The Magical Back Yard

The dog days of summer continue around here, kinda good, kinda hard work for mom, but the weather has been just lovely.  Troy and I have been putting rather a lot of work into our back yard lately - perhaps you think any work we're doing should be going into the interior of our house, but you would be so wrong.  Look.  Just LOOK at this:

We've de-cluttered the back porch, purchased some comfy chairs in which to hang out, planted herbs in pots and hung flowers from the beams.  Troy hung up our hammock. We have planted vegetables. Troy is regularly mowing the lawn, which I appreciate so much because it's fun to hang out there when the lawn is so nice.  He is also doing this amazing thing - he's building a tree house!  So far it's just a platform but the kids already adore it.  And go outside. A lot.  And stay there.  See?  It's heaven.  Then today seemed to actually get warm enough to pull out the good old and extremely aged blowup pool.  We put about  5 inches of freezing cold hose water in it this afternoon just to keep the kids happy and in their usual style they enjoyed those five little inches to their very fullest.  Bouncing, splashing, competetive speed leaping....and Troy and I just stand on the back porch smiling and taking pictures and biding our time until the inevitable tears need mopping up.  This evening it was from Bundle, who's feet were little blocks of ice after an hour in the water.  She survived after much...bundling.  And snuggling. 

So I know.  If you've stuck with this blog for any length of time, you may not be super excited to see another round of kids-playing-in-the-pool pictures, but Troy and I just can't help ourselves.  I think photos like these are what get us through those fabulous months such as....January.  So, sorry, for our own future-sanity, we're posting more pictures.

 Don't worry, if that had hurt as bad as it looks like it does, I wouldn't have posted it.

Speaking of Bundle, she had an episode with the hose the other day.  Excellent photo opp.