Picnic and Yard Work

The boys and I spent the morning at Stoneledge Park with Alisha, Katelin, and Abi. The kids had a great time and ran off a lot of energy! Here are a few pictures from the park:

Abi and Katelin

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on the yard. I am working on the lawn in sections. Today I finished two more sections. The process is long and tedious:

1. Rake (pick up sticks, remove large rocks, hand week crab grass).

2. Hand aerate.

3. Spread lime.

4. Spread seed.

5. Water

Hours and hours and hours of work and our yard looks basically the same. Hopefully we will see results soon.
Front yard b/t houses... Done!
Front yard... Done!

Update on Lee: I posted his travel plans incorrectly. He is supposed to fly into Belgium around 10:30 AM tomorrow, but it is not looking like it will happen. His plan is to head to the Manchester airport in the morning and see what happens. Most likely, he will be staying near the airport tomorrow night.

Stranded in Manchester?!

It looks like Lee's travel plans may change. His original itinerary called for him to fly out of Manchester tomorrow to spend time at facilities in Belgium. However, that is looking doubtful since UK airspace is closed. I (nor he) do not have any idea what his plans are for tomorrow. He is supposed to fly home on Tuesday from Ghent, Belgium. I am curious to see if he makes it home on Tuesday. That is still several days away so a lot can change before then.

The boys and I miss him, but are doing well. We have a standard routine down and are enjoying lots of time outside.

On to the daily recap... (I know that these recaps may seem boring. They are mainly so that Lee can see pictures of the boys and our activities while he is gone.)

I took a break from yard work to go on a walk with Lisa at King's Mountain. I am not sure that pushing 75 pounds up and down hills is a break, but I enjoyed the walk and catching up with Lisa.
After the "hike," we went to dinner with Alisha, Katelin, and Abigail at Denny's. Graysen is in love with Abi. I have never seen anything like it. He talks about her every day and loves seeing her. I decided to style his hair for his big date. Caleb wanted his styled too after he saw how awesome Graysen looked!
Caleb checking out his new hairdo in the mirror.
BTW, contrary to what you may think based on the new blog background, I am not obsessed with grass. Apparently, Lee has been messing with the template from England.

Progress (Laura) and Anti-Progress (Caleb & Graysen)

I started working in the yard at 9:30 AM this morning and finished up around 5:45 PM. The main goal was to put seed down in the area in the middle of the old bed. I am learning that lawn work is a lot of work, especially with manual raking and aerating. Also, my two little "helpers" are turning out to be more of a hindrance than actual help. There is still so much more work to do! I am, at most, only 10% done. Oh well. At least I am learning a lot and it is good exercise.

Today's progress.
I had to wash a significant portion of the driveway which was "seeded" by Graysen. The seed is powder gold (6% seed; Scott's EZ Seed). He probably put $20 worth of seed down. The seed is guaranteed to grow anywhere and there is even a picture of it growing on cement on the bag. However, I really wish that he would seed grass, not cement.
After much raking and sweeping, I was able to get the straw back into a reasonable pile. My nice bales were hit first by a Harley and then by a F-150...

Barbie is Cool

The boys and I had a nice day today. Caleb and I spent the afternoon working on our yard project. I finished the mulch bed around the second tree and am now starting the process of seeding. I started removing rocks and sticks, but didn't make it very far. I plan to spend tomorrow removing more rocks and sticks and may be able to get down some seed?!

This evening we had a neighborhood "Power Wheels" playdate. It was good to spend time with the great girls in the neighborhood, enjoy some wine, and catch up. For some reason, the boys really enjoyed the Barbie vehicles!?! That left the girls to ride the F-150. It was a great evening and everyone had fun!

Here are a few pictures from today:

This is a picture of today's "progress."
The plan for tomorrow is to rake, pick up sticks and rock, aerate, seed, lime, and straw the barren area. I am using Scott's "EZ Seed" for this, which is the equivalent of powdered gold. I will be happy if I finish the barren area. Raking and picking up sticks and rocks is A LOT of work!
Most of our yard looks like this. There are lots of sticks and rocks.
The boys crusin' in the Barbie jeep.
Caleb loved Maggie's Barbie Four-Wheeler.

Letters to Lee

Lee left this morning for the UK and Belgium. He will not be home until next Tuesday night. I told him that I would try to blog every day so that he could see pictures of the boys and our activities while he is gone.

Most of our activities will be centered around revitalizing the "dustbowl," otherwise known as our yard. We have lived here one year and haven't done anything to take care of the yard because we were so busy focusing on the inside of the house.

Lee and I spent the weekend fixing and planting the mailbox flower bed. I am happy with the results and look forward to more flowers in the future.

Today, Caleb and I focused on redoing the center bed. It is A LOT of work. Here is a picture before we started, followed by one when we stopped at the end of the day. I know that it doesn't look like a lot of work, but it took me almost three hours!!! I had to remove old dirt and mulch, remove old liner, put down new landscape fabric, put down dirt, put down new mulch.
Of course, here is a picture of my yard assistant. Caleb LOVES to work in the yard and does not tire. He fusses when I tell him that it is time to go inside, even though we had been outside three hours.

My plan for tomorrow is to work on the other tree tomorrow. There will be even MORE dirt to shovel tomorrow than there was today!

So, that is pretty much our week; missing Lee, working on the yard, and few playdates later in the week.

Viernos Santos

It is absolutely amazing to be here on Viernos Sanctos. There are religious street possions throughout the center of the city. I feel like I have been transported to an earlier time. I have thoroughly enjoyed our last night here and have enjoyed the festivities and a good Galatian dinner.

Here are a few other highlights from today:

Archeological Museum

My favorite piece of work: An intricate carving of the fallen angels being expelled from heaven.
Casa y Museo de Sorolla.
View of Madrid.
Parque de Buen Retiro

Adventuras

Today was a day of adventures. We decided that we had spent the past three days viewing religious art and weren't up for a fourth day, so we decided to "punt" instead of going to the two churches that I had planned. Lee had picked out a "trendy" market in a barrio that sounded great. However, there were two problems. 1) It is Maundy Thursday, and based on the the noises that we heard last night, the "Madrilenos" spent last night beating drums and parading until after midnight. Thus, all of the stores didn't open until noon instead of 10 AM. 2) "El barrio" (the neighborhood) was not safe. Lee was concerned by the three prostitutes that we saw. I thought, "Um. I am open-minded and do not judge." However, I got concerned when I asked an old man about Maundy Thursday and he told me about the hours, told me to go back to the center of the city (Plaza del Sol), and to be very careful, hold my bag tight, and that we were targets. I then looked around, noticed deserted streets and police, and did not feel safe.

We decided to scrap shopping head back to our second planned activity which was to go to the Museo de Ferrocarril and view train cars for the boys. It felt like we were on a playdate without the boys. All we kept talking about was how much Caleb would love the museum. We bought the boys coloring books that I am sure that they will love. We had coffee in a 1930's dining car, which I loved!

After the Museo de Ferrocarril, which was a VERY long walk from the city center, we went to the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum. It is a great art museum that has a collection that represents a lot of different time periods and artists. We thoroughly enjoyed the museum. After the museum we did a little bit of shopping on the way home and took a siesta. I thought that I would LOVE siesta time, but it is too late for me and is really messing up my sleep schedule. I slept from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM, we went to dinner at our favorite restaurant (Artemisa) and am still up. I probably wont go to sleep until 1 AM and we tend to wake up early. My body is very confused and tired.

I am looking forward to our nightly web call with the boys. Their eyes light up when we show them what we have bought them. They are counting the days until Mommy and Daddy come home on an airplane with their gifts. In the meantime, they are having a blast with Grammy.

Here are a few pictures from our day:

El Museo de Ferrocarril
Pictures of trains for the boys.
Cafe in a 1930'2 dining car.
Lee studying a boiler.
El Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza