A Busy Saturday

This weekend was so beautiful! We spent most of Friday and Saturday outside in the upper-60's, lower-70's weather and loved every minute of it. I am so excited that spring has arrived! The Bradford pear in our front yard bloomed yesterday, and it is gorgeous. The boys found their first bug of the spring (a carrion garden beetle, thank you insect field guide), and squealed and laughed for twenty minutes watching that thing crawl around. They even got brave and let it crawl on their hands for a little while. When the fun was winding down, Caleb suggested that we let the beetle back go back to its family, so we put it on a tree and said goodbye.

This weekend, we had several ambitious projects on the list, and we amazingly got through them all. The two fun projects were planting my raised bed garden and creating a "club house" area for Caleb and Ethan in the back yard, under the deck. I simplified my garden this year, only planting the four plants that produced a very good crop last year. So I've got five tomato plants, four pepper plants, four basil plants, and about 12 strawberry plants that survived and even grew all winter long. Half the garden is strawberries this year. I still have a little room, and I may add a couple more herbs in the next week or so.

Caleb and Ethan's club house is just an area of about 15' x 7' under the deck that we put picket fencing around, mulched, and made a cool little entrance for. We're going to build a small table from scrap wood in the garage, and I'm brainstorming for other things to add that they will like. I'm thinking about getting some old aquariums and letting them start a bug/critter collection in the club house. That may be a better project for next summer...we'll have to see. The other projects on Saturday were fixing a leaky faucet (yay, Marcus!), blowing the leaves off the roof and driveway, setting up the mosquito zapper, and cleaning out the garage and the dogs' cage.

We topped the day off by heading to a friend's beautifully designed and decorated loft in downtown Birmingham for dinner. We made delicious mini-pizzas, and had a very nice evening...thanks to the fact that all five kids and all six adults played nicely together :)