Weekend Work and Woes

Friday and Saturday were beautiful weather days here in the Burgh.  Warm, breezy and the perfect atmosphere for Spring yardwork.  Doug used every spare moment to get things done outside and Koen was his right hand man.  Tavin was the understudy and did quite well also. Doug was excited that the boys proved to actually be quite helpful.  Having a brood of boys could be as useful as it is fun!  Here are some pictures of the big boys hard at work with their dad.

Tavin was feeling a lot better on Friday and loved the opportunity to be working with Doug and Koen.  He has quite a good work ethic when he's feeling up to it!

Oh yes, do note the new sunglasses.  He's crazy about them.

Koen is impressively strong and able to really help Doug (as long as he pays attention to instruction!).

Now the reason the blog post is titled "Weekend Work and Woes" is because of the yucky cold that continues to keep a few of us down.  I was still feeling pretty nasty on Friday and poor Penn was pretty uncomfortable as well, but definitely slightly improved over his Thursday fevers, etc.  Penn and I didn't get outside much during his wake times, but here we are catching a little observation time and sun.

Later in the evening I had him out and threw one of Tav's hats on him to keep him warm as the sun set and the cool Spring evening began.  He was adorable in the hat and pathetic with the snot, so I had to include these pics (sorry about his nose!).

Thankfully everyone had a good night's sleep on Friday night despite all the congestion and coughing heard over the monitors (this is a nasty virus/cold, but Tav and Penn are such troopers!).  In the morning Penn had some great energy even though the cold was definitely still present.  He even cooperated and showed off his newest trick for the camera.  Penn does, "SO BIG!"  Come on, Penn, like Koen...

Up, up, come on, Penn!

Yay!!  So big!

Unlike Penn, Tav seemed to be quite tired on Saturday, but thankfully he was still eager to be outside.  I took all 3 boys for a picnic at the park while Doug had to be away at midday/in the afternoon.  Here are the Melder boys enjoying their playful lunchtime.

I had to take some pictures of Penn as it was great to see him with a little more of his usual energy (and slightly less snot).

We headed home for naptime and this is when the improvements and encouragement kind of came to a quick close (back to the woes of the weekend).  Penn barely slept due to his congestion and coughing.  Poor kid!  Tav did sleep, but when he woke up he was really lethargic and after awhile I discovered that he had a fever of 102!  Here we go again.  Ugh!  (Although I'll take this over the stomach bug any day!).  Tavin was pretty much a wreck until bedtime and Penn was overtired too.  We got through the evening though and even took a wagon walk down the street (sickies in the wagon, big bro pulling the two...so bummed I didn't grab a pic!).  With Tav having a fever so close to church time on Sunday, we were unable to attend today even though he seems much better again.  Hopefully that means he doesn't have an ear infection.  I'm sure everyone at church is pretty happy we didn't bring in the runny noses either!  Check out the next blog post for home church recap. =)