So let’s review: on June 22nd, a bunch of guys showed up and dug some fairly sizable beds in our back yard. On Friday, June 25th, a giant pile of mulch was dumped on our driveway. We had gotten a couple different estimates for having said mulch spread by people other than ourselves, but the price tag was hefty. The woman who did our landscaping plan told us 29 yards. Another estimate came in at 23 so I split the difference and ordered 25.

The night before “mulch day”, I stayed up late prepping a bunch of stuff that I thought would be handy in getting us up and out to the pile! This is Sunday, June 27th:

mulch day prep one: pre-made pancake batter in their super-favorite squeeze bottle applicator.

Move over Van Gogh – check out these artistic creations!

This big giant grill was acquired from Brian’s old company. They moved buildings and had a bunch of stuff “up for grabs”. I guess the execs used to make breakfast for the employees from time to time so – SCORE – he napped this beaut for the 554 and our pancake/grilled cheese needs!

Here are the boys a top the giant pile of mulch. It’s hard to put into pictures how incredibly large and daunting this thing was. Joel, who called the pile of sod that was removed from our yard the “VW-bug-sized pile of sod” likened this pile of mulch to a mini-van if memory serves.

So, for reference, you can see my mini van parked in the garage. If I pulled it out into the driveway, it would have been entirely hidden from this side of the mulch pile.

Mulch Day prep 2: Knox-blocks. I made a pan of Jell-O with Knox mixed in (makes it stiff and oh-so-fun to cut into shapes). I gave the boys cookie cutters and little spoons. That kept them out of our hair for…oh…like 5 or 6 wheelbarrows full of mulch (then Aiden and Brady made soup out of it…sigh)

Mulch Day prep 3: giant containers of (almost) full-strength kool-aide (a real treat compared to the usual watered-down fair that mom serves). Guess what was used for the Jell-O soup? Oh well…soup making took up another 5-6 wheel barrows of kid-time…but left us beverage-less.

Logan took the opportunity to play “safari”. It was so super cute…and continued to be super cute for fully 5 days after this one. I’m not kidding…he wore this shirt and hat (binoculars included) for 5 whole days. I washed it every night and thought I would put it away, but he insisted it was NOT so hot that he couldn’t wear his safari shirt…..every day! cute.

Ok…so we worked for about 3 hours that first day. We covered all around the house, but not the back beds. According to our neighbors, the pile still looked pretty much the same. The goal for mulch completion (this being the 27th of June and all) was July 10th…Aiden’s 4th birthday party at our house. As of this post (July 7th), we have had 1 more informal mulch day where I personally moved 12 wheel barrows during a random afternoon, Brian moved another 10 that same night. Then, we did another big push this past Friday, July 2nd and another 2 or 3 hours on Monday, July 5th.

reminder of starting pile:

This is what we have left right now: it seriously looks small, but there are probably 10-15 more wheelbarrows full in there. I started freaking out on Monday thinking there was NO WAY we were going to find places to put all this stuff, but I started spreading down the little mounds we made around the house today and I’m certain we’ll go through it. Also, BIG NEWS – we’re getting 5 (FIVE!!!) trees delivered and planted tomorrow. I’m so beyond excited!!! We’ll need more mulch for those plus 5 other plants arrived today, special order, from a nursery in Michigan because we couldn’t find them here. Again, Joel-the-ever-neighborhood-joker, informed Brian and I that we are major “horticultural dorks” lately. Guilty as charged!

…and now we turn to other news…

Brady (oh Brady!) has been giving us a run for our money on the sleeping front lately. This child, who used to take 3 hour naps like a champ, now pretty much won’t go to bed if he naps for more than 30 minutes. Some days we just skip it all together. This was our plan last Sunday when we, out of pity for the poor kids who have been watching us mulch for 2 weekends straight, took the boys to Toy Story 3. After the movie, we needed to grab some groceries. Brian took the boys to play in the toy aisle while I covered the shopping. When we met up, he was carrying a TOTALLY cashed-out Brady. We moved the groceries around and put my purse down as a make-shift pillow while we all finished up. I swear that I dug my phone out from behind his head to take this picture. Poor angel! If you’re wondering about his nose, he apparently took a digger outside when we had a sitter watch the boys last Saturday for an adults-night-out.