Goodbye 2015

All in all it was a good year. We spent new years eve with all the new friends we had make this year in the neighborhood at Liv and Justin's. We actually made it to midnight.

Well, most of us :)

Kaleb Jones

2015 was a big year for Kaleb as well. He started preschool then Pre K. He is still really quiet around other people and still shuts down sometimes but he's getting better and better. He is still hot tempered and overreacts to everything, like if a drop of water gets on him he screams like he's dying. He is still really defiant but starting to get better. Going to Pre K is helping a lot. Even though he's a turd sometimes he has a really fun personality. You definitely have your own style too.

                                              
                                     You still sleep with greenie, and the stuffed animal of the day.

This was the year of superheros in our house and spider man was your favorite

You're a go getter! There is a nail that pops up sometimes and catches our feet and you kept telling me to hammer it down and I said I would then would forget. This went on for a few days so you decided to take care of it yourself.

Your visit to the dentist this year was way better than the first. You let them actually clean your teeth :)

This was your Pre K class on Fort Belvoir

 Your school pictures

Some of my favorites from 2015

 Talking to Mamaw

 You also still love to climb! 

Jack Jones

2015 was a year full of changes for Jack. He started preschool, made new friends, and started Kindergarten. It was really hard for me at first because he was gone from 8am to 4pm and I missed him a lot! Some of his new favorite foods are orange chicken and white rice, and tacos. Pepperoni pizza is still his favorite though! This was the year that he found a love for Captain America. I'm not sure what brought this on because he had never seen any of the movies but he heard about him and next thing I knew he wanted to be captain America. Josh was coming back from somewhere and Jack wore this jacket and said, "I bet daddy is going to think it's really captain America in the car." so of course I text Josh and told him so when he opened the door at the airport he played along and Jack was so excited. He really thought Josh thought he was captain America. He is very serious and literal and our favorite story from this year is when we had the blizzard in Jan Josh took him into work with him and when he pulled up there was a guy shoveling snow and when they walked up Josh said "What's going on?" to the guy and when they walked away Jack looked at Josh and said "Dad, why did you ask him what's going on? You can clearly see he is shoveling the snow." These are the moments when we just want to push him over LOL

I love this picture of him. Mainly because this how Josh wears his beanie, above his ears making them poke out, and he says that's how his grandpa Jones wore his. It drives me nuts but it's still cute. 

 His imagination has grown so much this year. He still wants to be a construction worker and this is his model of how he's going to add my mom a room onto our house. I love that he loves his Mamaw so much and is always thinking about her.

This is a letter I received from the school in the fall. I talked to his teacher about it cause I didn't understand how a Kindergartner could be "gifted" I mean I know Jack is really smart but how could they know at this age. She told me that this program didn't necessarily mean he was smarter than the other kids, even though he was at a higher level than most, but more for the kids that think "outside" of the box. Once she said that I knew it was definitely  for Jack. She told me he is always thinking of different ways to solve problems and telling her different ways to teach things when she is teaching something new.  She told me she was teaching them the different ways to make 6. Like 4+2, 5+1, 3+3, and she said that was all and Jack raised his hand and said "There's one more way Ms Hogan. You can do 1+1+1+1+1+1. She said "He got me." haha

Kindergarten brought some unexpected challenges for me as well. This was a homework sheet he brought home in Oct and I helped him with it and he got it wrong! I felt so bad!  The assignment was to cut out the things that started with O. He did the ox, olives, and ostrich right away then brought me the rest. What I thought was left was peas, chair, anchor, and beaver, he picked the peas but I know that wasn't right but he said he remembered her saying it at school, which was total hogwash, but I didn't know the answer so I let him put it. The next day when it came home wrong I had Josh look and asked him what he thougth the answer was and without skipping a beat the said "the otter"

Ugh, I was so embarrassed. I really thought that little guy was a beaver lol

 I had to put this in the book because this was the first thing you ever tried to spell on your own. You were making a picture to hang in your room because Christmas was coming up and you wrote December on it. :) 

This year I made my first complete set of Pj's!! You love soft clothes and pj tops are hard to find and it's impossible to find Thomas the train in your size so i thought why not. They turned out so good and you boys loved them!

Here are some more fun pics from this year.  I love you!!

Work Work Work!!!

2015 brought some changes to the Jones home.  In addition to redoing the kitchen in the winter we had lots of projects throughout the year.  One of the things that drove me crazy about our yard was all the overgrowth. One of the first things I did this spring was take down this horrible vine around this arch. It made the patio feel so much more open.

Then I bought a pressure washer and attacked the walkway and patio. I couldn't believe how dirty it was.

 the Ferguson's left this wire table and chair set that we really liked but I wasn't crazy about the green so we tried the spray paint on it and it came out great! 

 They also left this hot tub that was supposed to be in working order but after having a spa company come and look at it they said there was over $4000 worth of repair so we decided to haul it to the dump.  It was too big to put on the trailer all at once so Josh came up with a clever way of disposing of it. 

 Kaleb, Alex, and Jack sure enjoyed watching him.

We also had all these vines and weeds in the back of our yard and we wanted to add a building but didn't want to take away for the play area in the yard so we took all those weeds out. Our neighbor Mark gave us this little metal building and it is great! I love the double doors cause I can just ride the mower right in there and not have to worry about hitting anything. 

While Josh was in Iraq the boys decided to make blue prints for a tree house they wanted. They were some pretty elaborate plans with a kitchen and everything. I thought it was cute but didn't know he actually planned on building the one.  One day while we were at Lowes he started piling wood on the cart and I asked him what it was for and she said "The tree house" So he started making his boys' dream come to life.

While he was working on the tree house I decided to  tackle the paint on the front of the house because I hated that red on the bricks so much! The problem is I'm so indecisive that picking a color took a while. I'm sure my neighbors loved me for these few days LOL So I knew I wanted a soft green but I wasn't sure which one so I got some samples and put them up and left them for a few days.

Then after a few days Steph showed me this house down the street that had just did their doors and shutters in blue and it looked so good. So back to lowes I went. Then I couldn't decide light blue/green or dark blue/green.

In the end I with with the darker shade of green and loved it!

I always loved the look of black interior doors but never had the nerve to try it so while I was in the painting mood I painted the inside of the front doors black.  I was so happy I did.

Another thing Josh came home from deployment to find was standing water in our crawlspace and mold starting to grow. We know we had to fix the problem because when we were buying the house our home inspector found a lot of mold under there and the owners paid over $8,000 to have it removed and new insulation installed. We had a foundation specialist come out and they quoted us $13,000 to fix it. Luckily the guy was nice and saw that Josh was willing to do the work himself and walked him through what to do and we just bought the dehumidifier from him and Josh encapsulated the crawlspace himself. After that though we had to run drainage off the hill which meant digging digging digging! It took us about a week and of course it was when a hurricane was hitting VA beach and we were having hard rains. Fun times! 

 Of course daddy had his little helper out there

 Then he needed a climbing break lol

 

the last update to the house in 2015 was a new refrigerator. Kaleb and been swinging on the door of our old one so it drooped and wouldn't seal anymore so I got a major upgrade! :)