Summer Projects

I've been trying to think of projects this summer that we can do to keep the kids busy! Heaven forbid my children should be bored this summer! There are too many fun things to do, plus the busier they are the less they tease and fight!

So I thought it would be a good idea to do a little yard work! We kept putting it off since we didn't think we were going to live in the Dupe very long, but it turns out we are still here! So we might as well make things look nice so we can enjoy it.

We have a little flower garden in our front yard that was completely covered in weeds. I told the kids if they would help pull the weeds out then we could go to the store and buy some flowers and plant the flowers for their very own flower garden! They thought this was a great idea!

Here's the before shot! It's bad isn't it?!

We borrowed a few tools and all worked together to get the job done!

Caleb loves playing in the dirt! He thought this was so fun!

How can one little spot have so many weeds?!

It must have taken us 2 hours just to get the weeds out! But they stuck with it and didn't complain! They were all such great workers!

Then we went to Wal-mart and everyone chose their own flowers. Ty chose red Snapdragons because he loves dragons and red reminds him of blood---he's all boy! Mara chose purple petunia's because purple is her favorite color. And Caleb chose yellow marigolds, well because yellow is a nice complimentary color to purple and red!

The dirt in Price is nothing like the nice rich soil in Tillamook! It's like clay here--it's solid and hard and very dry! So we added some soil moisturizer!

Everyone helped spread it around. We probably needed more, but oh well it will do!

Then we used every effort we could to dig the holes in the hard ground. It wasn't easy--I had several blisters from this hard work!

Ty also loves playing in the dirt--it's a boy thing! He did a great job making the holes all by himself and planting his flowers!

And of course the flowers need to be watered--unlike Tillamook it hardly ever rains here so we have to water them daily (if not twice a day!) The kids remember every morning to water their flowers. They are doing a great job keeping up their flower garden!

Please don't put those dirty fingers in your mouth! That's really gross! You should have seen these kids after an all day working in the yard experience! They were dirty from their head to toes! The bathtub water was almost black!

Ta-da!! The finished project! It looks fantastic! Much better! I'm so proud of my hard working kids! Glad we could all work together and do this project together! I'll have to take a new picture once the flowers are all in bloom! It's looking great!

The second project we worked on was less of the kids and more of a Mama & Mimi project! My mom has a room in her house that needed to be painted. Several months ago Scott & Lorisa took down all the wall paper in the room but nothing had been done since. I offered to help paint the room but wasn't sure if I'd be much help with 3 kids! But you can get a lot done when you wake up at 6am before the kids wake up and go to bed at midnight for three days!

This is what the room looked like when we started! Because the house is 100+ years old the walls were really, really bad.

We started by spackling all the bad spots on the walls. Then we sanded. Then we spackled and sanded more!

We decided to try texturing the walls to hide some of the rough spots. We mixed water and joint-compound in a bucket and then rolled it on the walls with a paint roller like you would paint.

It was all the prep and before work that took so long. We did a few coats of the texture before we primed. Then we finally were able to paint the final layer!

And ta-da!! Wow! Amazing! A little paint makes a room look brand new!

The color we chose was called barn owl. We wanted a yellowish, tanish, goldish, but not too yellow, or too tan, or too gold! (Yes, we were very picky on the color!) But the color was perfect! I love it! It goes great with the trim, and the carpet and bedspread that we didn't want to replace!

It makes our stay at Mimi & Papa's even nicer now, since this is the room we stay in when we come home!

And the kids? What did they do while Mimi and Mama were busy painting?! Everything! This was Ty's project--I helped him a little when I was done! He loves playing with legos! That's one of his favorite things right now! Ty, Mara, & Caleb were awesome! They did great! They kept themselves very busy with toys, puzzles, dolls, and yes even TV!!
Don't get me wrong, we didn't completly ignored them the entire day, in fact we had a lot of fun during the day and worked mostly when the kids were taking afternoon naps. We all went swimming one night, and went for a few bike rides. We played at the parks and had a picnic! It was a nice little vacation and we even were able to get something accomplished!