A Girls Night

The 3 boys went to the Twins/White Sox game tonight, so it's just Aleah and I. She's doing one of her favorite things....taking a bath, so I thought I'd sit down and add pictures of our landscaping project. I tried to upload a video showing the "before" picture, but couldn't get it to work. Just imagine the entire dirt area filled with rock. When all is said and done it will probably be half the original size. We're hoping to be done with the wall by the end of the week. We'll see.

These are the only 3 plants we're actually keeping (besides the little tree in the middle)

We're now realizing we probably have too much extra dirt. Anyone need a little dirt? It's really good black dirt!
The start of the wall. It took me the same amount of time to get my one brick level as Trent's 6! Entirely too frustrating for me. I am getting a bit faster. When we went out to work this morning, the dirt was like cow manure consistency mud! And then it rained a ton today. I know we need the rain, but could it hold off now until the end of the week? Hopefully it's dry by morning, because that's how we're spending our day tomorrow.

Aleah

I should have posted on Thursday, but obviously didn't.....no excuses...I just didn't. Well the pink Backyardigans bag made it and Aleah thinks it's great. She loads it full before we leave the house each time and then hands it to me and says, "heavy". :) She is such a little girl. In fact just the other day her uncle Josh and aunt Amanda came over and brought her a bag full of dress up clothes and shoes!! She tried some of the princess outfits on and almost all of the shoes! She loves shoes!! Jewelry, doing her hair, mommy's makeup, smelly lotion, painted toenails, dresses, and babies. Loves them all!!

Now I just have to figure out how to store all the dress up stuff (and I know my mom and dad have more for her that will probably come at Christmas time!), so she can actually get to it and play with it. I did a little research last night and found something that I think will work, and the best part is....instead of paying the $189 for it, Trent is going to make it! Yeah for a husband that loves to work with his hands.

Speaking of working with his hands, time to head out to our favorite flower garden to start laying the bricks of the retaining wall. The bricks are on sale until Aug. 9th, but we leave for vacation on the 1st. Guess what we're doing this week? Hopefully getting it close to being done.

oops

In my last post I meant to say that now that we're done with the demolition we CAN put it back together and start seeing the improvements. Guess I need a proof-reader!

Does anybody else have children that live for the Backyardigans?? Aleah LOVES them, can name them all (Tatash - Tasha, ooo ooo - uniqua, Toe - Tyrone, Aus - Austin and Poe - Pablo), and loves to "sing" the songs. In fact the newest is to lay in the pack 'n play (which was originally set up for Miss Geneva) and watch Backyardigans! Really. She'd rather lay in a cramped 3x3 area, than on my bed. Whatever. Anyway, so knowing her love for them, I decided a couple weeks ago to go on ebay and see what they had. I quickly found this cute little pink Backyardigans tote bag. Bidding was done within the hour and no one had bid on it, so I graciously bid 99 cents! Guess what? I won. Sweet. So imagine my surprise when now almost 2 weeks later, I still haven't received it. Hmmmm. Check the email. Oh, it's been shipped.....from where?....China???? The seller says, "if you haven't received it within the month please let me know". A month? Ok, maybe I need to be a little more observant when I buy off of ebay. A little less impulsive. Hope I get it soon!

The rocks are gone

WE'RE DONE!! We finished moving all of the rock out of the flower bed! Trent estimates that both Monday and Tuesday we moved between 1000 and 1500 pounds of rock! 2000-3000 pounds total....no wonder I feel as if I've been hit by a truck. My body just aches. Not sure if we'll do much work on it today because of other committments, but now instead of demolition we can't start to put it back together and start seeing the improvements. I'll post pictures as soon as I figure it out. My plan is to have Carter help me with this blog - he really enjoys the computer and learning how to do new things (or figuring them out by himself). He is growing up so fast....he's starting middle school in a little more than a month. When did that happen? I know he's nervous and has a lot of anxiety about moving to the middle school. Please keep him in your prayers....that God will surround him and calm him in these last days of summer and as he starts school. Well, I guess that's it for now...I'm off to find a "puple dede" (purple blanket) for Aleah. She now distinguishes her blankets as her pink and purple one!

One Rock at a Time

Well, here it is...the first Moss family blog entry! I've wanted to start a family blog for a long time, but struggled with a name and whether or not I really should do it. So I'm jumping in feet first and going for it. You may notice the name changing eventually if I come up with something better! But for now, here are...."The Moss Minutes".

So far I do have to say, that this summer has been much better than last. Last summer we did have the excitement of moving into our new house, but we also dealt with myself and the kids all getting hand, foot and mouth disease (of course, I got it the worst!), 2 of the 3 kids getting the stomach flu, me getting another virus that layed me up for almost a week and we rounded out the summer with Trent getting that same virus (or so we thought), that actually was strep throat - which went untreated (b/c my test was negative) and turned into rheumatic fever!! Ick. Never to repeat that summer again!!! So onto this summer....no moving and NO sickness. We've had a fun summer of lots of baseball, a trip with the boys to Valleyfair, some swimming, lots of grilling, campfires, and just plain old relaxing. Now that we've done the fun stuff, it's time to do a little work. We have this rather large flower/plant garden that has gotten out of control. It's hard to mow around and wasn't very symmetrical, so......we're tearing it apart! I'm sure that our neighbors will be glad when it's done, too! Taking out all the rock, getting rid of plants, shrinking it, putting up a retaining wall, replacing the matting and putting in mulch. Errrr. Way more work than I anticipated. But I'm not much of a green thumb, so smaller and less plants will be good. We have worked for the last two weeks moving rock. Everytime I help I get so overwhelmed because there is so much, but today I remembered a devotional that my mom did recently. The whole point of it was to take things one at a time, because if we look at the whole picture, life or a particular task can get overwhelming. We have to rely on God's strength to be able to break things down and do them one step at a time. And so....today, as a family we moved one rock at a time!