Our 3 Day Holiday Weekend

We Like to call this "Child Labor Law Violation" at its finest.

Actually, they had a lot of fun helping Mommy and Daddy (for a little while anyway) dig out our front shrub bed...until they got preoccupied with earth worms. They don't dig in the dirt much so it was kind of a novelty for them. Here's the deal with the front yard. We moved in 5 1/2 years ago and had a desert landscape we hated. So, after much thought and next to no research, we decided to rip it all out and put in grass. We had these huge beautiful ficus trees and built our front lawn around the tree and decided to put in a shrub bed along the driveway. We didn't know at all what we were doing when we started the whole project but soon were skilled in sprinkler system installation and laying sod!
But the last couple years of dealing with the dang Lantana we put in the shrub bed really got to us. They grow LIKE CRAZY and require constant trimming. And, if we get a cold day or two, they FREEZE into very ugly skeletons of their former selves. They attract bees and wasps so we were always having to get rid of a wasp nest. These tiny white flies live in them and often swarm in clouds. Yuck. We had had enough. So we came up with a new plan, again, we didn't know what we were doing, but decided to rip out all the shrubs and replace it with a flagstone pathway along the driveway and leave a tiny border for a small, tight, SLOW growing annual of some sort. (My friend and her husband are Landscape architects and she has some good ideas of what to choose - she is taking me to her wholesale nursery this week!) We knew we would have to dig out down a couple inches and grade and level it and figure out a map of our dripper lines so we didn't accidentally cut one. I said to Steve, as I knew we were nearing the source of some of those lines "we better grab a small trowel - we are getting close." "Yeah, you are right...HOLY CRAP!" And he hit a PVC sprinkler line with his next shovel dig and we were treated to a geyser shower! So, that repair took 3 hours out of our day (well, we cleaned the garage while the PVC cement cured) and we had to adjourn until Monday.
So we broke out the fire pit Steve got for Christmas. He admits he was skeptical at first - he actually wanted to take it back but I kept explaining that it really was a gift for the whole family to enjoy. So we assembled it and got to work figuring out how to build a fire. You see, for some reason, Steve is never the one asked at a ward campout to get the big bond fire going! He had bought a bundle of wood so we at least had a start. The girls were anxiously waiting so we could do what you do with a backyard fire pit - roast marshmallows and make s'mores! We actually had so much fun, trying to keep the fire going - we eventually did - discussing the finer points of roasting marshmallows. Now I think our back patio is screaming for some real patio furniture but I want furniture INSIDE the house, oh, what to do, what to do...

We also had a very lovely, age appropriate discussion, led mostly by Lindsay, about Martin Luther King Jr. and what he did and why we memorialize him this month. She told us what she had learned at school about him - that he made the world a better place by bring white and black people together. So I then decided it was time for some real world application. I asked Lindsay about some of her friends (Lizzie, Zyan, Ron, Nicholas) from school and our neighborhood and if they would have been able to be her friends if we had lived in certain places during segregation. She thought about it and it made her very sad that the play dates she loves and the girls she plays at recess with may not have been her friends 50 years ago. She then remembered how she had learned that some kids didn't get nice new schools or have books in a library or desks that weren't falling apart and she was grateful for MLK Jr. and all he did to lead the fight for civil rights.

So Monday we got to work again on our little yard project. The girls got invited to go and see a movie with a friend so Steve and I were able to work on it. We ended up that day going to two stone yards to find a color of flagstone that was sold by the pound and I liked the color that wasn't sold by the 2 ton pallet. (We ended up buying about 500 lbs .) We found a stone we liked, got it home and realized...we needed something under all this stone...so I went back with two Rubbermaid tubs to buy sand. Steve stayed and got some other work done and sent me, the preggo one, to buy 400 lbs of sand! Always play the pregnancy card - then you get a cute guy at the stone yard to shovel it and load it up for you! (I think Steve had an idea this would happen....that is why he sent me, well, maybe not the cute guy part...) Caroline was funny - as we started to level out the area with the sand, she said "This stuff is just like beach dirt!" Girl needs to get to the beach more often to play in the sand! So, here is our work in progress. We got about 1/2 the stones down before it got dark. It will wait until Saturday to be finished. Crossing our fingers that it works out and looks good!