Schneiderville

Well, finally, here is Jackson's "park." Tom really outdid himself, along with some good friends and neighbors, getting this playset put together. Had we known what it was going to involve beforehand, I don't think we would have done it. That whole ground leveling thing was just craziness. We decided to go with a gravel base instead of mulch, and I think it nearly killed Michael and Brian and Tom who did the bulk of hauling it to the backyard in wheelbarrows! But it's done, it's going to be here for as long as we're here in this house, and Jackson could even get married up in the fort part.

Jackson likes playing on his "park," but he prefers to have somebody else on there playing with him. He doesn't like to play alone. He likes to get his digger equipment and dump truck down there and scoop the gravel out and fill his dump truck up. I guess we should have just bought him a pile of gravel and been done with it, huh?

Then the next outdoor project was getting a patio poured, stained and stamped. Well, here's a picture of that. We are really pleased with how it turned out. I think we will get years of use out of this thing. Money well spent, I hope. The border is a cobblestone look and the middle has been scored to resemble large tile. Now we have some landscaping to do, and quickly, because we have all this dirt piled up to the sides! I tell ya, it's never ending!

The concrete guy who did our patio, his name is Joe. I guess Jackson has heard his name so much coming from us, but the day they were here working on it, I was on the phone with Tom as Jackson and I were eating breakfast, and when I hung up, Jackson said, "That Daddy? That Joe?" He is a nut. Then today Joe came back over to fix a couple of spots and darken the border up a little, so Jackson saw him this morning, plus he heard me call and tell Tom that Joe was at the house. So out of the blue this morning, Jackson said "I love Joe." I think he aspires to be Joe someday, going job to job, operating construction-type equipment and driving a motorcycle. Ah, the life.

Until next time...