Backyard fun!

When we were looking for our house, we had some criteria for what we wanted, how many bedrooms, etc... but above those on our "list" were the backyard criteria. We already had a house that we liked, but we wanted a BIG yard with a pool. This is not an easy thing to find. It's not incredibly hard in this area to find a pool- but most of the pools we saw were right outside the backdoor (boo) and left very little yard to play in beyond that.

So when we found this house, we were sold. We've had big plans for the yard, and it is coming together a little this year. We are having lots of fun!

Jon especially loves to be outside. He cries if you go out without him or when he has to come back inside. To bad I can't just let him roam free out there, he would be in heaven!

Chris is funny, he loves to play outside, but he gets tired of it and "too warm"... well it is in the 90's and wayyy humid lately, so I guess it's understandable.

In June, we finally decided on the perfect playset. We'd been shopping around, considering all the options and finally decided on one. Dave was ready to hire someone to put it together, but then he and his dad decided that it would be a fun project. But it took FOREVER. Each step was tedious and they didn't have a whole lot of time in the evenings to work on it, so it came along slowly... after a while Dave said we should look into hiring someone... that next week our new lawn guy was mowing for the second time and had obviously noticed the playset that wasn't getting very far since his last visit. He told me that they also put those together for people, so we went ahead and hired them, and they started that afternoon. The next day, it was done! The boys were so excited, they LOVE it!

Lots of swinging and playing...

We had to call and tell Daddy all about it...

The same week, we also FINALLY got our pool open for the summer... better late than never! There were some problems with the water, and the dang pool store people are USELESS sometimes. They had us do several different things for some stains on the fiberglass, and just screwed the water up. We finally hired someone to come out and fix it, and after a couple of weeks it was ready. We are loving it. Our new routine on most nights is to swim from dinner till bedtime.

When we aren't in the big pool (that would be during the daytime- no way can I take them all swimming alone at these ages) they are loving the little pools. We got an inflatable spraying crazy pool for the boys (which I would not recommend, it is not designed well!) and this little wading pool that Jon could play in for hours! Such fun and it keeps us from roasting in this muggy heat.

Yeah, it's a party in our backyard, who wants to come and play?!?