Landscaping With Children

We decided to build a path from the new deck to the fence gate. We had made the deck bigger and it's been an amazing outdoor space. We decided to make this path to put an end to mud. The grass didn't grow well in this area and we had just completed some landscaping around the deck and on the back side of the house. A path would be nice.

Except building a path with kids, well, it takes a little longer and involves a lot more dirt and sand management. The kids were great helpers and in less than 2 weekends we finished the path. It looks great and I love walking on it. Roo loves to try to dig up the sand on it. I think it'll be the last path we build for a while. But I'm glad we did it ourselves and the results were worth the effort!

Hello Spring!

This weekend we decided to enjoy the beautiful sunny spring weather and redo the landscaping in the front of the house.  We first went to Tumbleweed Gardens on Saturday to look at some trees.  When Love Bug and mommy arrived, Dada and Roo had picked out a beautiful Japanese Maple.  But that one tree would have cost the entire budget, so we didn't get it.  This morning we loaded up the whole family and went to Lowe's.  Roo decided to be a good helper and push the carts for us.  This made shopping take a bit longer and cause Dada to lose focus.  Even better, Roo was not the only 2 year old picking out plants for his family this morning!  Luckily, Mommy is a bit frugal and figured out that we could get all the plants we need for the cost of the 1 tree we looked at Saturday.  We spent the rest of the day planting.  Mommy was excited to use the truck to pull the azaleas out; that was fun!  Hours later, we completed our project and it looks great.  It's nice to see the pretty brick on the foundation, and to just see something new. We still need one more of the Emerald Vitae for the leftmost portion of the front to anchor that side, but for a single day, we did pretty good.

Oh, and we're taking Grandma's advice on the solids with Love Bug.  We figure, if we keep on trying he'll eventually open his mouth for the food.  No luck yet, but at least he's not crying about it anymore.   

Finally, take a look at Roo's hair.  He's a pretty cute floppy haired kid.  If you look back through the blog, you'll see that he hasn't had a haircut (at least not a professional one) since last May!  At this point it's hard to imagine what he would look like with short hair.  Oh, and please excuse his outfit, it's his Sunday best....ah yes, mommy would be happy if she never saw those shorts again :)