Who needs sand?

So Damian decided to work on the garden today, as we are making it bigger and better from what it already is.  We had to go out and get the top soil and we picked up the compost yesterday.  Got the top soil into the ute was a great price too so cheap.  Lukas decided he could help daddy and climbed into the ute with his spade and started digging but this turned into Lukas' play dirt, he was having a blast.  When they showed me I gave him his rake and he then wanted something else so i brought out his trucks his Aunty gave him a few years ago now for the sandpit and he had a blast.

Once Damian did up the part of the garden that he wanted to do this time around, there was some dirt left in the ute so we have decided to put the dirt in the sandpit clams so he had dirt to play with.  He will love this because after all he is a boy that's loves having fun and this keeps him happy for hours, I believe he was outside in the ute for a couple of hours playing.  It has a lid that will go over top to keep the cats out of it.

I'm very proud of what Damian has done in the garden cause its what i actually wanted in the first place.  Once the garden we have is finished we will sort that out with lime to break up the clay and then newspaper down to kill the weeds and then topsoil with compost again.  Will step by step that one up to with concrete steps down the middle so we can walk and pick the veges that grow.

This is how it looked Last year when we started making a garden.  Just a rectangle with the veges in it, the garden picked up well. 

Today our garden now looks like this.  All the stuff that is grown is in the garden which we made above, all the stuff that is new is what has just been done, including fitting in a blueberry tree.

The rest of that area will look like this too once its all harvested and getting ready for the next lot of veges and fruit.

We have started since the 1st Jan doing board games with the kids before dinner.  Todays game i would like to mention is a new game and no-one had played it before "priates treasure hunt"..  Now I was out in front, its very rare I win a game but yesterday I won "go piggy go" and today i was almost winning this game so excited.  But you see in the photos, that top row it has a black cross bones 2 spaces before the finish?  YUP well everyone was at the bottom of the board still and I was at the top and yup landed on that DARN cross bones, of course in the end i came last lol and Damian won.  I will get them next time :P

And of course todays photo challenge is Friends. This photo was taken January 2013 and we used for this photo challenge as my kids weren't around their friends today.  So this is my boy Lukas with his best friend Jayden

Big outside clean up.

Well today i decided to start on the outside yard as the lawns got really long and were mowed with no catcher, the weeds up fences were getting really long too, and well the gardens were over growing with weeds.

So i started on the front the first task was the weed eat all the edges and pull out all the weeds around the fences since they were long as.  You can see the piles that i made before cleaning up the piles

BEFORE

well after I did all the pulling of weeds

AFTER 

I did the weeding and mowing with catcher

 Then it was time for the two gardens down by my stairs, yup these got away from me pretty fast.

BEFORE

With my sister giving a hand, didn't pull anything out though and went home

AFTER

pretty proud of myself for this one, these weeds were a hard lot as the dirt wasn't very moveable and the bark just got in the way, but i did it.

BEFORE:

This garden is under Lukas's window and around the side of the house as you come down my driveway pretty much first garden you see on the right.
This one gave me lots of cuts and grazes from the ouch plants.

BEFORE.
Removed a lot from this garden, looks nicer now

AFTERMATH

This is what was taken out of the front ONLY, 10 bags and only one is full of lawn clippings, that is alot of weeds and crap that wasn't needed in my front yard.

Then i started on the backyard, I did most of the weed-eating around the fences out the back.  While I was weed-eating and pulling weeds at the same time, some of the ground felt a little odd while i pulled a weed out i found bricks buried deep and more are buried so will dig more out tomorrow.

Didnt get alot done out the back, while I weed-eating I pulled weeds to tider up an area at a time.  I have two flax plants out in my back yard and they were in desperate need of a clean up, so worked on the first one.

BEFORE

You can see its covered in weeds, i should of taken a photo of all angles of this cause MAN o MAN this was full with weeds, and dead bits of the flax so out it all came.

 AFTER

So much cleaner, another flax to go tomorrow

AFTERMATH 

This is what i have done so far in the back, now those that know my backyard its actually pretty large.

So tomorrow will be another day for me to be outside, i have so much left to do.
The other flax bush

Finish the weed-eating along fence line and down the bottom of the house

The weeding around the gas bottles and house
Weeding under the deck.

Then i have to mow and catch it all.

Will update tomorrow

Teaching (photo heavy)

Well today was a busy day, in fact alot of learning went on today.

Lesson one:

Go to the plant barn and teach kids which plants we need for our vege garden.

We brought home 

strawberries

zucchini

tomatoes

This went well, the kids were happy to pick the plants and pop them in the trolley

Lesson two:

Be quiet and eat your lunch so mummy and nana can watch a movie while we have lunch.

This actually went well, they sat ate their lunch then played with cars for a while, then went outside to play, which means we got to watch our movie.

Lesson three:

Strong wind = pegs fall off the line so the kids picked these up

Great job kids thanks

Lesson four:

Share with mummy.

Well I climbed on the seesaw next minute I had company

Lesson five:

Help plant the plants

The kids loved doing this and learning while so.  Was awesome to see

Here is what we planted

Strawberries

Tomatoes

Zucchini