In all honesty...I'm pretty much at the end of my rope with the whole "summer holidays" season. Love the sun, love the activities. But keeping three boys from seriously driving me insane is getting hard. We did really really well for the first two months. Now everything is "boooooorrrrrinnng" and we're picking fights over things like who sits where again. I think we're all just sick of being together day and night and need to see some other people.
Our back deck is built! did I not mention this before? During the mayhem of the wedding week, my brother and dad came and put up our freshly sanded and stained boards. It looks wonderful!

They came this week to put the stairs up, and as we tossed ideas around, we determined that it would be best to jackhammer up all the current back sidewalk as it slants into the house, re-level the ground, make a brick patio on the ground that the stair can come down onto.

In the photo above, you can see where the current sidewalk is...well it's covered with wood and a bbq tank. There will be bricks starting from the edge of the deck coming all the way over to the back gate and covering up most of the nasty dirt/grass you can see in this picture.
Yikes! We just signed up for another huge project when we haven't even finished filling our hole or fixing the front retaining wall. We're hoping to get started and finished all this stuff before the snow flies. Lots of work ahead.
ONE DAY our yard will be beautiful. And mostly level. With grass.