The Rock Garden

...or water garden, zen garden, miniature garden, play garden, herb garden--all things to all people--but mostly, since we've been working on it during the past few rainy days, the mud garden.
Chris, Amy, and Jamison help.
We placed the bridge--doesn't that look cool (below)! We have all the stones dug up while landscaping our yard, plus the flat stones for the waterfall and bridge and the blue stones for the pool at the base of the fall and the watercourse. All we're missing are the smaller blue pebbles for the "sea." Oh yeah, and the short bamboo posts at the edge of the pebble water, which may end up being cedar posts instead, since I've been unsuccessful in tracking down local 6" in diameter bamboo. But maybe we'll wait until it stops raining to finish.
The master builder. The stones in the photo are temporary, as we have to take them out again to lay the carpet padding and then the liner and then another layer of carpet and then the stones. Everybody said it was fun today and yesterday, even though we were soaked.
I'm the indecisive supervisor of the project. I stand and dither and say "I don't know, what do you think," and take photos.

The Veggie Garden

Two views from above. Before too long the tomatoes will overgrow the pretty crossed-square design that John built from leftover trex board from the deck. The garden is never as neat and tidy later as it is in the spring. 'Course it's a lot neater and tidier this spring than usual because of the hardworking Amy and Jamison. I was especially glad they were here spring term while John was gone.

Cats

Here's Claudio. He's shy. And here's Hero "What? Me? Of course I'm totally not nibbling on your potted ornamental grass!"

Brett's Birthday Party

We had a party at our house and played outside after dinner:
John and Brett talk
while the babes play soccer
and Ethan and Betsy sit in the swing.
Hey Mom, where'd you go?
Hero sits on her perch by the grape arbor:
Happy Birthday Brett!

Puppies at The Farm

I took the babes to The Farm last Friday while we were babysitting for their mom and dad, who went to Hawaii for a weekend getaway. I forgot to take photos of the picnic or the cows or anything else, but I thought this pic was fun, of Colette with Damien and Kelli's puppies.

Johnathan's Party at the Zoo

Johnathan had his birthday party at the Hogle Zoo. He had a double birthday cake, with blue elephants, by mom Nicolle, and TRAINS, which are also vitally important.
Party favors for the kids included elephant backpacks made from conductor hat cloth, also by Nicolle...
...filled with candy from an elephant pinata, invented and constructed by Rob from recycled pop bottles (as he said). Because Johnathan may have been traumatized at the prospect of bashing an elephant pinata to get at the candy, Rob designed it to dispense candy from the nose when shaken. The kids then put their candy in their elephant/train engineer backpacks to take home.
But of course we didn't go home yet! We had lunch and then we (Amy, Jamison, Betsy, and Ethan) went to look at the zoo animals.
We saw giraffes,
Tigers eating,
and the reason for the zoo party anyway, the baby elephant!
Then Ethan, Betsy, Amy, and I went for a ride on the carousel. Unfortunately the train was closed.

Happy Three-Day, Johnathan!