Weekly Chronicle - Memorial Day Edition

We spent a good part of our three day weekend relaxing.  May has been crazy busy and we all needed a day or two to relax. 

Sunday we went to Mom and Mark's house for a little cookout.  The kids loved splashing in the little pool and "cooking" with all the bowls and measuring cups that Nana gave them to play with.

Hi Phinny.  He loves to sing to me but he's still nervous about getting up on my finger.

Yum! Mark grilled some delicious hamburgers and hotdogs.  Mom and I cooked some bacon to go along with them.   Charlotte picked out the perfect hotdog.

Jon loves a bbq.

Here's my burger.  Lots of mayo, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and a touch of ketchup. YUM!

For dessert, I brought over pineapple that we grilled a bit and topped it with vanilla ice cream. I just had the pineapple. 

Before we left, we drove down the street to check out the progress on the dam repairs.  The pond across the street from Mom and Mark's house had to be drained temporarily to repair the dam and the road that tops the dam. 

Jon tries to look tough while talking man stuff with Mark.

Evan was in love with all the big equipment on the job site.  Nana helped them climb up onto this big machine.  Evan is still talking about it.


This next morning we got outside early (7:30am) to spread the dirt that we had dropped off to fill in our sink hole.

The kids loved the mountain.  Charlotte's pretending to throw dirt from the top. 

Jon shoveled and I spread with a metal rake.  The kids tromped down the dirt to settle it in.   Jon and I then moved the extra dirt to the kid's digging area... one tarp full at a time.  We really need to get a wheel barrow. 

Jon found a new way to pack down the dirt.

We had to even out a pretty large area in and around the sink hole.  We'll seed it and lay down straw this week.  I'm going to have to water it frequently to get grass to grow in this heat.  Our goal is to have this area looking great by the time we put the house on the market next spring.

Here's the digging area with it's new heap of dirt.  The kids had a great time playing on the dirt pile.

While Jon and I started putting up the shade sail, the kids got to work picking sugar snap peas.  They were the ones who planted them a few months ago.  Charlotte had a great attitude and picked 116 (according to her count).  Evan was tired and kinda whiny so his count was much less. 

We got 3 sides of the sail up but the 4th corner was really tough.  We pulled and pulled.  We looped ropes around to give us more leverage.  We were so close. Just a half an inch more!

We tied the rope to the post across from it so it wouldn't keep slipping back.  I then leaned on the rope to try to pull it close enough.  I finally sat on the rope in hopes that it would work.  Charlotte thought it was funny so she took a picture of me on the rope. 

Charlotte's self portrait.



After all that hard work, we enjoyed the rest of our day off.  I'm a huge fan of 3 day weekends.