Christmas came a little early for Brooke & Kyle

We finally did it! We broke down and bought the kids a play yard. I always just told Steve we would go to the park that is right around the corner from us. Well, I ate those words. It is going to be soooooo nice to be able to have the kids play in the backyard and mommy can sit on a chair with her coffee in the morning and watch them play. Plus it's going to be much easier on the furniture and should help wear off some of their energy. If I could just bottle some of it up.

We decided where the grass was in the backyard, you know...as big as it is, to rip it up, cap the sprinklers and put down sand. Kyle is going to be in hog heaven. He just loves the sand and dirt. Hopefully he'll want to climb and play on this thing. Brooke is going to have that rock wall down in a week flat! Mark my words. Anyhow, this past Friday, it rained the entire day. No biggie but we decided to cap the 2 drains off as well. Of course I remembered it at work but forgot once I got home with the kids. Wholy crappola. I went out there in the dark, walked straight into "Lake Bierbaum" and tried to pull the caps off so the water would drain. Can I just tell you how cold that water was. Yikes! I'm out there in the mud, sweats pulled up to my knees trying to pull those damn caps off. Well, I can't do it with my bare hands. I go back into the kitchen, grab my jar lid helper, take it back outside and turn the caps off. Glug, Glug, Glug and the water starts to drain next to the patio. Well, not so lucky on the one next to the gate. It plugs up so I just put the cap back on. Nice! Luckily it doesn't rain here much. Guess we'll have to figure something else out for the next time.

So once the play yard is all set up and we're good to go, I'll post pictures but the kids should be able to play on it by tomorrow late afternoon or early Wednesday morning. We are then going to have the sand brought in on the 15th.
Here is a picture of the play yard that went in yesterday. I was so excited yesterday to get home from work and have the kids play on it. There is no sand down...just wet dirt. Oh well. Nothing like being a kid and getting dirty. These are some pictures of the kids on the swings in our enormous backyard(yeah right!)!!!