Family Reading Night

Each spring, everyone looks forward to Family Reading night at the school. The kids start preparing for this night weeks in advance as they all have the opportunity to take part in the huge book swap. For 2 weeks before the big night, the kids can bring in books that they want to donate to the book swap. For each book that they bring in, they will receive a ticket for a free book at the book swap!

Every year, Darrin bring in a huge pile of books from his ever growing collection and replaces them with "new" ones. However, in the last few years, he has been finding it harder and harder to find books that he wants at the swap - many of the books are for younger kids. He has always been an advanced reader and many of the books were just too simple for him! We figured that this year was going to be tough for him to find many books at the swap.

But then he had a great idea! John and I had recently reconnected with an old friend and found out that she has a 5 year old son that, at 18 months old was diagnosed with an in-operable brain tumor. As any young child, Jayson LOVES to read and play games. Darrin decided that instead of picking out books for himself, he was going to pick out books for Jayson and then we would send these to him. I was very proud of his generosity! When he went through the books on his shelf, he ended up with 2 bags of books to donate to the book swap - 48 books in all!!

Now, with Family Reading night upon us, Darrin was on a mission to find books for Jayson.

This evening was filled with all kinds of exciting events, including a petting farm, open mic night, the book fair, basket raffles and of course the book swap. I think most of the kids spent the majority of their time playing with the animals in the petting zoo - including a snake!

By the end of the night, we found about 5 books at the book fair (gotta love when they book fair features buy one get on free books!), bought a bunch of raffle tickets for the basket raffles and found 30+ books to bring home - some for Darrin, but most of them were for Jayson... another fun successful family event at the school. With this being Darrin's last year at this school, we are going to miss the many events that they put on for the kids!

The Spring Landscaping begins

Before...

Today was the start of our spring landscaping project. We are not really sure how long it will take, or what we will end up with in the end.... we are still trying to get through the planning. The above photo was actually taken in April 2006, but it was the best photo we had that would really show everything that was there at the beginning. The only really difference between the start today and this picture (besides the size of the trees) is that we actually removed all the bushes in front of the front window last fall.

This is the start of our journey to redo the front landscaping ourselves this year.

This morning was the first HUGE step to our new "curb appeal". We have been talking for years that we wanted to do something with the pine trees near the garage. They have become overgrown and are we are really not even sure what the rest of the landscaping around them was suppose to look like!

We found out that Nick just bought a new chainsaw and was looking for trees to cut down to play with his new toy... so he offered to cut down our trees! He would cut them down, but we had to take care of all the hauling.

We had already started removing some of the lower, smaller branches and were discovering the hidden "treasure's" that these trees held. Aside from the 2 pine trees, that was 3 other smaller trees that were trying to grow as well as 3 other various shrubs that probably provided some great curb appeal when they were first put in. Now, they were overgrown and starting to die.

Nick made quick work of these trees. As he was cutting the branches off, we started pulling them away into a big pile so that we could get them hauled away later. It was really fun trying to get the trees to fall int eh direction that we wanted. There was a light incline that the trees were on so gravity wanted to pull them right towards the neighbor's house!

We have some great kids in this neighborhood too! When they saw us starting to haul the branches and wood from the trees away, they all came over to help too! What kids (ages anywhere from 4 to 10) want to spend their afternoon hauling brush voluntarily???? Apparently the ones in our cul-du-sac! I will have to say that if it were not for their help as well as all the neighbors that also came over to help, it would have been an even longer day that it already was!

Several hours later... trees are gone and brush is hauled away... now just to get the stumps ground out so we can plant some grass!

The end results of our days work... (the photo is slightly distorted as it is a 180 degree composite photo).
Thanks again everyone for all your help!!!