The Phillips Family

Author: Andy

  • Mommies away, Daddies Play!!!

    Mommies away, Daddies Play!!!

    Last weekend the Phillips family got to travel down to “happy valley” to see cousin’s new and old, Grandma & Grandpa, and finally Aunt Cathy & Uncle Gabe. It was a ton of fun getting to hang with the ever growing PB&J crew. On Saturday Gabe, Grandpa, and I got the become the “decision makers” when the ladies went to my cousin Maureen’s bridal shower. While I’m fairly certain they were nervous to come home to a lord of the flies situation, I think we men did a spectacular job (if i do say so myself).

    After some inconsistent napping schedules (Andrew was awake before Everett even went down), we dads mustered our efforts and made it to the Catoctin nature center. The kids loved seeing the animals, running around, and basically not listening. Then we moved outside to the playground which somehow was even better.

     

     

    Once we had seen everything there was to see (or the dads got a little chilly) we went home and Grandpa put years of experience toward the greater good, pizza for the kidos. As you can see it was a huge hit!

     

  • March winter wonderland

    March winter wonderland

    I was nearly worried I had gone through all the effort of putting the plow on the tractor without it getting to see some serious snow. Boy was I wrong. This year March came in like a Lion and has thus far stayed a Lion. On Tuesday we got around 14 inches of the white stuff plus some sleet to top it off. It is nice to look at though!

     

  • All muscles

    All muscles

    Ever since I was 16 and Chris House let me drive his eye melting yellow wrangler I was hooked. As many of you know when I was in college I bought my first wrangler (Isabel)  and cherished her dearly. Then when I moved into the big bad apple I had to sell my first love, cried a little, and held on to an extra key as a keep sake.

    Fast forward to our move out to suburbia and then us needing a second car. Kristi somehow let me get the wrangler of my dreams. A 4dr 2015 JK wrangler with manual transmission and the dual top group (named Bertha). Having both the hard and soft top is awesome. It makes it feel as if I have two jeeps instead of just one.

    Though having the hard top during the summer months creates a small challenge, where to put it? Kristi refused to keep her car outside so I needed to figure something else out, and I got creative.
    It started with questionable drawings including thr location of my rafters (mostly to scale).

     

    Then proceeded to lag bolting some 2×4 to the ceiling.

     

     

    Followed by trying to figure out pulleys

     

    But I eventually got it all figured. It’s been a few days and it hasn’t fallen yet, I’d called that success!

  • BFFs

    BFFs

      

  • Going Green??

    Going Green??

    Today Kristi and I decided to step up our “gardening game” for our vegetables this year. Given our horrific failure on lettuce from last year we cut that from the line up and went heavy on the zucchini (to make Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread of course). All in all our total line up was:

    6 zucchini
    2 cucumber
    4 italian roasting peppers
    4 jalapeno peppers
    2 bell peppers
    2 large cheery tomatoes
    4 beefsteak tomatoes
    2 eggplant
    4 sunflowers
    4 strawberries plants

    And an entire grocery store’s worth of mint that Kristi bought for our “Bourbon in the Burbs” party from last weekend.

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  • Spring into action

    Spring into action

    The life of a home owner is never 100% restful. Now that is it above freezing temps its time to make the house look good. Lets see how far 6 yards of mulch takes us. I’m guessing we will need to order more. 2015-04-17 16.30.38

  • The Third Parent

    Kristi’s and my arms have gotten stronger over the past 2 months, but nothing compares to how important the swing has been in giving both parents a quick breather.

     

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  • Some snaps over time

  • Beach R&R

    It is so wonderful to be able to come down to LBI for the weekend and unplug. You can almost forget about the grass cutting, trash collecting, and everything happening in the office…… Almost.

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  • Back yard wilderness

    I’m constantly surprised by how different suburban living is compared to life in the city. Just another example is waking up to the scene below instead of garbage men or the crazy lady going through the recycling you’ve put out.

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