Backyard is Clear

At the beginning of the summer, our lawn mower broke. I'm guessing it was probably the old gasoline that was in it, as I only semi-recently learned that gasoline gets old. Needless to say, we are new to maintenance of home and small machinery. So, I kinda looked at new lawnmowers at Costco, but then I thought ugh, we'll just end up breaking that one... cause we don't know how to take care of them!! Did I tell you our freaking new snowblower broke and we weren't able to use it at all last winter?!?! (Note to self, we should take that to the shop before it snows this year!) Well, instead of buying a new lawnmower, we've hired out the yard this year. One morning as Corey left for work, he saw a guy doing yard work and turned around and ask him if he was available for work and brought him to our house to ask for a quote. Marcos has been our lawn guy since. He's great!! He mows, he edges! He leaf blows and he hauls away. And he's dependable! I recognize that most hired help is, but the kids aren't, and since they've been doing the yard up until now, this is a welcome thing to know that it will be trimmed on Thursday mornings. The kids were telling me that the would have showed up too if we paid them like we're paying Marcos. I said we would have if they had done as good as a job as Marcos! Anyway, so it's not Thursday, but Marcos came today and the worked and cleared out the back yard, and it's like a new place. He was careful with the milkweed. I've thought before that in our life, we don't have time to plant flowers, but I would just like to be able to get the weeds gone and see the dirt. Thank you Marcos for helping us see the dirt again!!

He worked for over 7 hours, and then he hauled it all away...

We like Marcos. This morning I was giving him a check and he was like "I'd like to make a nice place for your family, you have 3 or 4 kids?" and then he paused, waiting for an answer... "We have... 12..." and his jaw dropped. That's the usual reaction, so my immediate response to get the conversation moving again is "Here's a picture" (I keep it handy on my phone). So I told him Joseph is in Guatemala, he's 19, the baby is 7 months. And that reminds me, we need family pictures again soon! I think we'll do it in October after I get my braces off, yay. But I don't know what to do for Joseph... I don't think I'll do a cutout, but I'm wondering if we have a picture of him in a frame, or is he just not there? I guess we can do one picture of each and we'll see how it looks with both? What else has been going on today. Daniel went down for his nap today like a good resistant toddler he is (aka said "NO!" until he collapsed.

Our two caterpillars are in their last phase and are being very good caterpillars.

We've had no drama at all this year. Two caterpillars is probably the right amount for a stress free experience. But I'd still like to have a great monarch year like we did in 2017.

So the caterpillars are resilient enough to hold now, but they mostly just played dead when we picked them up. They curl up as tight as they can in a little ball...

"I'm not a caterpillar! I'm a little rock! Just put me back in the bushes please!!!" Daniel was and is a very careful toddler, but I still get nervous. I trusted Lily with him a little more, cause she's been doing this for years!

And two more things... I was in the basement for a while today with the little boys. They like to go down there so Owen can destroy the things the girls are working on (sorry girls.) I found this little lego robot and got a kick out of it. I want to keep it on my shelf, I think it's so funny and cute.

I'm guessing this is a Wesley creation. And, with the start of the school year, I'm happy that I've got my morning routine back in place. I've been going outside on walks, and I thought this morning that I'll try to get one picture for my lovely world blog every morning that I go out, if I can. That's the goal anyway.

I chose the mosaic layout for that blog cause I just like seeing all the photos of flowers together, so pretty. And I also started that blog so that I could have a place for my aspiring photographer photos without overloading the family blog like I have a tendency to do! (Here's a few links to a few... more... examples.