The Deck is Formed

The deck was finally formed out last week. This is where they make all the outlines for where the concrete will be poured. We can finally see how much room we will have for patio furniture and lounge chairs. Of course, it's never enough! Be sure to look in the pool photo album for more photos..

The deck was actually poured on Monday, but I haven't yet taken photos. Stay tuned!

Shotcrete and Waterfall...

Last week we had the shotcrete done - kind of a fascinating process. At 5am the workers arrived and began pounding and pounding. As I lie in bed, I couldn't figure out what in the heck they were pounding! I'm sure the neighbors were LOVING us that morning. Turns out the workers were pounding stakes into the ground all around the perimeter of the pool so they could surround it with a tarp. I was intrigued, yet disappointed that I couldn't see what they were doing! Fortunately at one point they took down part of it so I could peek in. They were done by about 10am! Now it was our turn - for the last 5 days we've had to water the pool down about every 2 hours (not at night). That was to ensure the concrete didn't cure too quickly and result in a lot of cracks. However, since the temps have been extremely high (115+), I'm sure it cured quicker than normal. We still did our job though and I don't see many cracks. After it was partly dry, we all got to finally walk down into the pool.

Monday, the rock waterfall was installed. Right now it looks like a big pile of rocks! But it will be beautiful once it's running (and yes, that big pipe will be cut off!) with plants around it.

The next step is the decking. I'll be so glad to get some of the mess around there cleaned up!

We have steel!

We got the rebar/steel put in last week. We've spent this week waiting for an inspection to get ironed out. Had to play a bit of the squeaky (throwing in a little whiny with it) wheel to get it done. Tomorrow we get shotcrete (concrete that is sprayed into the pool)! I'll be taking lots of photos of the process...probably from the window. I certainly don't want my camera to get sprayed with concrete! Well, me either, for that matter. ;)

We have a hole!

So pool construction finally began this past week. It took 2 days to dig it and what fun we had watching! The boys (even Grant) got a kick out of the excavator and the bobcats - what boy wouldn't? The entire outside of the house is covered with a layer of dirt. Yuck.

I've been taking photos (of course) from before we even started doing anything to the yard, so I've posted a few of them in the Building a Pool photo album over to the right.

Plumbing was done today. Steel work will be next week. Yippee!

Summer so far...

The boys got out of school on May 25th. We bought a Wii on May 28th. That was their reward for doing so well in school this year. Wyatt brought home straight A's again, Grant retained his #1 ranking in his Freshman class by bringing home straight A's too. And Kent and Kurt still got straight checkmarks! So glad they get regular grades next year.

Grant started summer school (he is taking his 2nd semester of PE to get it out of the way) on May 30. He came home with a jammed right hand. Passing League for football started on May 31. He came home with a "messed up" left wrist. June 1 found us at the nearest Urgent Care finding out that he broke his left wrist and his right pinkie. Oy. Yes, 3rd year in a row for a break on the left arm appendage somewhere.

We were all heartbroken and bummed. Grant's physical activity schedule for the summer was intense. Five hours a day for PE, plus working out in the weight room (required attendance for football), speed training twice a week, and passing league once a week for 3 hours. Monday, June 4th (do you like all the dates? I want to be sure you stay focused here...), we went to the ortho. The wrist got casted (is that a word?), the pinkie was OK. I was able to get permission for Grant to continue in PE with limited participation, but no-go on the football activities, so he is out for 3 weeks. We are all surviving.

In other news...we are putting in a pool! Yes, we've lived in this house for many years, in the Arizona hell-heat, with no pool to jump into and refresh ourselves after coming home from our heat-stressed trip to the grocery store...or walk to the mail box. We couldn't get our act together early enough to get it scheduled to be finished in time for summer, so we just elected to be under construction during the summer months. Yes, we love having dirt and dust blown into our house in the depths of the summer heat. Anyway, we are hoping it gets done...just in time for the boys to start back to school! Yay. Heh. Actually, it might get completed before that, so we are crossing our fingers. But not holding our breath.

With a few movies, many play dates, and lots of Wii...that's been our summer so far.

Almost Over!

One more week of school and we are done! I'm as ready as the boys for the year to be over. The month of May is so busy with school alone, then throw in baseball, spring football, and us all getting the stomach flu, and we are DONE!

Baseball is almost over also. Wyatt's last regular game is tonight (tournament next week) and Kent and Kurt's last game is tomorrow. Since I've been remiss in posting baseball pics, here's one of each: As always, it's been a fun season, but long.

One more picture, the boys and I on Mother's Day - the boys have grown so much in the last year!

OK...off to summer we go!

...I'm happy I'm a scrapbooker/crafter/hoarder. Today was bug habitat day. And lucky me, I got to oversee TWO of them, not just one. And double-lucky me that one of them has scorpions and snakes in it. Only double-NOT.

So Kent and Kurt chose an insect, or in Kurt's case, an arachnid, about which they had to research, write a report, and create a habitat.

Kent chose the mosquito - one of the worst insects to deal with where I used to live...humid Missouri. The habitat had to have some of the food chain, so as you can see, the bat is there to eat the mosquitos, and the mosquitos are drinking nectar from the flowers. Kent says mosquitos are mostly nocturnal so of course it had to be night time.

And Kurt chose the scrorpion, THE worst creature to deal with where I live now...Arizona. Did you know that corpions can eat snakes and snakes can eat scorpions? All together now: EEEEEWWWWWWWW!" We used burlap to represent sand - much less messy. And of course, being a house of all boys, it wasn't tough to come by some snakes and scorpions, as well as a beetle for a snack.

Putting these together gave me my Reason #159 (or something like that)...while my friends were out spending lots of money for materials for these habitats, I'm proud to say that I spent under 8 bucks, only for the real cacti. I had everything else in my stash. This is also the reason that I refuse to get rid of my ancient Making Memories letter stickers (have them in every color!), and any papers that look realistic, even if neither of them will ever have a chance to grace one of my scrapbook pages. I'm also grateful for my "experiementation" phases of scrapbooking so I own things such as the glass bubble marbles and the silk flowers, as well as my other hobbies where I picked up things such as burlap and smooth rocks.

This started out as something I was dreading...I actually had to touch those fake snakes and scorpions and they gave me the willies. But having all the fun supplies to create it, including the tools to put it together: spray paint, stapler, and GLUE DOTS; made it so easy we all 3 ended up enjoying it.

Just a note: I'm way overdue in putting up baseball photos, so I'll get to that in the next few days. The season is flying by and we had our first really hot day game yesterday. One hundred degrees and counting!

Long time no update

It always makes me nervous when someone links to my blog from theirs and I haven't updated mine for so long! Ack! Just been really busy...scrapbooking stuff and yearbook stuff and kid stuff and work stuff...you know...that kind of stuff.

Anyway, so since both Kitty and Karen linked to mine, I thought I'd better at least let everyone know I'm alive.

And since they were both posting about AI...I might as well say I'm watching it and kind of enjoying it. I do miss Season 5, however. I don't really have a favorite yet, which is very odd for me, but much, much healthier! I like Blake, and hometown girl Jordin, and I even like Haley and Phil. I predict Stephanie goes home this week. I'm bored with Melinda and have been bored with Lakisha for a long time. Gina is OK, Chris S. is OK...don't like nasally Chris R. much, but he can stay awhile.

I thought this week - British Invasion (I have to put that in case I don't update until, like, well, final 2 or something...) was really good and I can't wait to download the studio versions of these songs at the AI site this week! Loved many of the songs (Melinda and Lakisha = *coughcopoutscough*)

In other Larson news...Little League baseball has started up for us again. Went to the first scrimmage for Wyatt last night and loved it. Can't wait until we start real games next week! Wyatt is in Majors and a Ranger and Kent and Kurt (normally, I'd just put K&K, but in this post, you might think I'm referring to Kitty and Karen ;) ) are doing Farm League again and are once again the Mets.

Grant is doing track at school. He chose to do pole-vaulting (I think because then he doesn't have to run much). I do have to say it's fun watching him do it :

And that's about it for us. Spring is upon us, the tortoises are awake and back in their pen and flip-flops are on my feet. Yay!

Oh, and a quick update...I've finished the first 4 Harry Potter books. I just couldn't put them down! I'm trying to hold off on 5 and 6 for a while, but as when a new HP book comes out...I really can't wait to read them! Maybe I'll watch the first 4 movies first.

Wildlife World Zoo

Since the boys and DH were all home today, we decided to finally do something we had thought about many, many times - go to the Wildlife World Zoo! We regularly go to the Phoenix Zoo with our annual pass and we love it. But the Wildlife Zoo has the animals up close and personal. It's quite a drive for us, and more expensive, so it will never replace the Phoenix Zoo, but it's a fun special treat.

The weather was horrid, however. It rained almost the whole time we were there and dangit, I forgot to bring my jacket! I was so worried about getting jackets for everyone else, I went off and forgot mine. And I paid for it dearly as my teeth chattered and the wind blew and I quickly got wet. Thank goodness my shirt had a hood on it so I could at least cover my head when it rained. Of course, by the end of the day my hair was matted down anyway.

One of the big attractions there is the albino white alligator, one of the rarest animals in the world. It doesn't survive very long in it's natural habitat because it has no way of protecting itself from the sun. So the ones that get past infancy are captive, like this one: Looks like a statue, doesn't it? I stood taking photos of it for several minutes and it never moved a bit. I was beginning to think it was a statue! But later we walked by it and it had changed position, then it moved. So it's real. Heh. It's probably about 5 feet long.

Their entire reptile exhibit was pretty cool. Over the years, being a mom of 4 boys, I've had no alternative but to reconcile myself with looking at snakes and lizards, etc. They don't creep me out quite as much as they used to, but I won't be surprised if I have nightmares tonight!

Goings On

It's been a while since I've updated this thing, so...just the facts and a little fluff:

• Grant started Track last week - apparently he is doing pole-vaulting. Should be interesting.
• We recently found out Grant has an academic ranking of 1 in his freshman class of 752 students. We are very proud of him, to say the least!
• Kent and Kurt just ended their winter soccer season. We get to sleep in tomorrow - YES! They start baseball in a few weeks.
• Wyatt just got drafted to the Majors for Little League. He is very excited because he got on a team with some of his good friends. And I'm very excited because the mom of one of his good friends is my good friend! It's going to be a great season!
• I just got back from a quick trip to Las Vegas, with my sister, this past Monday. Of course, it was for work, not play. ;)
• I've been watching American Idol - have you? I haven't yet picked a favorite, but I'm leaning.....very excited now that it's down to the Top 24!
• On the other hand, I've decided NOT to watch The Amazing Race All-Stars edition that begins Sunday. I came across some spoilers (oh, OK, I went hunting for them) telling who the final 3 couples are and sadly, it's not worth my time to watch it based on those couples. While disappointing, because I had been looking forward to it for years, I'm also relieved not to have that commitment. Besides, Colin and Christie aren't in it - they are having a baby! And it just won't be the same without them.
• Kurt found the first scorpion of the season tonight in our downstairs bathroom. You have no idea how much I HATE those things and am just sick that we've already found one inside and it's not even March!

Also, because of this:

I've started re-reading the Harry Potter books. I just finished the first book - The Sorcerer's Stone. It has been about 7 years since I read it. It brought back some fond memories. Kent and Kurt were about 1 year old at the time and they were going through a phase where I had to sit in their bedroom until they went to sleep at night. That phase started when we were visiting my family in Missouri. The babies were in an unfamiliar room, to them, at my parents' house, and they cried like crazy if we walked out of there after putting them down for the night. They each had their own crib, heirlooms that my uncle, the carpenter, had made when my twin brothers and sisters were babies - my mom of course, had saved them and they had already gone through many grandchildren, just not both at the same time. So DH took to lying down on the full-sized bed (where Grant and Wyatt would sleep - all 4 boys in the same room - OY!) until the twins fell asleep. That phase continued when we came back home to Arizona.

Now with my older boys, I would rock them to sleep and then lay them down in their cribs. But with twins, you can't really do that effectively. I tried it once in a while, but then I couldn't get up out of the rocker without waking both of them up, so I would wait....and wait....and wait...for DH to come check on things and help me. Many's the time that I stomped on the floor, praying someone would hear me. Anyway, I digress. So we would put them in their beds and they would lie down, but one of us would have to sit in the room until they fell asleep. That's when I took to bringing in this new Harry Potter book with me, along with a flashlight. I would sit in the rocker and read, and every so often, either Kent or Kurt, would hear something and JUMP UP quickly, and look over at me, to make sure I was still sitting there. I never said a word, but just kept reading with my flashlight. Eventually the next time they heard something they would only peek out between the rails, then they would just raise their heads, and finally, they would be asleep. I read almost the whole entire first HP book that way. Heh. Very fond memories.

Of course, after that first book, I was hooked and read the rest of them as quickly as they came out. I tried hard to savor them so that they wouldn't be over so quickly, but I rarely held out more than a few days. OK, well, book 4 took me about a week. ;) I am quite sad that this summer will be the last installment of the saga. I so hope it ends satisfactorily. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy reading the story in it's entirety.