The beginning of May

We will begin with a few of Aaron's Lego creations. He has become enamored with Legos. His favorite thing to do right now is get Lego books from the Library and try to reproduce things he sees in his books. 

An ice cream vendor stand.

Excavator

The front of a semi-truck complete with a fifth wheel hitch receiver.

Utility Police cart with a tailgate. I may or may not have helped him with this one :)

On our way out for church Alan spotted this little guy under the bench.

He was still there when we got home. The mama picked him up about five hours later.

An update on our tomato plant.

On May 9th our homeschool group had the end of the year award ceremony and picnic at San Gabriel Park. We all joined to have pizza and play for a few hours. The weather was beautiful, in the low 70's, perfect for watching kids run themselves sleepy. 

Oh, aren't they cute? Especially that big grumpy one who doesn't like to be inconvenienced to have his picture taken.

Pizza time.

After pizza and awards were passed out, the kids spread out all over the rec center and the park. A bunch of them went over to the soccer field and ran around for an hour. We (group of parents) were amazed and proud that our kids could have fun with no toys, balls, or anything, it was great. It was already way passed our normal bedtime when we left - they were just having too much fun to leave any sooner.

That same week... The corner of our yard closest to the gate and the porch was unusable due to poor soil and extreme sun exposure. Alan knew for a while that he wanted to convert it to usable space and had been playing around with some ideas. We decided to turn it into a rock patio area. 

The first step was to excavate and harvest boulders from the yard and use them to outline the space...

...including a fire pit. Then we cleared the area and he made it level.

And installed a series of drains.

In the time I was at Bible study one morning, Alan transported (with tractor) and laid all of the basalt rock to finish the area... that's why I have no photos of that part.

Finished product.

We were able to christen the fire pit once before summer set in.

As usual, Hayley oversaw the entire process. After all, it is her domain.