Heaven

The kids are in heaven right now.  In my opinion, our yard is a mess.  In their opinions, it is a utopia of sand, shovels, holes, hills, and just overall good times.  No matter what, it won't last - I'm not sure they're ready to face that reality right now, so we'll just keep on keepin' on until the excavator comes back to backfill.

For the most part, the kids spend at least 4 hours outdoors each day, toiling away on the sand piles (we dug for the foundations and it was sand the whole way.) Some days it's closer to 8 hours, depending on the weather - we'll even have lunch on the porch.  But when they've been outside for hours and it's cold and they've come back in, they don't like to hear that they have to go back outside to see the concrete truck!  Here's the look Tom gave his dad when told he had no choice - he was going outside to watch them pour concrete whether he liked it or not.

Will is excited about it - here we have the crane with the bucket being filled by the concrete truck, ready to pour the footings!

Tom did enjoy it once he got outside, but again here's Will just loving the whole thing!

And here are my workers, taking care of business on the sand mountains.

My lovely Tom - this kid would work and work and work until I said I was exhausted, then he'd ask to work for just a few minutes more.  A part of me wonders why we're going to get an excavator back when I bet Tom would backfill the entire hole by hand!

And here's Will, looking angelic.  That means he's up to no good.

Here's the garage foundation (for anyone who is interested) - I gotta say, all that sand doesn't stay outside.  I can't wait for this to be done if for no other reason than to stop the sand from coming into the house and being tracked everywhere.  We got into our bed last night and there was even sand in our bed!

Tom is typically the foreman.  He's a working foreman, but he's in charge.  Here he is, telling Will what to do.

Here's Will on top of one of the piles.  They play through the afternoon and evening, and hate to come in for bath and bed!  They sure do sleep well!

I'll give the birthday update in a few days, but here's Tom's cake for tomorrow's party.  Tom loves classic video games, so hopefully he'll like his pac man cake.