spring time garden prep.

Yesterday Chris had the day off.

We like when Daddy has the day off around here.

There was no homeschooling and the day was spent outside getting ready for Spring.

We started breakfast with cereal and left over goodies from the Married’s Retreat we hosted over the weekend-- {more on that tomorrow}.

Hubby had me make a list of the things I wanted taken care of in the backyard.

I loved it!

Even the boys asked if we would prune the big avocado tree to let some sun in on their tree fort.

And with those branches, they made a new fort on ground level.

This has been a recurring problem: the boys have the tree house and are constantly making new forts out of whatever materials end up in the yard. Leftover plywood from church projects like the House of Horror, boxes from Costco, and stuff Daddy’s working on.

Of course, Sophia wants to know when Daddy is going to make a girl’s fort.

And why it’s not done yesterday.

So Daddy, being Daddy, got himself in more trouble saying he’d make one for Pearl's birthday-- he promised.

Now I’m excited to see what he’s going to come up with...

Even River enjoyed his first day out in the backyard, crawling all over the place exploring and investigating.

The day ended with the oldest three leaving for swim team practice and Charlie staying back with Daddy to burn up the old lattice he’d torn down earlier. The fire got so fierce that Daddy even stood by it with the hose in hand just in case. It was a great father-son moment for just the two of them.

When they had put out the blaze, Charlie, Daddy and some of the littles went to grab some pizza.

Good pizza.

One final note-- this honey-do list was part of his Valentine’s gift to me; I owned him for a day.

And by the way, he even had all the kids in bed close to 8:30... Hallelujah!

{The Sniper's hide-out}