The Dog Days of Summer

A few of the kids swimming at Laurel Lake

Our oven turned patio project

  A few weekends ago we took a break and went over to Laurel Lake and played around for a bit.  The weather was nice and the water was perfect. It was a lovely day.

The clay oven project that I have posted before has turned into a little bit larger project.  We originally were eventually going to make a patio out front along side of the oven.  As I was about to finish off the base for the oven, Brett said, "You might want to make that taller."




Why, because if we make a patio we will have to even everything out, raise the ground here lower it there--lots of earth moving.   Well since we just couldn't decide how tall I needed to build it without the patio, we dug up the front yard and have started on the patio.   So now the oven is on the hold until we get the majority of the patio figured out. --Maybe by Thanksgiving we will have an outdoor oven to cook a turkey in and a nice place to sit and eat it--outside.

The kids have been in school for about a month.  Life is still very busy.  Monday night for family night the kids, grandma and I went and picked about 14 gallons of apples and about 1 gallon of pears.  This week we have been busy making pear butter, dried apples, and still have apple pie filling and applesauce to go.  I am glad for tools that make things easier for the kids to help.  They all like to take turns turning the handle on the apple peeler slicer.

Isaac showing off our biggest watermelon from the
garden and his cheshire grin.

Buttercup and her buddy Isaac

Here are a few pictures of lone Isaac.  I think he enjoys being the only one home--although I have played Memory, Uno, Checkers, and Stratego more times than I care to count in the past few weeks.  Sometimes I am thankful the patio isn't finished because there is lots of sand for Isaac to be happy playing outside on his own for a while--even if the sand often finds its way into the house.  The best is when Isaac climbs into my bed for a nap and sand falls out of his pockets or seems in his clothes.  It is so fun to climb into a sandy bed.  Reminds me of trips to Lake Powell as a kid and the beach when we lived in Oregon.  Just one of those little things to help me remember how truly blessed I am.