What's Keeping Me Busy

My hopes of updating the blog over the weekend were dashed. Life took precedence. As our life gets more complicated and as our kids become many, I find that I am not able to keep this up the way I'd like to. There is always something else to do.

For example, right now, both Bereket and Ashen have just woken from their naps and are having a hard time figuring out what to do. I should go and help them get settled into something, but instead have asked them to clean up the living room of their toys. Wishful thinking...

To fill everyone in (especially since I've been off facebook for a few weeks and have been somewhat reclusive in my social endeavors due to illness) we have had a lot going on.

I got a bee in my bonnet last week and decided that I wanted execute a plan to make our front yard more useful for our family this summer. After we added our addition nearly three(!?) years ago, our front yard has been a wreck. Half of the lawn was dead after being covered in plastic for over a year, and though I had planted a few things last spring to fill in the garden temporarily (tomatoes and dahlias), we knew we needed to do something this year--a year where we aren't adding any children to our family (hooray! and I mean that in the nicest way--transitions are tough). Though I've seriously pondered making our front yard an urban garden, I decided it just wasn't going to work with my rambunctious crew who LOVE to spend every afternoon in the front yard in the spring and summer, playing baseball, soccer, frisbee, rockets, etc, etc, with the neighbor kids. So, I traded in my front yard edible gardening dream for a leveled grassy lawn with surrounding garden. Of course we are doing this ourselves (with the help of our incredible brother-in-law who just happens to be a landscape architect, and Mark's dad). We dove into the project last Thursday with a jackhammer and got rid of the cement walk up to our house, and then tilled the whole yard with a mammoth rototiller from Home Depot. I took my turn at tilling. Holy cow, that was hard. I would love to post pictures of before and after, but something in me tells me that posting pictures of our house on the interwebs is not the best decision, so I am posting odd angled shots, but it give you the idea.

Torin has been the cutest helper on this project. He was too young to help when we did our home renovation (we started it when he was 3 months old), and though we've done small projects here and there which he's loved, this is his first big project that he's been involved in. He has been at the work site full time, whether he's physically shoveling or moving cement pieces, or eating an apple while watching Mike work.

He was so enthralled by the Home Depot truck we rented and begged to ride in it. Mark finally gave in and moved his carseat into the truck for a quick trip back to Home Depot, and he's been talking about his trip in the "tow truck" ever since. We didn't work on Sunday since we were all totally beat, but Mike worked yesterday and installed a short retaining wall which will allow us to level our previously sloped lawn.

Torin and Ashen were pumped that he was going to return this afternoon, and were equally bummed when he had to cancel. I think they like "Giant Mike"...their new uncle (to be) just a little bit.

Several other big things to update on this here blog. So check back!