Art and Cake

Found this in the yard, the last remnant of this last years Christmas tree:(

The weekend of Father's Day we baked Daniel a double layer chocolate cake and started the undertaking of the patio and the raised beds in the backyard. Our backyard has been a disaster since the day we purchased this house. The people that lived here before us couldn't grow grass in that backyard so I am not certain why we even tried. We did though. Daniel aerated, fertilized, seeded, added soil, watered, waited, watered again, waited and repeat. Sure, we would get beautiful bright green young grass shoots and our excitement would swell, all that hard work paying off! But then the dog would always find them the perfect spot to ether hike his leg and relieve himself on or the perfect spot to roll on to relieve his itchy back. The dog, the four trees that shroud our backyard in a blanket of shade, and the sandy/dusty soil was working against us. So the project begun. Lots of trips to the hardware store and garden centers that weekend, and in between we managed to stop at the little sculpture garden of a gallery in downtown Portsmouth. We were constantly passing the garden on the way to Maddie's school and she always picked out the "disco ball" sculpture so we stopped to get a closer look. The piece was called Spin and had CDs and records attached to it, I was surprised that Maddie recognized a record and told me it played music. We dont have records in the house so I dont know where she learned that. It is amazing what children absorb.

Warm and Water

The wildflowers/weeds growing in our front yard. 

Yay a water fountain! You can see Daniel's work behind Maddie.

The whirlpool created by the intake of the water fountain. This was the highlight of  Madeline's day. She has been fascinated with trying to make whirlpools in her little kiddie pool.

Maddie was a bit apprehensive on board the sailboat. There were random openings in the floor that men would pop out of now and then. Here she is looking nervously down into one of those openings that had a ladder down into the space below deck. I dont know if she was worried that she might fall down it or if someone might come out of it.

Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen!

Four days! Its only four days into summer and already I am longing for autumn, I am pretty certain Daniel is too. The new season has ushered in a lot of change with it. One such change is an overhaul of our awful backyard. Ugh lots of hard work, dirt and sweat. I will be posting pictures of that eventually when we get closer to finishing. In the meantime, we took a break a few weekends ago and went to the Harborfest celebration in Norfolk Va. in hopes of getting some great photos of the tall ships and their sails and some good food. Unfortunately, it insanely packed with people. Getting photos and food proved to be difficult but we did get a chance to step onto one of the ships and take a look around and eat some very greasy, very expensive fish and chips. All and all it was a good time, Madeline got to see a mermaid up close, play with a ship's wheel, and take in the sights and sounds of a water fountain downtown. The highlight of the day for her was the fountain's intake pipe that was creating a whirlpool. She was totally fascinated by it and she begged to go back and see it a second time before we left. Silly girl.