Friday, May 30, 2008

Dig It

Aahh... summer is finally here! And we are enjoying it, I tell you what. Yesterday Roan and I met up with some of our neighborhood friends at the zoo, and it was such a great time. This was her third trip to to the zoo, but the first time she really seemed "into" the animals. She laughed out loud, squealed, pointed and said "oooh" at the polar bears, giant turtles, giraffes, komodo dragons, fish and geese. She chased a peacock halfway around the park and darn near caught it too. She ran all over the place, played with her friends and got her first taste of ice cream.

She would take a little nibble, think on it a moment and then grunt enthusiastically as if to say, "hey, bring the good stuff back over here!" It was one of those perfect sunny but not hot Denver days, and all us moms had such fun with the kids and also just hanging out jabbering with each other. All in all, it was a great day.

Last weekend we broke ground on a massive backyard landscaping project. We must've gotten confused and thought it was "Labor Day" instead of "Memorial Day," because we labored like crazy. We had a little help from a hired hand, and thank goodness. We never could have gotten as far as we did on our own. We took out all the trash trees on the south side of the lot (where Arwen is), removed the sod, rototilled, levelled the dirt, and put in new grass and border.

We moved *so* *much* *dirt*. It was astonishing. Behind those limbs to the left there, the whole back of our lot is filled with the excess dirt. It's amazing what backbreaking work it is just to get a blank slate!

Roan got into the action, of course. She loves to "help." This usually involved standing in the way of the rototiller/ shoveling dudes/ wheelbarrow and scooping one tiny toy shovelful of dirt onto the pile. It was adorable, I gotta give her that. And naturally she has added a new word to her growing vocabulary: "dirt"!

Here she is trying on Daddy's gloves. Dad had to shovel one-gloved till he could sweet talk her into giving it back to him.

And here is the fruit of our labor: one little patch of new green grass. All the area around it that is currently dirt will be landscaped with bird and butterfly attracting plants, trees and mulch. Oh and we plan to put in a privacy fence to screen our neighbors' disasterous yards from view. We still have a ton of work ahead of us!

But that will have to wait at least until next weekend. This weekend we're going camping in our Little Guy trailer. I'm so excited! We seriously have not been camping since 2005!!! That is just plain wrong! I'm excited to see what Roan will think of it. I pray she sleeps, and lets us sleep. We are bringing a tent as a backup, in case we can't sleep all together as one big happy family. Wish us luck...

Oh, before I go here's a quick clip from last weekend.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

She is a genius! Only someone highly intelligent and with a sharp eye for fashion would know to color coordinate her shoes with her wheelbarrow. Pure genius. GPOP

lisa said...

Wow-and I was whining about my wall! I need to get rid of all the trash plants too-maybe next year?
~lmc