Monday, June 02, 2008
 We had a crazy busy weekend. Friday we had a 14-wheel dump truck with thirty cubic yards of wood chips dump in our backyard. The kids, as you can probably imagine, were thrilled and spent most of the afternoon climbing and digging and playing in the stuff. Then the boys had to go to Jungle Book rehearsal with Mark and afterwards caught Indiana Jones on the big screen.
Saturday we spent a good five hours outside spreading the wood chips out in our soon-to-be play area, complete with trampoline. The way things are now, the swingset is on the grass and between the six boys they've worn the grass away and left three pools of mud in its place. Plus the three big boys have sort of outgrown the swingset and need something to encourage physical activity. So, Mark and I decided with a little heavy labor, we could fancy up our backyard a bit and have room for a trampoline and get our swingset away from the mud. We cleared out a huge part of the yard that was overgrown and full of rocks and branches and junk we'd thrown back there for the past six years. Then we laid weed block fabric over 1600 square feet of backyard. We have another dump truck coming tomorrow with another twenty cubic yards of playground mulch. Once that's spread Mark just has to put in the wood border, move the swingset onto the play area, and assemble the trampoline. Then next year we'll work on fixing all the bald patches of lawn that the swingset and the kids have torn up.
 
Anyway, spreading the mulch (and piano lessons) took a good chunk out of our Saturday. We finished around 3:00pm. Mark took Caleb to Home Depot for some things for our garden and I got in the shower. When Mark got home I took the three babies to the babysitter and Denver to the mall for some new tennis shoes. We made it back just in time to pick up Mark and the other two boys and head over to the Quick Center to see the BYU Chamber Orchestra perform. I had so much fun with the boys making up stories as the Orchestra performed. At one point, Noah's story had me laughing so hard I could hardly breathe and poor Mark was very disappointed by our behavior. But I was so tired, I suppose a little giggling was better than sawing logs. On our way out of the Quick Center we saw several very large bullfrogs in the parking lot and with a little needling, Mark caught one for us all to see up close. We didn't get home until late and then poor Justus had trouble breathing which made it hard for him to sleep and made our already late night even later.
Sunday morning Mark and I were so sore we had a hard time getting out of bed. I took the twins to the doctor because Justus was having such a hard time breathing, even with the nebulizer and I was worried his ear infections hadn't cleared up all the way. Then I went to church with the three big boys while Mark stayed home with the babies. After church we ate dinner outside and finally got our garden planted in our new and improved raised garden, thanks to a lot of hard work on Mark's part the past few weeks. We planted carrots, lettuce, zucchini, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, sugar-snap peas and 12 foot sunflowers. We roasted marshmallows for dessert and called it a night. This doesn't happen all the time, but a lot of the time, Mark and I work together like a fine-oiled machine. This weekend was no exception and despite our sore muscles and aching backs, we both feel really good about all that we accomplished. We worked hard and played hard and spent some good times together as a family--the perfect equation for true happiness if you ask me.
posted by Shana # 4:00 PM 
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