A hard days work

My muscles are sore, Brandon's back is aching, we're all lounging around in pajamas freshly showered and bathed and full of Chinese take out... its been a good day! Peyton and I began our day at the gym. It was my first day back since I was pregnant with Peyton. We both had a great time! Peyton gets to go to 'kids club' while I work out. He loved it!! At first I wasn't sure it would work out for us. I can watch him on a tv in each room of the club and since I was on the treadmill most of the time today I watched him almost the entire time he was there. Because he isn't two, he had to start in the 'infant area' which is fairly large area of a really big room. Its fenced off and has lots of baby toys. Walkers, jumpers, etc. Toys Peyton grew out of over 6 months ago! But because he wasn't two, he had to go in there. I saw him trying to get out of the gate, messing with the latch and I was sure he'd figure it out and open it. He was very obviously not having fun and I was afraid if that was how it was going to be for him we couldn't continue to go. Well finally they let him out to play with the big kids on the slides and play houses. He had the best time!! I could tell even on the little tv that he thought he was big stuff playing with the big kids!! (And he was!) I spent most of my time refamiliarizing myself with the gym. Its been quite a while since I've set foot in the building! Kathy was with me, she's considering joining so we had a good time just messing around. Then we came home and got Brandon up (he decided he wanted to sleep in on his day off) and headed out to rent the equipment we'd need for the garden. The first tool we needed was a sod cutter. That was quite a machine!! It took some fanageling to get it and all of us in the Yukon but it all fit. When we got it home it just about killed Brandon coming out of the Yukon but he did live. Brandon cut the sod and I rolled it up. Peyton 'helped' by throwing loose grass in the old kiddie pool we still have in the yard. I did find it a little humorous that I painstakingly pulled up the lawn that just last year we were thrilled to even have. Our lawn guy got grass to grow last year where we hadn't had it. And today we spent most of the day pulling it up! Several hours later, we finally got all of the grass up and Brandon and Peyton went to get the tiller. That one came out of the Yukon okay but I think it just about finished Brandon off to till the garden. But it's done. We have a good size garden area ready to be planted in a couple of weeks. I'll keep it moist until its time to plant. We've had a serious drought here this winter so it will take a couple of weeks to get it ready to plant. Tomorrow we're supposed to till the areas where we will transplant the sod that we pulled up today. While we have the tools we also decided to finish off some areas of the yard we've been meaning to tackle. I think we'll all be ready to go back to work on Thursday just to get some rest!! By the way, Home Depot has a wonderful tool rental department if you ever need a tool just for a day or even a few hours. If you look anywhere near inexperienced, though, they might chuckle at you as you sign your life away. Brandon and our Home Depot guy are good friends now. He's talked us through this garden prep business all day today! Oh, and for those of you keeping track, I saw NO snakes today!! I really can't believe it! Every time I pulled up another line of grass I was sure I would find one. Instead I found gillions of earth worms but for some reason those don't bother me.

Brandon letting Peyton help him put the sod cutter away.
Brandon tilling in front of our fantastic fence. It will soon be disguised by flourishing plants!

It doesn't look like it but this is the finished product, all cut and tilled twice. And there's the beautiful fence again!