a couple more things

pace finally got in to the pre-k online upstart program.  it's free, totally funded by the state of utah, and it's a pretty great program!  they have to do 15-20 minutes of reading activities 5 days a week, then they can choose to do another 5 minutes or so of math/science activities.  we'd been tearing through the workbooks from costco (i think we've done 3 or 4 this year already), and i could tell pace was getting a little bored with them.  we've been keeping up with our reading every day, but he definitely needed something new.  he was on the waiting list for upstart for at least 8-9 months, so i was so excited when they called that he'd finally gotten in.  i love that it's participant-initiated, and the program completely adapts to the level of the user, even during use.  it's so fun to watch!  i think this photo was from the first time he recorded a reading he did, and he thought it was so cool to hear his own voice playing back to him.

these cute kiddos wanted to split up all the extra flagstone pieces i wasn't using on the patio.  lucy filled up a backpack, then when it was too heavy, pace decided on teamwork.  they'd pick it up and take a few steps, then take deep heaving breaths, sit down for a rest, and then pick it up again and take a few more steps...all the way over to lucy's house. 

i don't normally bring my phone to church, but i had grabbed it instead of my kindle, so why not take a photo of david's etch-a-sketch handiwork?!  he can't draw a stick figure worth his life, but give him an etch-a-sketch, and he will design and draw any and all of pace's requests.  car wash?  check.  penguin?  check.  excavator?  check.  logger truck?  check.  i tried to do a "fish crusher", per pace's demand, and he took one look at it and said, "mommy, you canNOT draw.", then quickly handed it back to david.

this was pace's version of a fish grinder.

on sunday after church we decided to work on our thankful tree.  i had the boys lay down on paper and drew around them for a tree trunk and branches, then we traced their hands and cut out a bunch of "leaves".  we labeled a bunch of leaves that evening of things we were thankful for, and they taped them on the branches.  we'll do a thankful leaf each day with our foundations in the morning until thanksgiving.

random days...

while we're working on the backyard, we're having an HVAC guy and contractor work on the basement.  framing going up!

tedious cobblestone work on the stairs.  david took a sick day from work on thursday, i think, and did the square stairs, and finished the retaining wall on the left.  i used all the flagstone we had...we called and ordered more, and they said they could get it to us by friday/saturday, then their truck broke down.  so there is still a hole in my patio. 

the boys and i spent friday morning at home depot picking up more materials.  yup, we pushed one cart and pulled the other until a worker guy saw me struggling and came over to help.  then we loaded everything up, unloaded everything at home, and then i worked on clearing the area in the front for gravel.  we see this area being used as parking for renters.

see the water drainage pipe all the way on the right?  i had to pickax a trench, add a gravel pit for drainage, bury it, then cover it up.  then dig up all the weeds.  then lay weed mat.  man.

i don't think i took photos from saturday's work.  david worked on a cobblestone landing at the top of the square staircase, and as we still didn't have flagstone, i thought i'd start poly-sanding the patio.  we knew weather (snow) was blowing in, and the polysand would need time to set, and saturday/sunday were going to be sunny all day.  so, first i ran 12 miles saturday morning (that half is coming up...), and spent the rest of the day poly-sanding the patio edges.  the poly sand is a mixture of sand and concrete, you pour between the cracks on your patio, sweep it in really finely, then wet it, and it dries hard like concrete.  it was pretty great to work with.  after reading up on ways to do a patio, we decided to put the poly sand around the edges to set the pieces, like the edges of a puzzle, and keep the rest of the pieces set in place.  since it's down below "earth-level", drainage needs to happen, so we'll just pour pea gravel between the rest of the stones.  

and here is today.  this morning.  totally up to date.  snow.  you can kind of see the cobblestone landing at the top of the square stairs, getting all wet and covered with snow.  the polysand seemed to keep up ok.  we still have pallets of material (and we're still waiting on two more pallets of flagstone), but look at all those pallets done and piled out of the way!  

since i couldn't really work on anything else, the boys and i decided to spread the gravel in the "parking area".  that was it.  hard monday...

still on our to-do list before winter really sets in: laying stones on the patio and pouring pea gravel; finish the second tier retaining wall on the right, with a set of "service stairs" to what will be the garden side of the house (more raised garden beds); finish placing cobblestones on the round stairs, making a landing at the top, and polysanding it all; burying the second drainage pipe; making a flagstone walkway from the top landing curved around the house and up to the garage (including three small stair landings, as it's a sloped area, stairs will be better there in the winter), and a smaller retaining wall mirroring the curve of the stairs.

backyard day 7: saturday

this is it.  we gave ourselves 7 days to complete the job.  we did as much as was humanly possible in one week, but we didn't finish.  ultimately, i think we need a whole second week, while david says we only needed one or two more days.

backyard day 6: friday

my mom was concerned i wasn't eating enough while working on this project, so i took a photo of what i ate for breakfast: waffles with chocolate ice cream, 2 eggs with cheese and a whopping handful of sautéed asparagus.  note: this was just breakfast.  the struggle was real, people.  ice cream was needed, a lot.  "a lot" referring to both quantity and frequency.

beat.

the day fluctuated between overcast cold wind, and sun and t-shirt weather.  

worst.puzzle.ever.

the boys wanted to have a "campout", and we were very happy to oblige, as we had not been very hands-on that week as parents...compared to our normal schedule/routine.  pace and his penguin were very happy to be there.  max just wanted to go to sleep (i'm pretty sure he fell asleep no less than 2 seconds after this photo).

backyard day 5: thursday

diagnosis:  rock crazy.  onset: between day 3-5 of working hard manual rock labor.  cause: long hours of lifting, shifting, wheelbarrowing, and all other verbage associated with moving thousands of pounds of rocks for a backyard hardscaping project.  symptoms: donning highly fashionable work clothes, fatigue, running around and playing "gobble" on a newly-laid flagstone patio, fatigue, creating grand sweeping staircases, deliriously laughing at the slightest inclination of humor, including but not limited to excavator jokes, slow motion running man dancing, johnny cash lyrics, fatigue.  prognosis: unknown.  treatment: epsom salt bath soaks, oreos dipped in half-and-half, a very early bedtime, shirking all cleaning and chore related household duties (except dishes.  we do have standards). 

backyard day 4: wednesday

i don't think i've ever documented how max eats donuts.  as opposed to a sandwich (in which he eats the center and leaves the crust), he eats the outside "crust" and leaves the middle.

pace is our little worker bee.  he loves being outside by our sides doing what he can.  if either of us stopped for a second to check things out, or talk about the direction we wanted something to go, pace would pounce on us, "daddy/mommy, what are you doing?!  keep working!"  on the warm days, the boys would come and go inside and outside.  on the super windy day, they stayed inside and just lifted the window to yell out at us if they needed something.  this day was sort of windy and colder than it had been before.  we could see the snow pounding the foothill communities, but we didn't get anything.  more of the same workload: prep work and patio laying.    

backyard day 3: tuesday

so, so, so windy.  it literally blew 10-20 mile/hour winds all.day.long.  it never stopped.  we weren't wearing sunglasses to block the sun, but the sand and dirt and rocks from being blown in our eyes.  i don't think david was even listening to anything on his headphones, i think he was just trying to keep the dirt out of his ears... and the temperature dropped about 20 degrees that day.  you can see the rock crazy starting to set in:  david wore shorts and a t-shirt all day long.  

david spent the day prepping the second retaining wall.  hard, hard, hard work.  he spent it pick axing through all the layers of river rock, and got pretty down in the dumps.  it's hard going back to prep work after seeing a wall go up so fast the day before.

i spent the whole day making the flagstone patio.  we'd fill the wheelbarrow full of flagstone, roll it down to the stairs, then walk/throw each piece down to the patio area.  so, so beat at the end of the day.  i thought all day of our neighbors around the corner--they bought a lot and are building their whole house from bottom up.  oh.man.