell in love with this race car driver costume. It's made entirely of thick fleecy sweatshirt material which was a stark contrast to the other costumes that were so thin and flimsy that the kids would definitely rip them if they stepped into them the wrong way. Surprisingly, most of those "cheap" costumes were at least $20-30, and this one was only $15 (and I had a $3 birthday gift card still waiting to be used - can't beat a good quality costume for only $12!)! I ordered him a Lighting McQueen baseball cap off of Ebay to go with it. I'm definitely not going to put myself through the stress of making the boys their Halloween costumes this year!

We also had our community garage sale over the weekend. It went just well enough to have been worth the effort, but it was a huge disappointment over the previous garage sales we've had (the fact that it was raining AGAIN didn't help the situation!). Our area is just too remote to draw in enough customers, so we're going to have a spring sale at my parents' house since we still have almost half of our stuff left to sell. Fortunately, we sold almost all of the big items, so Mitch doesn't have to devote too much of his garage space to storing old baby items anymore :)