Yesterday it was a beautiful day here. Mike started by catching up on mowing and weed-wacking. Then we started on moving the extra sand around in our yard so that we can bring in topsoil and plant grass and start working on landscaping. Hauling sand is hard, tiring work, especially the wet stuff. Our neighbors rented a "Dingo," which is a walk-behind small loader that runs on tracks. We were impressed with the work he got done in his yard, and so we are considering renting that to help dig up the area inside our half-circle driveway. It is full of rocks which makes it very hard to excavate by hand.
We recently purchased a tag-along bike with money made from our garage sale profits. It is a bar that connects to an adult bike that has one wheel, a seat, handlebars, and petals. Isacc sits on it and can pedal to help or just rest if he wants. To him it's still a novelty to help petal, and he has discovered that we go faster when he does. We had a lot of fun riding around on Friday. We packed a picnic lunch and headed up to a little spot at the school at the top of the hill by our house. Then we walked along a trail in the woods used for snowshoing in the winter. Adjacent to the woods there is a large field that is part of an old family farm (one of the few not developed yet around this area) that is a nice place to go for a walk. It almost feels like the prairies in Iowa or Nebraska with waving grass and rolling, gentle hills. We will use the tag-along bike a lot this summer on a paved trail called the White Pine Trail. We drive to the trail and get on in Belmont and then ride 4 miles up to Rockford where there is a park to play in, a dam to watch complete with fisherman (usually) and an ice cream shop along the trail. Isaac and I will be able to keep up with Avritt and Emily who don't like to dawdle along, but ride fairly fast.
Tomorrow we will head over to some friends for a pork loin themed lunch. We'll probably try to get more done on the sand excavation or if it's raining, we'll work on a master plan for our yard. We need to figure out where to put play areas, paths, flowers, etc. This next week Ginger heads to Iowa on Wednesday to be with her parents for her dad's surgery on Thursday. It will be a hard week because Ginger's close friend, Aimee, will be moving on Friday, and Ginger will need to say goodbye to them before she leaves for Iowa. Avritt will be saying goodbye to Matthew, his best friend from preschool, and Isaac will be saying goodbye to Samantha. They have been the kids' closest friends for almost three years.
The kids have only 9 days of school left. They have all had a very good year. We just found out last week that Isaac is accepted into the Young Fives class for next fall! Emily will be in 7th grade next year and will be in a new school right up the street from our house. She and a friend who lives across the street are in the same grade and will walk together. Avritt is heading into 2nd grade and growing taller every day. He lost a little weight this last week due to a 3 day bout with the flu. Thankfully no one else was affected. We have a couple of nasty clean-up stories, but we're back to normal.
It feels good to be working on the house again after a break for awhile. It will take a long time to "finish," whatever that means. I have a feeling there will always we things to do. Getting grass back into the yard will be a big step towards normal. So if you're wondering when the house remodel will be done, we don't have an answer. Perhaps a better question would be "What are you working on right now?" We will probably have an answer to that question for a long time...
No comments:
Post a Comment