A LITTLE WORK, A LITTLE PLAY

This morning Tim and the big boys headed off to the church for Dudes, Doughnuts, and Dodgeball, Devon as a participant and Tim and Silas as helpers.  What they did for three hours is pretty self-explanatory. Meanwhile, I hung at home with Naomi and Teebs. We did exciting things like wash slipcovers, clean up the house, and watch movies.

The guys all came home, we ate some leftovers for lunch, then headed to some friends' house. Teebs got put down for a nap, then the rest of us got busy. We spent the next four hours working on their property and eating.  We gathered tons of fallen branches and made two huge piles of them, which then got set on fire and burned while we worked.  Here is some of the fruit of our labor.

When we reached our stopping point for the day we woke Teebs up, roasted hot dogs, then made s'mores while we sat around and chatted.  The poor little Ws were simply wasting away and we had to shove food in their mouths to keep them from collapsing.

They soon perked up, though.

I love yard work so much! It was great to be outside all afternoon and to be able to help someone else with a big project.  The exercise was a bonus. Doing squats as I pick up branches a gazillion times is way more fun than doing them in my living room and I'd much rather lift wood outside than weights inside.  I even got to take home a souvenir.  Jealous?

We finally said goodbye to this scene (my first panoramic, I might add) and headed home.

We braced ourselves for a rough evening, as some kids who needed naps didn't get one today, but it's been great.  All the kids took baths or showers, I made smoothies and popcorn for dinner (we ate late enough on the property that no one was starving, but it wouldn't have held us over until morning), and have been sitting around the table all night reading (Silas), playing games (Devon taught Naomi to play Solitaire and now they're playing other games), and just visiting (all of us).

All little Ws are going to bed early, I'm going to take a scalding hot shower and remove plant life from my hair, then crawl in bed with a book.

Pretty fantastic day!