Week Ending 10-1-23 Building a Sandbox and Raking Hay

Miscellaneous Pictures

I’m starting off this week’s post with the miscellaneous pictures.

This is what happens when you ask two boys to pack up all the library books. They sit and read them!

Talea reading in bed one morning.

Spending the morning making Spencer some fancy birthday cards and getting them in the mail. He’s turning 20 next week!

One of our many chores in the fall: Throwing walnuts off the shed roof.

Ducks and Chicks

Here are a couple of this week’s pictures of our ducks and chicks who are now 4 weeks old.

Someone left the front door open and the chicks started walking right in.

Kaitlyn set up this large wading pool for the ducks and they love it! It’s so fun watching them splash and swim around in it.

We let a side lean down a little so the ducks can get into it as they are still too young to fly.

Friday: Project Day!

I’ve decided every Friday afternoon will be our project time. Of course things will come up, like this Friday we have company coming, but for the most part Friday afternoons are the perfect time to do a big family project together. Throughout the rest of the week we do little projects like clean out the coop, weed the garden, and stack firewood. In fact every day after lunch while Kait and I milk the kids do a 30 minute job. But I feel like we never have a set aside time to do the fun projects. Now we do! Our first project was building a sandbox.

I thought this would be a great place for an 8 foot sandbox. To the left is our mud kitchen (we’re going to make it better one of these project days) and to the right is our wood shed where the little boys already play cars in the dirt. It’s pretty shady here and not as much grass as other parts of our yard to content with. Plus, I can see the kids from the kitchen window and they’ll be able to hear the dinner bell.

Hoeing the grass out of the place the sandbox will go.

The finished frame!

Thomas giving the sandbox a good sanding.

Scooping up sand from around the spring to haul up to the sandbox. Trying to do this whole project for free! But hauling sand was definitely a lot of work!

While some kids were helping with the sandbox, others were picking up the million walnuts we have that fall all over the yard. It makes it hard to run around, especially barefoot, as you’re always stepping on something.

We stopped for a dinner break/movie party and watched a free Hometown episode while eating some frozen party foods (something I try not to let happen very often), Makenna’s yummy cheese ball, and some fruits and veggies. Then we went out to finish the sandbox, put away the tools, dump the walnuts, and close up the chickens.

Adding a little 14″ bench at the top.

The ground was uneven here because of some tar stuff stuck to the foundation of the cinderblock shed, so we couldn’t push the sandbox flush with it. So then I decided a little bench would be perfect. Thomas made the bench supports–each one custom to fit around the tar stuff. Then he screwed the planks I’d cut to the top.

The finished sandbox! The little boys quickly moved their car box right over and started digging in! Literally. Before we even filled it with sand, which we’ll do next week.

Leaves also quickly moved in, but ’tis the season. We have a cover for it and soon the leaves will all be off the walnut tree. I love how the bench area turned out and am so glad I thought of it.

We stayed out until dark and when we came in, someone suggested a popcorn party. How could I resist? We’d had a wonderful day working together as a family with not one complaint. I’m so grateful for each child, their talents and skills, their good attitudes, their helping of one another each and every day.

Dirty feet picture! From walking on the messy walnuts.

Saturday: General Conference and Raking Hay

The children playing conference bingo and doing other games while watching our church’s semi-annual conference.

Between sessions of conference we cut and gathered hay and straw for the chicken coop. Thomas drove a few kids to the top of the driveway collected the leftovers there where our neighbor cut and rolled our hay a few weeks ago. Makenna and Andy stayed down in one of our other pastures cutting the grass and broom straw by hand. They had a great time! I enjoyed seeing the wildflowers.