Family Visit and House Updates!

I mentioned in my last post that my father-in-law came to visit for a few weeks.  It was so nice to have him here.  Gwendolyn quickly learned how to say "paw paw" and he liked to make her laugh, so it was a nice time. 

Our first few days together were pretty chill. 

 

 

We took a day and showed dad the capitol in all it's glory. 

 

This time, the NY state museum was open, so I enjoyed going there!  My favorite exhibit was the antique carousel on the 4th floor.  All of the horses are original and hand carved and hand painted.  It is free to ride on and the rides begin every fifteen minutes.  Because I love carousels so much, we took two turns on it. 

 

Turns out Gwendolyn is a real fan of them as well.  :D

 

 

 

After that one day chilling in Albany, we put dad right to work on the house.  I felt bad that he worked so much on his visit here, but you can't stop a Shedd from working! 

 

Dan and his dad put new drywall up in the whole upstairs, and patched holes, mudded everything, sanded everything...

 

 

 

Dan is so close to finishing!  We can see the end is near and it's very exciting.  Here in May, we have fun things coming!  A baby will (hopefully) be born, we'll plant the garden, Gwendolyn will have her first birthday, we just celebrated our anniversary, and it's officially Spring, which really makes me feel alive.  I love the winter too, but when Spring does finally come, I'm very ready for it. 

 

 

While dad Shedd was visiting us, we also had a pretty intense Missions Conference.  I mentioned that in my last post.  We had four different missionary families in and really enjoyed getting to know them all.  While the one family was here staying in our prophets chamber, Dan was happy to have an extra hand then, re-doing the church name on the front of the building.  These wooden letters have been rotting off since we arrived two years ago, and recently, the bottom of the I in "Baptist" fell off, so it was really time to do some updating.  We purchased new lettering that won't rot.    

 

 

It's very nice to have that project completed.  Today, I finished planting all of the watermelon, cantaloupe, bell peppers, tomatoes, some kale, and a few pots of squash and zucchini and cucumbers indoor.  I'm slightly late doing it...so hopefully everything grows fine.  The hope is that we'll be able to plant outdoor the last week in May.  Dan already got a truckload of chicken manure and spread it and tilled it into the garden. 

That's what we've been up to!  I have a midwife appointment today, so who knows...maybe I'll be posting an update on baby Shedd #2 someday very soon!

(at least I hope so!)

😃😃😃