Yesterday was Saturday, so, You know

Rain, rain go away

So far our Memorial Day weekend has been a wash out. I don't think tomorrow is going to be any drier. John did spend some time moving pieces of the deck to the burn pile. He had to attach chains to some of the wood to drag it over to where we burn. I think he came close to getting the truck stuck a few times. It is looking a lot different around the pool. We are taking out pretty much all the decking and buildings. Only the large gazebo will remain. Today, as it was pouring down rain, we put stakes in the ground and ran string to help us visualize where the new fence and retaining wall will go. All I could see was dollar signs. The blocks for the retaining wall are not cheap and John thinks it will take close to 1200. I am hoping that number goes down once we get a more accurate measurement. If not, we may just get a fence for now. Hopefully the landscape timbers that are there will last a few more months, and the wall can become a fall project.

These pictures are from last weekend when we were just getting started on the demolition. We pushed the fake wishing well off the upper deck. It almost flipped on over into the pool. I was really relieved that it stopped rolling where it did.John only made me a little nervous playing with the chain saw. In the end, it came apart pretty easily and made a nice addition to our Saturday fire.

Schools Out, Schools Out

School is officially out. As you can see Joshua had a successful third grade year with perfect attendance. He was pretty excited about all his awards. I was most impressed with the High Honor roll award. He was the only one in his class to get it. In the Rankin County school district, you have to maintain 95 and above to achieve the high honor roll. They are debating changing the grading system so that 90-100 would be an "A", but for now only 95 and above constitutes an "A". We are proud of our little smarty pants.

Saturday Fun

Today was a busy day, but that seems to be the norm around here. We started the day with Daddy making pancakes. I love that he handles breakfast on Saturday. After breakfast we headed to the ball field for Jacob's game. They won 13-2. After the game we headed to Walmart for a birthday gift and then to the skating rink in Pearl for a party. Let's just say my kids aren't natural born skaters. Once we left the party it was on to the local Harley Davidson shop to tour the trail on honor. On Monday John will go back to represent his company when all the motorcycles come roaring into Jackson. Once we got home we spent some time outside playing before the rain started. Tonight we went to the grocery store to prepare for the coming week. Tomorrow will be equally busy. We are having a kick off to summer party at church and after that John has a church council meeting. This coming week is the kids last week of school. They are ready to be out. We will have four ball games this week and two next. Our final ballgame will be on May 29th. I am definitely ready for that.

I wanted to post a few pictures of my boys playing with their new bows and arrows. They had been wanting them for a while and we finally caved a few weeks ago. I have been meaning to post the pictures, but time seems to slip by too quickly. I am ready for the lazy days of summer.

Weekends can be tiring

I think the picture of Jacob says it all. We had the kids in bed at 7:45 tonight and they were both asleep before 8:00. They swam almost 5 hours yesterday and at least 2 today.

Swimming constituted a lot of the weekend, but not all. Yesterday we started the day with a baseball game at 8:45 a.m. John had a men's breakfast at church at 7:30, so he and Joshua went to that while Jacob and I headed to the ball field. Luckily the breakfast didn't last long and John made it to the game before the first inning was over. The game ended with a tie and we proceeded home to get the fire going. It's kind of a Saturday thing.

The fire was slow to start, but adding all they dry wood from where we are ripping out the deck helped.

By evening it was nothing but a pile of smouldering ashes. Today John spent time redoing some of the plumbing for the pool and our gutters. Once it is all done we can dig trenches to bury the lines. It looks a little rough right now, but we have big plans for the landscaping around the pool. It is going to be a long process with lots of hard work, but I am so excited about where things are headed. Stay tuned.

Where do I begin

I cannot believe how long it has been since I posted. Life is rocking along. Things are busy, but good. John said that I would post some pictures of our munchkins playing in the pool, so here goes. Things started off innocently enough. John was pumping the last of the ground water from behind the liner and the boys were taking turns testing the water. I tested it as well and it was cold. It wasn't long before John "accidentally" bumped them causing them to fall in. Once they were in they swam most of the weekend. Wednesday of last week they swam some more. Since then, it has been raining and cool most days. Today it is warming back up so it wouldn't surprise me it they spend more time testing the water this weekend.

What day is it?

As you can see if you follow us very often that we have been off here for a while.

Our laptop is scheduled to be back today (we hope). We pulled out our old desktop and got it going while the other was being repaired, but it is so slow and takes about ten minutes to start up and run its scans before it is ready to use. That is one excuse as to why we haven't posted in almost a week.

The other is just the fact that it has been crazy here lately. Between the four baseball games a week and both of our jobs being very busy right now we don't have the down time that we need. We are hoping for things to get back to normal by this weekend, and next week we only have two games so that will help also.

By the way, from up close experience the past two weeks, if you expect someone to know the best solution just because they work for the government then you are in for a surprise.

Hopefully we can get back to updating here more often soon. Then you can see pictures of the boys swimming in what they say is "not too cold water".