Barnicles 4/27

What a wonderful weekend! It was busy and crazy and great.


Kenny and I left work early on Friday (not as early as planned, but early none the less). We picked up Gray and headed to Lowe's for some yard work supplies. Then we picked up Nate and went home to start on the flower beds.


We wanted to add a second row of castle wall bricks to our flower bed. Unfortunately we couldn't find any light red 8" castle wall bricks. We experimented with adding a row of alternating dark red and white on top of our current light red and with 12 inch light red, both of them looked bad. We ended up digging up our old bricks, adding soil under them, and replacing them. It wasn't as much work as I expected, was far less expensive than buying more bricks, and turned out great.


Nate and Gray played in a couple of dish pans with water while we worked in the yard. We also had a sprinkler out for them to play in, but they much preferred dumping the dish pans on each other.


We got through the left flower bed on Friday evening. We also laid down some sod in a shady spot where the grass had died. We grossly underestimated the amount of sod we needed. We decided we wouldn't have time to finish the right flower bed, so we cleaned up and went out for Chinese food.


It rained some overnight and Nate's football game was cancelled on Saturday. While we didn't want the game cancelled it made our day a little less hectic.


We got up and finished the yard on Saturday. We fixed the right flower bed, planted begonias, and laid more St. Augustine sod in the front yard. We also put down a couple of squares of Bermuda sod in a spot in the back yard that is either (a) over watered by the sprinkler system or (b) over trampled by the dog. Hopefully it takes and we have grass their for a while.


The boys enjoyed running in, out, and through the house all morning. They played in the back yard, watched Saturday morning cartoons and visited with us.

The outside of our house is looking quite presentable. Now I just need new flooring, freshly painted walls, and a home organization specialist.

I took a little "me time" while the boys took naps and got a pedicure. It's nice to have pretty toes.


Nate wanted to go swimming Saturday evening and we told him we could. Then we checked the natatorium hours and found out it was closed. Nate wasn't happy, but we were able to make him happy by taking him to see "How to Train a Dragon." Kenny stayed home with Gray. Nate and I really enjoyed the movie. Unfortunately, on the way home at 9:00, I realized that I had to make some desert for church on Sunday.

I dropped Nate off at the house and ran to Kroger's. Then I came home and stayed up past my bedtime to bake a couple of lemon meringue pies. I probably would have bought some desert if I hadn't been craving a piece of lemon pie.


Sunday we got up and went to early church and Sunday school. We came home for a quick lunch and change of clothes. Then we headed to Nate's football game.

Nate had a great game. He made 3 tackles (pulled flags) and blocked a pass. His team only ran 12 offensive plays, so he only got one run, but it was pretty good. Unfortunately his team lost.

After the game we ran home, cleaned up, put church clothes back on, and headed back to church. Our church celebrated its 25th anniversary on Sunday. The sanctuary and fellowship hall were packed for the service. We sat in the fellowship hall, which was nice because while Pastor Gabb (and several visiting pastors) made post-service comments, Pastor Herring announced that if we (the people in the fellowship hall) prayed we could start getting food. Everyone in the fellowship hall joined in the common table prayer and moved through the serving line before the people in the sanctuary got released.

The food was delicious (Thanks Brian and Lindsay for the meat and for everyone else that made side dishes). The fellowship was even better. The kids played for about two hours! Nate and the medium kids tried to make quick sand in the sandbox and played a pretty rough game of football. Gray played with several of his friends and on his own a lot. There was swinging, sliding, and dumping pea gravel on his head.

We finally decided to leave around 7:40. We headed home for baths and to put the boys to bed. I laid down after we got the boys down, fully intending to get up in a few minutes. I didn't get out of bed until this morning!

While the weekend was a lot of fun I'm looking forward to some slow down. I made a valiant effort against the mountain of laundry last weekend. I didn't quite finish it, but came really close. Unfortunately that seemed to make the laundry mad because it came back with a vengeance. It's starting to look hopeless on the laundry front.