Busy weekend

We had a fun weekend where we checked a lot of things off our to-do list.  It's so nice now that the weather is nicer, and we had a great Saturday to get things done before the rain came on Sunday.

But what better to way to start off the weekend than with a Friday night wood burn with hot chocolate?

The next morning, Lukas and Konrad helped mix the soil for starting tomato seeds.

We started three varieties of tomatoes this weekend.  It's so fun to check them every morning, give them a misting of water, and cover them up again.

After Tom and the boys borrowed a rototiller from Jeff, and picked up some of his extra raspberry bushes, Tom spent most of the rest of the day installing a new garage door opener.  Now it opens when we push the button, and it has the safety eyes to stop closing when a child or cat runs under it.  Whew!

I gave the kids haircuts.  Here's Natalie showing off the dusting I gave her hair.

This picture serves two purposes:  showing off their new haircuts, and showing off the free lumber from which the boys are removing nails (Dominik is eating popcorn, BTW).  A shock to Californians:  it's actually encouraged for people to pick up scrap lumber from building sites around here (the contractors put scrap wood in a box in the front of the job site).  So we are going to see if we can build our chicken coop entirely from free wood.  Now we just have to find free shingles for the roof and free siding!  I do expect that we will have to buy screws...

Tom installed a piece of wood in the laundry room, so we have an official "child measuring station."  We copied all the measurements from the door jamb from our house in California, and I need to transfer them to this one...but here's Konrad getting measured (just over 49 inches).

Lukas is moving the wood into storage in the shed.  Tom will probably build the chicken coop on the other side of the shed.

After dinner, I was shocked that Tom still had energy to roto till the garden area.  Here he is starting out, with the boys in the tree.  That tree is an apple, but it is all root stock so we are going to remove it sometime this year (and provide more sunlight for the garden).

Our garden is about 45' x 37', and Tom roto tilled the whole thing.  Now we have to add a lot of compost.

The other thing I did was to paint the step on our deck.  Several people had already stepped off it, not seeing that there is a step down, and almost falling...so now we can finally have people over without fear of them falling and injuring themselves!

I hope to post pictures of the tomato seedlings this week!