Springtime Yard Work and Family Fun

So, our soil in Grand Junction is probably as salty as the Salt Lake. You may remember we were doing yard work last year in the front yard, evacuating the crappy soil and replacing it with this lush, organic topsoil. We got a second order delivered recently and I started chipping away at it during the days when Kevin was at work.

I got about a fifth of it cleared and spread across the back yard before my brother Loren arrived and started helping me. (Kevin had a shoulder injury from ultimate frisbee that prevented him from shoveling for about a week.)

These are just some "before" pictures of the back yard, so you can see how much we accomplished when I post the "after"s. I forgot to rotate this picture of the storm drain, but it used to have these three haystacks around it. We built a retaining wall instead and filled in the dirt around it.

This is the other corner of our back yard. You can see our neighbor's yard and we don't have a fence up yet, but the nice topsoil is in now!

These two shots kind of show our progress throughout the week. I got about this far on my own and within a day...

Loren and I had gotten this far! It was much faster with two people. Thanks, Loren!!! We'll put more pictures of the yard up soon.

We got to visit my other brother's family (Duncan, Liz and Mya) when I got Loren from Provo to bring him to my house. Mya is so cute and growing up so fast. I loved it that I got to rock her to sleep for her nap. Makes me excited to have a little baby again! :)

Mya is still tiny, even though she's grown. Look at this itty bitty foot!!!

She's a big girl eating some solid foods now!

We also got to see Kevin's parents for a few days because he was working on a big dental case for his mom. They took us out to dinner (thanks, guys!) and also brought this toy from their house that Mikey LOVES. It's one of those fantastic marble chutes.

If I let Mikey play outside with me and don't watch him closely enough, he will put dirty rocks in his mouth and do other such boyish things. This particular time, he had a whole mouthful of potting soil. Disgusting! It looked like tar. We washed it out before he swallowed much of it... I think.

I'm thinking it's about time to get Mikey a bigger bed. He's filling this one out a little too much at times. He seems to like to fall asleep with his head against the bumper though, since I find him like that a lot when he's sleeping.

And finally, Mikey's haircuts. I've cut it twice in the last month. This is how I try to get him to cooperate: put him in the exersaucer, put the cape over him, and cut his hair as quickly as possible before he throws the cape off.

This was his hair before I cut it. It still grows unevenly with the longest pieces kind of running in a stripe down the top of his head. His temples still have mostly peach fuzz.

And we clean up the mess with my lint roller because his hair is so fine. We picked up some shavings of dad's hair with his from the last haircut... oops. But this was the only shot I could get of Mikey's clipped hair.