If you give a ....

I haven't read the books lately. I should make it a point to read them to Oliver this summer, but years ago I read the book If you give a mouse a cookie and others by the same author many times to Ian and Nadia. Although the cycle may not typically bring us back right where we started as it does in those circular books, it does seem in life that many times one change leads to many other changes. I was thinking about that in reference to our deck. Installing a new deck meant that first of all we needed to remove the previous deck. While working on that project Paul had two accidents. First, he cut the line to the air conditioner outside. Secondly he got his Dad's pick-up truck stuck in our yard. A neighbor who had a vehicle with four wheel drive had to pull the pick-up out of our yard while the kids and I were at church. This past weekend Paul repaired the line to the air conditioner. Thankfully we hadn't needed to use it while it was out of commission for the last two weeks. The long, deep trenches in our yard have made mowing the lawn more difficult for me the past two weeks as it was hard to get the lawn mower over the trenches. On Sunday on our way home from church I bought some topsoil. Yesterday and today I spread 320 pounds of top soil. 280 of those went into the trenches. I haven't filled all of them yet, but it should be much easier to mow the lawn later this week than it was the past two weeks. I used the other 40 pounds to fill in where we had removed a square stone that had been at the bottom of the steps of the old deck. Because our new deck is a few feet shorter than the old one, it meant I needed to spread grass seed and fertilizer and such in the hopes that grass will start growing in what is now bare dirt. Also, there had been a large forsythia bush at corner of one of the ends of the old deck. With a shorter deck that bush looked like it was sitting in the middle of nowhere. I hacked it down and started the process of digging out the roots. Paul finished digging out the roots on Saturday night.

Since I knew that Paul would need to borrow his Dad's truck again to haul away the last few pieces of lumber from the old deck plus the forsythia bush, I decided to clean out the shed and also trim one branch off of a tree in the front yard that was in my way when I was mowing the lawn. Some things that the previous owner had left in the shed (ex. stain for the deck and  privacy lattice for the deck) are now loaded in Paul's dad's truck for Paul to dispose of along with the wood and bush. Since our grill was flipped over when a tornado was in our area earlier this spring, Paul felt we should also dispose of the grill. We also loaded that into his dad's truck. I was hoping to add the red truck to the load, but there wasn't room. It hasn't worked for more than two years. I'd like to say that the projects that are happening because we got a new deck are complete, but that's probably not the case. I am trying to decide what to do about the areas on the right and left side of the deck. I'm considering buying some stone to put down. Partially it will depend on what we decide to do with the shed. I'd like to get rid of it. The estimate to replace the shingles on the shed was $700. Nope. Not happening. It hit me today I should have asked him for an estimate on repairing the one window that has been broken for a year as he does windows. If we got rid of the shed, I'd  move the trampoline to where the shed is now and then I wouldn't put any stone down as I'd just have that be grass. If we are keeping our dilapidated shed, then I think I'll get stone as I don't want to try to mow in between the deck and trampoline.

Some of the projects I worked on today had nothing to do with the fact we recently got a new deck. I finished weed whacking (the battery had died on Saturday before I was finished), power washed the fence, cleaned the outside of the mailbox, made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, stained some windowsills, cooked dinner, etc. Two years ago I cleared a patch of grass by the swing set so that I could plant blueberry bushes and strawberry plants. A neighbor also gave me some tomato plants. Some animal ate all our blueberries the past two years. The strawberry plants didn't come back in 2018 so we never ate any blueberries or strawberries from our yard. The tomato plants did come back last year. The guinea pigs and I were the only ones eating the tomatoes as Paul and the kids don't like tomatoes. So today I dug up a bank of dirt I had created when I made that garden bed in 2017 so I could put dirt on top of the mulch. I'm hoping grass will grow there again. As I was digging I accidently started to dig up a burrow for some small animals. I am not sure if they were baby moles, voles, rabbits, or ??? I didn't injure them and tried not to destroy their home. I had the kids come out and see what animals I had uncovered. I was wanting to take a picture and text it to Maurice to ask him what they were, but of course I couldn't actually do that. So sad.

I also put up the Junior Range badge displays in each of the kids' bedrooms today. I saw that the National Park website sold a canvas for this purpose, but I bought one on Amazon that was half the price but was just a plain canvas (same size but no logo on it). I glued the large Junior Ranger patch in the middle that they were given at Steamtown, and now the canvas looks even more similar to the one the National Park sells! I dug out the badges the kids have earned and put them on each canvas. There is a LOT of empty space on each one for additional badges! I added a few other pins to each one that were not from national parks such as the pin they got at Disneyland for doing Jedi Training, a pin from the 2017 Little League World Series, a tag from Fort George in Canada, etc. I got out a hammer and nails and hung them from the walls. There was a space for a dowel rod, but I just nailed them up to keep the cost down. I look forward to seeing those canvases fill up with badges from a wide variety of National Parks over the coming years! They should be earning another one this Wednesday at Valley Forge.