Weekly Wrap- Up: The One Where We Worked on the Yard

We had another busy week filled with summer fun.  We played lots of board games and finally tackled a rather large household project. We spent plenty of time visiting with family and friends and even managed to tackle just a tiny bit of schoolwork too.

The boys and I were heading to a friends house to swim in their pool on Friday.  We packed lunches and bags with towels and goggles, etc.  and had just enough time before heading out for the younger boy to make a card for their friend's birthday party.  We had a great day hanging by the pool with all our friends and planned a bit of our fall school year too.

Alec and Evan raced from one end of the pool to the other 

I'm pretty sure they ended up calling it a tie. 

Saturday morning Ian headed off to work for the day with his father.  The younger boys and I had a birthday party to attend. We had a fabulous time celebrating one of their friends.

My husband recruited the boys to help him work on our yard on Sunday.  We hadn't done anything with the side yard that we removed the swing set and the two trees from and it was looking pretty awful.  My husband ran the excavator piling up the excess stones and gravel that we needed to remove, Ian ran the loader to load it all up into the dump truck and then would run loads out to the woods to get rid of it all.  The younger two boys were on shovel duty shoveling stones and weeds away from the side of the house where the excavator bucket couldn't reach.  The boys also swam in the lake, went tubing and played lots of board games with one another.  They all played Yahtzee and Uno too keeping cool in the air conditioning.  Alec also dragged out his Sudoku board for most of the evening challenging himself with some pretty hard puzzles.

Monday, we invited my sister and nephews over to swim and Ian spent a decent portion of his morning still trucking dirt away and bringing fresh gravel in.  The boys played in the lake most of the afternoon but Evan and his younger cousin also played inside with Lego's too.  My sister and I had a great time visiting.  I had moved my new bird feeder (that my sister got me for my birthday) to another garden while the guys were working on the side yard so it wouldn't get broken and it was so entertaining to watch the squirrel trying to sneak bird food all afternoon.  He finally succeeded too.  After dinner Ian continued working on the yard with my husband and they got it all ready for the loam.

These two have been playing Monopoly all week long and getting along just great!

Alec had karate on Tuesday morning and was thrilled to see their summer t-shirts finally arrived.  He said it was much cooler working in the t-shirt.  After karate we ran a couple errands and then headed home to work on a bit of schoolwork.  It was real overcast all day and we knew a storm was due to hit in the afternoon.  I told the boys they could entertain themselves for the afternoon and I began reading another new book.  It finally began thundering, lightening, and down pouring around dinnertime and we just could not believe all the water pouring out of the sky.  Thankfully it didn't wash much of the work on the yard away.  We spent our evening playing games; while Ian and Alec played Monopoly Evan, my husband and I played Trivia Crack.  We then all played Phase 10 Twist and managed to get half-way through the game before it was time for bed so we set it aside to finish another day.

We had no plans on Wednesday but it was beautiful out.  The sun was shining but the rain had helped cool things off so the younger two boys spent a couple of hours outside playing in the morning while I cooked up a few meals in the kitchen to throw in the freezer.  We all played a few rounds of Uno before lunch and then headed out to check out a new hiking trail after lunch.  We only lasted 30 minutes hiking since we were being swarmed and attacked by horseflies that just would not leave us alone.  Once home Alec asked me to play Guess Who and World Monuments.  We sat and watched the humming bird feeder for a bit and then the younger two boys began looking up humming bird facts on Google trying to find out what type of bird we had seen (turns out it was a young male ruby-throated since they don't get red feathers until they're older).

Alec won again!  (Though he only beat me by 4 points this time)

We spent our day at home on Thursday.  The boys and I checked out some things under the microscope; a hummingbird wing and tail feather, a healthy tomato plant leaf, and a dead tomato plant leaf.  They did a bit of schoolwork and Evan and Alec took off into the woods again.  Ian worked some more on his model boat and is so excited that he's very close to finishing it up. We finished our read aloud during lunch and then the younger boys and I played a couple games of Clue.  We had some loam delivered and Ian began spreading it out with the excavator.  The younger boys and I pitched in shoveling the loam close to the house and under the bit of fence.

Our last frog was ready to be released today!

How was your week?

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