We ended out May with some busy days getting our backyard ready for summer. We started out with some hair cuts, including Hunter's first. He was a little pill the entire time, which is why first haircuts always happen in someone else's chair :). Two handsome little guys, if I say so myself.
Thanks to the day-old bakery section of Walmart, we occasionally have after school treats of donuts or muffins :). The kids always enjoy them, but I didn't realize how much until I walked into the kitchen to this...Hunter had help opening the fridge, but I can just picture him pulling out the celery, trying it, then moving to the snap peas, trying quite a few of those, then deciding that the sugared donuts would be a better bet :). It's fun to get these glimpses into the little minds of the kids.
Every day after work, Alex went straight outside and stayed out until dark, or sometimes later. He worked SO hard to get everything ready for cement to be laid.
We had 3 yards of gravel delivered, which was a huge adventure for the kids, who had never seen a dump truck at work so closely. They stayed outside the entire time that it was being dropped off, which was a while because the slant of our driveway made the 'dump' feature not quite so effective.
Lunch with Alex after we got the gravel, and Hunter REALLY enjoyed his chicken strip :)
Later that afternoon we had 3 pallets of cement blocks delivered. We had to change the order of operations to do the cement first, so the blocks ended up sitting in our driveway for a couple weeks, including during our garage sale that weekend.
As the little kids get older, we have no one to save their outgrown things for, so we decided to have a garage sale to get rid of all the baby stuff (YAY!)
Olivia worked SO hard on this food stand that she and Carter had during the day. Besides a few spelling questions and making straight lines for her to write on, I had nothing to do with it. She was especially proud of her little writing under drinks :)
On Sunday night, my dad came into town to help us lay the cement patio. We were really grateful for his expertise and assistance, especially since I mostly stayed inside taking care of kids the entire time. The one thing I did do was measure and count rebar so we could have the least amount of waste possible. I didn't know that 20' rebar isn't exactly 20' long, so most of my math to get the least number of cuts was pointless, but the guy at Pullman Building Supply was impressed by my organization anyway :). He said he was definitely curious about a project with this many different lengths of rebar, it had to be a star or something similar. While not a star, the shape of our new section of patio didn't include any right angles, so the measuring and framing was an adventure.
The kids all donned safety goggles (or the closest thing we had) to help smash a cinder block. They were super excited, but not very effective with the sledge hammer :).
Alex and my dad worked all day to get the whole thing framed out and the rebar tied in place. They were ready for the cement truck the next day.
We decided to keep Olivia home while we laid cement so that she could see the cement truck, which meant that the kids had seen 3 different work trucks (excavator, dump truck, and cement mixer) for this project. This makes painting the living room and installing new flooring seem boring to them :).
It was super hot, so Alex and my dad had to work fast to get the whole thing smooth and flat before the cement dried. I took my job of bringing out gallons of Crystal Light very seriously, but didn't help with much else.
Everyone's handprints - including a mangled one from Hunter - went in the back corner, right across from the initials of the family that lived here when the first part of the patio was laid. It's SO nice to have a patio big enough for the grill, a couple tables, and chairs to hang out on. Carter has a bigger basketball court than he's ever had at home, so he loves honing up his skills, and I can sit in my chair and read while the kids play all around the backyard. It's perfect.
The last day of May was Carter's end of the year picnic at Sunnyside park. We fed ducks, played on the playground, had HUGE pizzas and walked around with all the families from Montessori School. It was a really fun day, and Alex was able to come on his lunch hour, which was a special treat. I'm so proud of everything Carter has learned and done in Preschool, it was fun to be able to celebrate with him and the rest of his class!
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