Movin' Dirt

This was a successful weekend working on the yard. Because of the holiday, we had four full days to work and accomplished a ton. Eric had fun driving the Bobcat to level the yard. I even had a turn and moved a few strips of dirt. I'm not too happy about having to take down the fence to get the Bobcat in, but I am realizing it was the only way for us to level the yard.

Me having fun driving the Bobcat.

I hope the fence goes back up soon.

We underestimated the amount of dirt we had and ended up needing to order a dumpster. We moved approximately eight tons of dirt into the dumpster, along with some miscellaneous items we've been meaning to get rid of.

We moved about two-thirds of this pile into the dumpster.

That's a lot of dirt!

We spent the rest of the weekend measuring and digging a trench for the retaining wall. It won't happen before we leave on vacation, but I'm hoping we will be able to put the wall in soon after returning. Eric had to dig out the old sprinkler system, so we also have those trenches.

I also researched and contacted a few companies to look at redoing the deck. After spending so much time around it, we are noticing it is much more unstable than we realized. I think it will be good to do everything at once. I was concerned that having the lower part of our yard look really nice would emphasize how bad the deck looks. Even though we are nowhere close to being finished, it feels good to accomplish something. Not only are we saving money, but it's easy to get in a workout everyday.

I am thinking this would be a good project to showcase in my classroom this year to show how math can be used in the real world. I think I'll post some of the in progress pictures along with open ended questions, just to get the kids thinking and to perhaps realize that math can be applied in real life.

I finished booking the last of our Hawaii activities, and am really looking forward to my extended trip in Washington. In addition to surf camp, we will visit Pearl Harbor, attend a luau, and snorkel. I also feel good about the list of free activities I found that we can fit in whenever we would like. There's something about the anticipation beforehand that really adds to the fun of going on vacation.