Yard Upgrade

Kansas had a stay-at-home order in place from mid-March through May 3. This turned out to be great for the state of our yard! The process of demolishing the two existing houses on our property - and subsequently moving our current house into place - last summer....left our yard a muddy mess. Last fall, Brandon made great strides towards growing grass inside our front and backyard fences. But the empty lot to the south of our house was mostly hard-packed dirt that turned into muck every time it rained.

In mid-March, Brandon and our neighbor Nick spent a weekend aerating and seeding the large empty lot, as well as going over our little front and back yards. And now we have grass growing in this space!

Then, the first weekend in April, Brandon picked up some free railroad ties to outline a play area, which he filled with wood chips (also free!) - SO many wheelbarrow trips!!

He finished filling in the area with wood chips over Easter weekend. Now all of the many plastic toys have a place to rest at the end of the day :) These do not all belong to us, but the space is shared between the three families who live on "the compound", and only one of us has a garage.

Finally, last weekend weekend, Brandon and Nick took on their big building project. They designed and constructed a swing set, jungle gym/workout gym. The set includes: an 8 foot pull-up bar, a 5 foot (kid-height) pull-up bar, parallel bars, monkey bars and a massive 9 foot swing set! They worked two full days, and still had a few things left to finish. The kids are very excited!

Before:

They had to dig lots of holes!

The high pull-up bar, with the swing set cross bar laying on the ground:

Getting the swing set legs anchored in the ground:

Monkey bars!

Lots of progress made in just two days

This weekend, Nick added the low pull-up bar, painted all the metal bars, and hung up some swings and rings (after I took this picture). This has already been so fun for the kids. I also have a personal goal for 2020 to (finally!) do a pull up. I've never been able to do a pull up....maybe this will be the year, now that I have a place to practice.

Also, I have a fun memory, from my childhood, of playing in the neighbors' yard - specifically their trampoline and cool climb on/fort thing. These neighbors had a fence, and the gate was alllllll the way on the other side of their house.  But there was a ladder built into the fence, behind the "bike barn" in the corner of our yard, so that we could easily hop over to their yard, and vice versa. So, I asked Brandon to build a ladder into our fence, so the kids could hop over to the fence to the new play area, rather than go out of the gate and around. This weekend, he made it happen. It turned out great!

I love having this space for our kids to play. They spend most of their days outdoors, scootering up and down the sidewalk, flipping around on the bars, or "hunting" rabbits that wander into our yard (they haven't caught one yet!). We are soaking up these "pre-summer" days before the heat descends on Kansas.

Puzzle Challenge

I challenged the kids to assemble every puzzle we have in the house. We gathered the puzzles.....and realized that we own a LOT of puzzles!! Most are in the 24-48 piece range, but we have a dozen 100+, and one that is over 250 pieces. Everybody found their own space to puzzle, and we got to work.

I was originally thinking this would be a way for me to keep the kids busy - and that maybe I'd be able to get caught up on a few things. But they were pretty whiny and it ended up being very hands on for me. I didn't mind too much, because I actually love doing puzzles.

 The kids kept at it for over 3 hours! I was very impressed with their diligence. We didn't quite finish every puzzle we own, but we made a serious dent before everyone was over doing puzzles. I think we completed over 30 puzzles! As a reward, the kids helped me make cookies for a yummy afternoon treat :)

Last Day of School!

I made the executive decision that Friday, April 24 would be our last day of school this semester! We are finishing up most of our curriculum anyway, and frankly, we're all a little burned out. We will take next week completely off from school - sort of a delayed Spring Break. And then we'll start a (much lighter) "summer semester" in May.

 This morning, we released our butterflies. We started with five caterpillars, and three of them made it to butterfly. The kids had fun with them before they flew away.

Then....a few hours later we had a torrential downpour, complete with hail. Not great odds for our newly emerged butterflies.

We celebrated the end of the semester with ice cream before bed! Hooray for making it through Year 2 of homeschooling! We added a student this year, and I feel like we got into more of a rhythm. There are certainly struggles in trying to teach K/2nd grade while a toddler destroys the house and gets into everything...but it's probably easier than trying to homeschool with a toddler AND a newborn in the house.