it's the most wonderful time of the year!

Christmas is great and all, but summertime is my favorite time of year. Sunshine, swimming, 4th of July, and gardens. I love my garden. 

Danny had to meet with some of his professors at BYU a few weeks ago, so I braved Cook's greenhouse with three kids ALL BY MYSELF (huge accomplishment!) and we gathered up everything we needed for this year's garden.

The next night we were able to spend a good couple hours getting the boxes ready to go & planting seeds and starts. The kids were awesome helpers & Graham was an awesome napper. Besides eating dinner around nine (!!!) it was the perfect day.

yardwork.

These pictures were taken way back in April (how is it already June?!) but we spent the Saturday working out in the yard & Max took it upon himself to plant these flowers for us. Danny and I were each working on separate things so we didn't notice that Max planted them in their containers :)

He worked SO hard on it so it was hard to break it to him that we actually needed to replant them all...but he definitely got an A for effort! 

Our yard has come a long ways since this picture back in April, but our tree! I love that little Eastern Redbud. The blossoms were incredible & definitely helped to brighten up the place a bit.

Oh, and Graham helps to brighten things up too! He's even sprinkled with dirt...his older siblings love on him a little too much sometimes :)

fudgesicles & sprinklers

we have been spending a lot of time outside in our yard lately. we love it out there and are pretty proud of how far it has come over the last three years! (it was a wreck when we moved in.) the other night, after mowing, weeding, & watering we enjoyed fudgesicles out on the front porch. it was pretty perfect :)

i can't believe we were all looking at the camera!!

and thanks to rising outside temps, yesterday we got to run through the sprinklers for the first time this summer!!

summertime is so sweet.

lovely summer nights.

tonight ended up being such a perfect sunday evening.  it started out hot and muggy (inside + out...it's awesome not having AC!!!!) but by the time our rice krispie treats were done, a nice breeze was blowing outside so we went out to enjoy it in our beautiful yard.

the rice krispies must have done something to the kids because they were wired but oh my goodness i love to see them interact with their daddy.  

they love him.

i get to be on the sidelines, snapping pictures away and praying that nobody gets hurt :)

enjoy!

proof that i was actually there:

(avery came over to say hi for a second...she's so sweet :)

and more proof that our children aren't always so hyper-active :)

they do spend 99.9% of their time constantly on the go, but isn't this picture the cutest??

danny took them for a run the other day (max started out by running the first 6 blocks alongside him!) and they came back like this:

ps. we are in shock that school begins this week!!!

we've been busy getting danny's room ready for a new batch of students.

however, getting back on a normal schedule will be soo good for all of us.

landscape design 101

saturday was a fulfilling day for us.  we laid sod!!!  the evolution of our yard has been a slow, on-going, seemingly never ending process (we started in march of 2011) but we are so pleased with how our yard looks today.  care to join me for a walk down memory lane??

at the end of march last year, we ripped out this cement pathway that led nowhere.  and got rid of the shack shed that was probably going to fall over any second anyways.

 

we took a huge load to the dump and then danny chopped down our gigantic, misshapen willow tree (whose roots were ruining the lawn and cement).

during april + may we built some grow boxes and planted our first garden!!

(while trying to ignore the dirt + weeds that were taking over the yard...)

we tolerated the yard, and tended our garden until october when we borrowed a lovely old tractor and attempted to till up all of the grass in preparation for our sprinkler system.  it didn't go over so well but danny and max sure had a good time driving it around the yard.

this is also when i started my landscape design class which i loved.  i learned so much and implemented everything i was taught into our current design.  i was able to create a master plan after looking at many professional plans + this is what we went off of when putting in sprinklers and sod.

in november, danny cut down our ugly, ugly pine tree (we promise we're not tree haters!  new trees will be planted soon.  see above plans.)

and then our good friend jamison brought over his nice new tractor and really tilled up our yard for us:

danny + max drove around our neighbor's 4-wheeler with a steel grate on back to try and level out the yard some more...

and then we got started on our sprinklers!!

danny and his dad ran electricity back to our shed.

we patched up our very sad looking columns on the front porch,

and rented a trencher to lay the pipes for our sprinklers.

we tore out our old driveway lanes, and formed up the front for a new driveway and front walk and had a great team of guys from our ward help us out with the job:

since we laid our cement in the middle of the winter, we kept it warm with cement blankets (i had no idea these existed until now!) 

and then, finally, we were ready to get the yard prepped for sod.  this brings us up to two weeks ago.  we hired a guy (whose name won't be mentioned because i would not recommend him...) who did a good job on what we actually needed him to do but had a very hard time listening + did a little bit of damage in the process (half of our stair railing, danny's shovel, and our water shut off pipe were all casualties!)  he smoothed it all out and got it in tip-top shape.  they also brought in some dark wood chips for our garden area.  doesn't it look beautiful?!? 

this last saturday was the BIG day.  we ordered sod from emerald turf in payson (who i would definitely recommend!) and we had a giant sod laying party (we laid a little under 3400 sq. ft!) many of danny's students showed up to help.  we got the job done in a little under 2 hours and afterwards we grilled up some hot dogs (complete with some copy-cat j.dawg sauce!) and had fresh watermelon, chips, and drinks.  a few of danny's older students work for the city during the summer so they took the lead and did a fantastic job!  we couldn't have done it without them.  max even helped out too, carrying little strips in his wheelbarrow :)

i can't explain how happy i am with our new yard and i am so excited to enjoy the fruits of our labors during the upcoming summer months.  we are putting in a patio within the next few weeks and will finish up our landscaping when we can find some great deals.  in the mean time, i will keep smiling every time i hear the sprinklers come on to water our beautiful green grass!!