Backyard Progress #1

Last week, Matt bought a rototiller to help us landscape the backyard.  The day after he bought it, we started our backyard landscape project!  After taking down the three big trees in early April, and having someone come cut up the wood and haul it out of our backyard, we now need to still deal with the stumps, grade the lawn flat, and reseed.  So, step one is to use the rototiller to grade the yard level as well as remove the many many roots that are all over the yard.  The tiller does a pretty good job of exposing the roots enough for Matt to cut them with an axe and get them out.  This past weekend, we worked on the yard for nine hours and got quite a bit done!  Of course, it has rained all week thwarting our plans to continue, but this weekend promises to be sunny and warm so we are hoping to get so much more done.  We have a nice routine down now of Matt using the rototiller to break up the dirt, I shovel the dirt and haul it into a dirt pile on the lower part of the yard, Matt digs up the huge roots and gets them out of the way, and repeat.

 

The yard before any work was done.  And Levi doing his best Sound of Music impression.

Everyone was excited about Daddy's new tool.

The biggest stump we have to remove, it is huge.  Matt tried a method of burning the stump using charcoal briquettes.  It worked fairly well, until we realized it was no longer burning season and we can't burn until October. 

Here is one of the massive roots that we dug up and got rid of.  Roots of this size are everywhere in the yard!

At one point during digging, Matt found this lizard that the kids immediately loved!

Book Club for Kids

A friend of mine had a brilliant idea of hosting a book club for kids this summer!  Erika and I met for the first meeting last week and it was a lot of fun.  The kids considered it more of a play date than a book club meeting, but for the first time that any of these kids were exposed to a book club, it went rather well.  Each kid came with the book that they read and a little worksheet that they filled out.  The theme this time was "summer" so all the books the kids chose were about summer.  After everyone gave their book report, we did a craft together....decorated sunglasses for summer!  A great summer activity!

 

Finally

More evidence that my kids are growing up and becoming more independent. 

 

We bought a new swing set this weekend!  It is perfect for our three wild children.  The right amount of swings so no one fights over them anymore.  A cool fort where they can pretend they are spies--their new favorite game that they play constantly!  A tire swing.  And a super fast slide.  They love it!  And I love that they can be outside, safe, playing nicely while I am inside.  I have been waiting for them to be able to do that for a while.  Our last house, which I really did love, really only had play space in the front and side yard.  And while they were enclosed with a picket fence, I never let them play outside by themselves because I was too worried of the possibility of them getting hurt or being snatched up.  Plus, Levi was too little to be by himself.  But this yard, with a big space to play out back, is perfect.  And Erika is big and strong and can lift Levi into and out of a swing if needed.  Happy mama!

 

The girls chilling in their "fort" while Daddy gets it all put together.

The new play set! 

 Sunday afternoon, I got to chill inside while they were playing outside.  Lovely!

Everyone happily playing outside.

Erika making sure Levi is happy.  She is the best big sister!

She didn't always get him in the swing correctly.

 

 

 

At one point, Levi tripped over something and stayed on the ground forever.  He would not get up on his own.  So I went over to take pictures.

 

Once he saw the camera he changed his demeanor.

Laurel swinging her best friend.  A worm she found.

 

Ladies Tea

This post took a while to post due to the fact that the pictures had trouble loading.  But I finally got them to cooperate!

The last weekend of April, my friend, Danya, and I hosted a ladies tea for our church family.  It was so much fun planning and decorating and everyone who came had a great time!  I made chicken salad sandwiches and cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches, as well as chocolate mint shortbread cookies and tea pot shaped sugar cookies.  The rest of the menu included fruit salad, bagels with strawberry cream cheese, mozzarella sticks and chocolate truffles.

 

Danya is a trained and skilled party planner and does a beautiful job hosting!  I am very lucky to be learning from her.

The women who attended the tea.

I set up a photo booth area for people to take pictures with their daughters or friends.  

Cute Laurel!

My sweet girls.

Grandma and girls!

Me and the girls.  I think Laurel was done taking pictures by then.

The hostesses: Danya and me!

School's Out!!

I am so excited for summer vacation!  Possibly more so than Erika is.  I just love having all my kids with me....this entire kindergarten year was difficult to let her leave me each day.  But, she truly thrived and grew and matured and I am so so proud of her!  She made new friends, learned to read really well, can do addition and subtraction facts to 10, gained even more self confidence, and is well on her way to being the caring, confident, brilliant, Christ-like woman we are praying for her to become.  I am amazed at the difference this one year of school has made Erika.  She is becoming a regular little person with sassy and sweet attitude moments and so inquisitive....it is more and more fun every day to parent her! 

 

The last day of school was, unfortunately, rainy and cold.  But, that didn't stop the kindergartners from enjoying field day complete with water sponge catapulting, relay races and other games.

 

Last day of kindergarten

 

First day of kindergarten

 

Then, before the final dismissal, families were invited to join the kids for a bbq hot dog lunch.

 

Erika and the world's best kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Foster.  Seriously, this was a great year because of this teacher!

 

Laurel and Levi and I made decorations to officially welcome the kids to summer time!  Levi looks slightly frightened of summer in this picture.

 

Erika is ready for swimming.  Regardless of swimming weather.

 

We ended the summer vacation celebration with popcorn and a movie and then the girls got to have a slumber party with each other.....possibly their favorite activity!

 

Bring on Summer!  We have our summer to-do wish list ready, the free community summer programs in my calendar, reservations for two super fun vacations and lots of ice cream in the freezer!

Salespeople

The kids participated in a rite of passage this past weekend.....a lemonade stand during our garage sale!  The girls had a really good time making the sign.  They wanted to raise money for a pack of gum...such simple requests!  The lemonade stand was open Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.  They made $14.50!  I think they liked sampling the lemonade better than making money, but it was a good lesson for them to learn that they get to earn money, and then spend money, if they do some work.  Laurel was the best salesperson....asking people as soon as they stepped into the driveway if they wanted to buy some lemonade.  And who can resist such a sweet face?

 

 

Waiting for some customers.....and trying out the drinks.

In between customers, the kids watched a movie on the iPad. 

And there were outfit changes during the day.

Saturday morning, as is our custom, we had donuts to open the garage sale.

 

On Saturday morning, there weren't too many people at the sale, so the kids pretended they were customers.

This is what the girls bought with the money they earned!

And, they also got to play in the pool after the garage sale.

 

This is what Erika deems "sunbathing".  Not quite, little girl.

Unfortunately, we ended the weekend with a sick Laurel.  This is her favorite activity when she is sick....cuddling with her favorite person!

Face Paint

Last week, we went to the Safe Kids fair here in Newberg.  The kids had a lot of fun playing games, riding their scooters, and climbing on the fire trucks.  My favorite part of the fair was the amazing face painter who decorated my kids' faces!  I kind of didn't want to wash the decorations off!

 
 

Summer Swim

Another perk about my mom moving here after her retirement is she moved to an apartment complex that has a swimming pool!  I can't remember too many early June days where we were able to go swimming, but we took full advantage of the heat and sun yesterday.  Laurel and Erika were fresh off swimming lessons so they jumped right into the pool with no problem.  Levi had never been in a pool so I was worried that he wouldn't like it....I could not have been more wrong!  He was a little fish in the water!  Like most kids, he wasn't a big fan of getting his head dunked, but that was mostly because he was constantly laughing and smiling and wouldn't keep his mouth closed so he would swallow a bunch of pool water.  Once we told him to close his mouth and blow bubbles, he did much better.  Laurel wore her floating device and didn't need me or Grandma to be right beside her....she would just swim wherever her little heart desired!  Erika is determined to learn to swim so she just had a pool noodle as her floatation device.  She did very well in her attempts to swim....we just need to work on her body control so she doesn't swim so chaotically.  For Levi, we tried this floating saucer thing, but it was too tight for his legs and he was much happier being in my or Grandma's arms.  We had such a great time and look forward to lots of other pool trips this summer!

 

Excited for our swimming adventure.

 

Such a happy little swimmer!

They love the water!

My water babies!