My Saturday Project

I haven't been very motivated to blog lately. Sorry about that. Today though, I started--and finished!--a project that I am pretty proud of, so I thought I'd brag a little bit. By way of explanation, my little Dallin loves to be outside. Even more, he loves to "work in the dirt." I think he saw his daddy digging holes last summer and decided that was a cool thing to do. So Dallin digs in my front flower bed. This has not been a huge problem, since there are no flowers in it at the moment. However, it gets Dallin very dirty and tends to get dirt and sometimes mud tracked in my house. It's also in the front yard where I have a hard time keeping an eye on him unless I am outside with him, which I just can't be as much as he wants to be out there. Last Saturday he rode his big wheel all the way down our street and into the busier cross street. A neighbor's daughter-in-law stopped her car and, not knowing who he belonged to, brought him back to the neighbor's house. In the meantime, I had gone looking for him up at the park east of our house--the opposite direction from where he had gone. Not finding him there, I started to panic. I was very relieved to find him in my neighbor's arms in my front yard when I got back. I wasn't so relieved to hear he'd been found in the middle of the street, but my prayers for his safety were answered, and I didn't have to panic for too long.

Okay, so that was the long explanation for why I spent most of today building a sandbox. I'm hoping to trade dirt for sand, and to entice him to stay in the backyard where I can fence him in and keep an eye on him out the kitchen windows.


I bought the sand at a local landscaping company--six 5 gallon buckets full for $5. Then we trekked to Home Depot where I actually had an employee ask if I needed help. Then he actually helped me--unusually good customer service for that store, in my experience. I got treated 2x6 boards, cut into four foot lengths, and weed-blocker fabric. Then we went home and got to work. Adam sanded the ends of the boards. Then we all got our painting clothes on and painted them the same color as the trim on our house. While the paint was drying, we dug out some sod by the back fence under the maple tree and covered the area with the weed-blocker fabric. Then I screwed the boards together and put them in place. My only regret is that I got 2x6 boards instead of 2x8's. It would have been better if it was a little deeper. Except for the painting, Dallin was not excited about this whole process. But when we started dumping the sand in, he was all over it. I think he played out there for close to two hours--until I carried him kicking and screaming into the house for dinner. Success! We'll see if it keeps him out of my flower bed though.

Here are a few more pictures of my project and my boys:








And, just for fun, a picture of Jared in the middle of his haircut tonight. If his hair weren't so curly he would have wanted to keep the mohawk. Glad I didn't have to fight that fight!