What's goin' on

This goes back to what we did on the 4th of July as a family and what Anne took on alone just slightly before that. We redid the front of the house a lot. The flowerbed is good now (soft and nice soil instead of hard clay--also no more of those lousy overgrown bushes and myrtle).


Pre:Post (the half dead ash tree went away in December--there is a newly-planted yellow curly willow to the left of the stump now,but it is hard to see in this picture):Joel helped a lot!
Joel fell into the dirt just after we watered it. It is a good thing that kids are so rubbery--he fell in a way that made us think he might have been hurt. He did not move for at least 5 seconds (an oddity for a 17 month old) and then said "boooooom!" and started laughing. Joel is really cool like that. He doesn't mind the small stuff (usually). Plus, I just love this expression.
The arbor in the backyard is in final form and I am shaping the grapes to be a proper vine now. We have a sweet hammock back there now too.
I made Joel a gravel box after seeing how cool Todd's was. This is not art like Todd's was, but it gets the job done of being play-with-able. Joel seems to like it! Thanks to Ryan for the decking scraps and help! (That is the neighbor's kid in the picture--our backyards adjoin and he comes over when things are more exciting in our yard than his).
I think I can say that the long list of "must dos" is down to little or nothing. As fun as these projects and such are, I cannot wait to get into this dissertation in a way that I haven't been able to for at least a month or two now.

Arbor, Grayson's, rafting

I built this arbor for our grapes. Maybe there is a reason people always build 4 sided arbors. I don't know what this reason could be, so this one has three sides. This picture shows what it looked like before the grapes were attached. I will also probably dress up the top and sides. The first thing to do is to figure out the right way to prune the grapes. They are all over and have never been pruned.

Todd just had a new baby (who is really cute and small). To get Ty (about 6 months older than Joel) out of the house, he built this cool gravel box over at Ryan's using spare decking material. Joel and Ty went nuts over it. I am not a great carpenter (Todd definitely is), but this looked simple enough to take a shot at making. Here are pictures of the kids playing yesterday.

We have had Anne's family over this weekend and it has been good fun. I finally got to meet Scott's friend Cheryl and she was really cool...so cool that she mowed the lawn. She said that she likes mowing lawns, but that because she grew up/still lives in Arizona that she has never had a lawn. So when she travels, she mows people's yards. I thought it was a fantastic hobby. Besides this, we went to the park a lot and Anne's dad went crazy over his grandson (as usual) and Joel ended up with 2 sweet new tractor toys. This is in addition to the CAT bulldozer that Cheryl got him. Joel totally needs a gravel box for that CAT.

Last weekend I went whitewater rafting with the Perrysburg Grace mens group. We went to a place called Laurel Highlands in PA. It was quite fun. It didn't hurt that we had a constant buffet of meat for all meals. Actually, it was just fantastic hanging out with the guys for a weekend. Jeff (a former Zoar youth who graduated last year) came too. It was great catching up with Jeff. I miss a lot of the old youth group people. It is fantastic to reconnect with people. The rafting itself (2 days worth) was quite fun, except for one spill--it was a little too forceful for me. The rest of the weekend was fantastically-calming and quite welcome. These pictures are from our group meeting on Sunday morning where we sang some songs and stuff. Yes, that is a mandolin.

Now for more Joel news...
Joel is in a storm of learning as of lately. He is trying to talk all of the time. He smiles and plays all of the time. Life is good...We are talking "playing in forts" and "chasing cats around the neighborhood" good.