Jacob’s family was still in town for the Fourth of July so we all watched fireworks together:
Ben came into town also:
Brooke and Caroline attached themselves together with glow sticks:
Then Spencer joined in on the fun:
Ben is Spencer’s new best friend. He pestered Ben all night long:
Spencer enjoyed jumping off of a chair over and over again:
Then snuggled down with Grandma to watch the fireworks:
Time to backtrack a little bit and revisit my brother’s trip to Utah. We all had a pizza party for Caroline’s birthday:
Natalie showed of her hula hooping skills:
Brooke went from not knowing how to hula hoop to being a pro in 24 hours. She can even do it on a picnic table:
We celebrated birthdays:
My grandparents:
Caroline and her Dora cake:
The evening ended with balloon animals:
Dallas is beside himself with grief that we moved away from his beloved Provo mountains. He’s convinced the Salt Lake mountains just aren’t as good. We decided to explore the mountains by the Bountiful Temple on Memorial Day. We had perfect weather, cooperative kids, and beautiful scenery. I think Dallas is on his way to learning to love our new mountains.
I’m probably including too many pictures, but I couldn’t edit any out. We had such an enjoyable time on our hike that I love reliving it through these pictures!
So. Our backyard. Remember when we moved in and it didn’t look the greatest?
We knew that the onset of spring meant we needed to tackle taming the backyard. Our plan has been to mow and water and hope grass grows. Does that sound like a stupid plan? Because now that I’m writing it down after looking at that picture I’m thinking it does, especially when you consider we had two problems.
First problem: We didn’t have a lawn mower. After borrowing my parents’ and Dallas’s dad’s mower several times we finally bought one. Check.
Second problem: We don’t have sprinklers in the backyard. Our plan is to have Dallas install sprinklers even though he’s never done it before. Does that sound like a stupid plan? Because I’m a little worried. Dallas is completely confident that it’s not that hard. Our entire house so far has been a do-it-yourself project so I guess the yard might as well follow suit.
We had some rain. It turned our backyard green.
Hope. That’s what you see right there.
We had more rain. And now our backyard looks like this:
Doesn’t that look kind of good? A little sparse, but I do see grass! More hope!
Until I show you the next picture:
This is actually what our yard looks like. The previous picture was a close-up of that red, rectangular piece of our yard. Sadly we only have one little area that actually looks like it has a reasonable amount of grass. Everything else is pretty much weeds.
Here’s a close up of the weeds:
Those weeds are what you see in these areas of our yard:
Believe it or not, Dallas has been out nearly every evening picking bucket after bucket of weeds. In other words, he is planning to hand weed our entire backyard.
He passes the time by listening to books on tape or by bringing the iPad out with him and watching movies on it as he works:
Sometimes we all join in on the fun:
I thought Dallas was crazy when he first started weeding, but now I’m actually seeing progress and it doesn’t seem quite so overwhelming or impossible.
Will we have a somewhat decent-looking backyard by the end of all of this? While the weeds are proving a worthy opponent, we will not rest until our children can run barefoot in our backyard!
P.S. Sometimes I feel bad about sitting back and writing blog posts while Dallas is weeding so I have been trying to find times to go out and help. It’s just hard because usually a meal needs to be fixed. Or cleaned up. Or kids need to be helped. Or laundry needs to be done. Or something else like that. One night I was able to put Spencer to bed early. This meant there was still plenty of daylight for me to go out and help weed. I gave the girls their bedtime snack and jokingly told Brooke to put Caroline to bed after they were done, and she did. If it means getting out of putting kids to bed, I may find myself weeding more often!
Brooke was off-track so we decided to meet up with my sister, Sarah, and visit Ogden’s Treehouse Children’s Museum.
Spencer found the trains right away:
Carson showed me his cute smile:
Brooke planted carrots:
She found a pony and had to have her picture taken with it:
What luck! Next to the pony was a display of bears. Her two obsessions right next to each other:
Ponies! You can guess who was in heaven:
Spencer doesn’t look like he’s having much fun, but I assure you, he was:
Caroline painted with water on the wall:
Brooke enjoyed being the teacher:
Brooke loved the musical instruments area. She played this instrument for several minutes, eyes closed, body swaying. I could tell she thought the music she was playing was so beautiful and she was appreciating every note:
You can’t see it in the pictures, but my sister and I are convinced that somewhere lurking in that fun museum was an evil germ that gave our babies the barfs. Luckily Spencer was the only one affected in our house. Unfortunately Sarah’s whole family got to experience the sickness. As fun as the museum was, we may have a hard time wanting to plan a return trip. You might say it left a bad taste in some of our mouths.
Our sick little guy curled up with his blanket and bunny:
