What happened to my back yard

So, when we were building our house, the builder looked at our lot and recommended we put a lot of fill on it to raise the level of the house. We thought okay, we can do that. So, they hauled in lots of dirt and our house is on an ever so slight hill.

Why do I bring this up? Well, we’ve had lots of rain recently. And, my kids are getting really stir crazy. We do play in the rain somewhat, but it’s that chilly sort of rain where once you’ve been in it for a few minutes you’re feeling real cold.

Well, on the Sunday we got back into town the kids were playing in the family room as Jeff and I were playing on the computer (I know we’re bad parents, we weren’t completely paying attention).

Batman yells at us, “Hey look, something’s floating in our backyard!” Say again? Here’s what we saw:

This is the area where my kids mostly play, the back corner has a nice little dirt pile they dig in. This is also probably where Batman dropped a shovel on Princess’ head, and we almost had another ER trip.

So being the care-free parent I am, I of course called the kids out to come play in the water…..

“Mom the lawnmower is floating”

The flooding 2 years ago when we built the playscape was even worse. Then it was up to my knees and then a little bit. Of course, then it was 4th of July, and I could still feel my toes after wading in that water.

It was seriously cold. My solution was to come back inside and cuddle up in blankets. I think this was a good solution.

Princess had a blast the next time it rained (all of 2 days later I think), running around wit her goggles on, and telling me about the rain.

And we of course had to go get the mail, you never know what kind of suprises you will see.

Guess what we found!

I was working in the garden, trying to get one last thing done while the kids were taking their bath with Jeff. I looked over to the side and found this.

Can you see him hiding in there? We found a frog in our yard! I love frogs!

After their baths I called all the kids back out to come see the frog. I didn’t tell them what they were coming to see. They were so excited.

We tracked him down with flashlights and talked all about why he might be hiding there. They decided that was where his house was, and he was trying to eat the bugs.

Seriously, how cool are frogs?

But more on my backyard

We decided to build here because of the backyard we would have. It’s huge and it has this big gorgeous tree.

Underneath our big huge tree, we have all the little sproutlings trying to come up. At least I think those are baby trees trying to grow. One of the ways live oaks propagate is by sending runners up. It makes walking around barefoot there very painful.

We have a playscape that Jeff and his Dad spent a weekend building. It’s got room for 3 swings, a slide, and a climbing wall. For the longest time my kids wouldn’t go down the slide because it’s fairly steep.

Here’s their cousin going down the slide. This is how my kids used to insist going down the slide (that’s their younger cousin, and my sister in law Dawn).

I was so excited last Thursday when my kids actually took turns on the swings and were helping push other people. Here Superman and Older Cousin are taking turns pushing each other.

I’m trying to decide what to put in the third swing slot because Princess has rather painfully outgrown her baby swing. I don’t want a third normal swing because then I’d have to push 3 kids in swings, and that is very tiring.

Future Ticia 2020 says, we did put in a third swing.

This is what it usually looks like when my kids play in the backyard. They go play under the tree, and dig holes. They usually tell me they’re cooking.

We also have in our backyard, though I don’t have any really good pictures of it, 2 pear trees planted when the boys were born, and a pretty flowering tree of some sort planted when Princess was born.

I also have a garden where we found this guy (the frog up above). Sadly, I’m not a good gardener, that combined with the heat this summer and my garden produced a total of 4 sad little tomatoes, that didn’t really get eaten because they looked funny. However, my herbs grow like crazy. So apparently herbs love heat, and a lot of it. My thyme, basil, and feverfew (which I decided after planting that I won’t use after reading more on it, but it looks pretty) grew like weeds, so to speak.