The ends of Summer

The boys have been reading a lot this summer to earn a snow cone party. Ruby is so cute about it--anytime she sees them reading she picks up a book and reads along too. She has asked me the words to a few of Luke's easy readers and she has memorized them so it looks like she is really reading.

Ruby has always been kinda rough on Isaac. He just adores her and wants her to adore him...well, it is slowly turning around and this week she has been loving him more and more and it is so nice to finally see!!

Supplies for our back to school snow cone party! We are so excited!! We've always wanted an ice cream maker and snow cone maker! Thanks Isaac and Luke for reading all your books so we can all reap the reward!!

We did the 2nd phase (we have 7 phases in all) to our yard work!! Now we have a firepit and giant sand box in the back yard. And in the front we had a flagstone walkway put in and a little sitting area by the door. We LOVE it. We got a great deal on it too! Our 3rd phase will be a fence in a few weeks. Then we can take off the tarps on the sandbox (we are keeping cats away).

Kyle is gracefully demonstrating how to use the walkway. He loves the functionality of it...I love how cute it is!

I think it might look too much like little house on the prairie...fence, wagon wheel, wild flowers..but oh well! I like it!

I always wanted to fit a couple of chairs out front so I can watch the kids play but our porch was too small, so I came up with this grand idea!

We cleaned up the wall (we had some mud sliding down because our rain was going down the steps) we fixed the problem and added some pebbles on the steps to keep them clean.

Our fruit trees are doing well! We have 4 peaches:)

I think we have made a lot of progress this summer! We are still fighting the weeds, but we will conquer them some day!

Here is a before shot

MAY 2010

and after

AUGUST 2011

We plan on doing phase 4 this month (repainting the front door and getting new knobs for all the outer door knobs to replace all the ones that were stolen before we moved in), but the rest of our phases, will have to wait until next summer!! Our kids are excited because I finally talked Kyle into letting us put a slide down our back deck:)

Oliver enjoyed watching the machines at work!

We had an exciting morning one day when Kyle found a turtle on our driveway! We have enjoyed him in our window well but found him a new home and will be saying good bye this weekend. Turtles are cool but too stinky!! I think we should find a pet rotation--just share pets and pass them around so we can have fun for a few weeks with all the different kinds!:)

Had a great hike with some friends at Bridal Veil Falls.

awesome hikers!!

Ruby AND another Ruby! Isaac, George and Luke.

The first part of August we got a visit from our cousins. Ruby LOVED Mimi and the kids had so much fun playing all day long. I loved visiting with Lark too! We always love when family comes to visit! I wish I would have taken more pictures! But here are the blanket girls! Mimi told Ruby she is just a little bit older because she has a white blanket!