Summer Swim lessons

Sunriver 2012

We enjoyed a week in Sunriver.

 Drinking milk through chocolate straws.

 Want to see my backfloat?

 Ubonga!  (Kamden's made up word is funnier when shouted down the slide)

 Un-Olympics

The redesign is finished.  We love the new yard - they cleaned up or fixed up every part of our yard and it looks so much cleaner and better.  Truly new and improved.  No longer is there an extensive pile of large bark on the front yard.  Gone is the slope and the weird array of plants.  Now we have clean, edged lawn, thick borders filled with all the plants from various parts of the yard.  In total I had purchased 8 small, new plants, the largest being the weeping red maple by the front walk.  I wanted one like my grandma had at her Pendleton house.

 River walk to keep the mulch in place.

 Flagstone from the back yard now connects the front walk to the grass.

 They created a nice flower bed by moving plants to the front window.

 A few more plants were added to the dry river rock.

 They removed the concrete edging, thinned out the plants, removed weeds and cleaned up all the junk that got piled here during the busy year after moving in.

 Still a few things to move around here, but it looks better without the weeds and with the ground cover edged.

 Previously, there were plants and paths and paving stones everywhere.  Now we have a clean lawn with a neat flower bed on the perimeter of the yard.  They moved and pruned the big plants near the back corner to improve privacy.

 We still need to break out the paint and cover up that mural...

 The back yard feels much more peaceful now that there is order.  Now we just need some sunshine to enjoy sitting back here.

This corner made me the craziest of all.  I am so glad it's cleaned up.  No more gunnera!  (Jonah took this picture).

Front yard redesign

Our landscaping project was inspired by rather unusual events.  Two tall Fir trees (30 feet and 80 feet) were struck by lightning.  Luckily we were able to have them taken down the next, just before a windstorm.  It took several weeks for the stump grinding crew to come remove the stumps and roots of those two trees.  This provided the unexpected opportunity to redesign the front yard so that it suited our needs - especially the boys.  Before it was one giant flower bed with about 50 paving stones.  

Here's the house when we first bought it.  You can see just a tiny bit of the trees that were removed.

The two trees struck by lightning.

  

Day 1 of work.  Two dump trucks full of stump grounds, old bark and soil were removed,  Plants from the middle of the yard were moved to the outer beds.  Some plants were removed and others were moved to happier spots (some were dying, some shade loving plants were in the sun, others just needed a new home to fit in with the overall plan).

Looking from the front living room window.

Jonah turns 6

Jonah celebrated his sixth year with kindergarten and neighbor friends.  He chose Lego themed minute-to-win-it games.

 The kids filled their own bag with a variety of snacks - some lego colored, some not.  

 Jonah chose a lemon cake with strawberry filling and lemon frosting - with candy Lego decorations!

 Each kid took a turn guessing how many legos were in this container - Ryan guessed 40, which was closest to the actual count of 65.

 Lego coloring pages were a popular filler activity - even if some of the morphed into paper airplanes.

 Each box, wrapped like a Lego, contained 1-6 bells.  The kids had one minute to put them in proper order.  It's much harder than it sounds!  Braeden was the only one to get it in perfect order.

 Jonah standing with the party favors - Lego shaped boxes contained Lego candy and bouncy balls.

 The object of this game was to bounce ping pong balls into the bowl.  The kid who bounced the most in (Will, 8) won.

 Jada shakes the boxes to determine the order. 

 Ryan takes a turn - so close!

 Jonah's up

 Lou's turn

 Michael also got close!  Thanks again to Braeden and Michael for helping me to take pictures.

 Junk in the Trunk.  The object is to shake the ping pong balls out of the empty tissue box in under a minute.  The fastest wins.  Breakdancing did the trick!

 Jada shakes it!

 Ryan shakes it!

 These three just danced to silly music.

 This was the last game the kids played - just before cake.  They used their straw and suction to move the legos from the plate to the cup.  The object was to move the most in a minute.  

 The big moment - these kids know some good Happy Birthday renditions!

 Opening gifts from his friends.  Boy, do they know him well - he was a happy camper!