Birthday Week

Brody had a full week this past week. Birthday, training camp, new patios, and taking naps!

Tuesday was Brody's birthday and we had a little celebration for him.

Some candy, a new hat, pool floats for our weekly lake visits, a new tennis racket, subscription to "The Economist", gift card for new tools, cash, Express gift card, framed paintings from Cambodia, Barnes and Noble gift card, and a night out with dinner and ice cream. Needless to say he got spoiled, and Birthday week wasn't even over yet.

Wednesday night we had some friends over and brought out a cheesecake with candles on it. Brody's getting so old his poor cake looks like it's on fire!

On Thursday one of our friends got Brody a ticket to the Bengal's Training camp.  They arrived at the field and while there were thousands of people in the stands, Brody and Kevin walked right out to the field with the players!  Brody had a front row to the comical antics of Chad Ochocinco and the newest Bengal Terrel Owens. (I'm convinced that T.O. will soon change his name to T. Ocho-uno. haha)

During the week Brody has been hard at work re-landscaping the back yard.  (I helped by drawing out the design, Brody has done all the heavy lifting) We didn't have any flower beds in the back yard, a patio fit for entertaining, and  had a taste of the woods with a plot of our backyard covered in a hot mess of bushes, weeds, trees, underbrush and just pure wilderness. Brody has cleaned up all the underbrush, just leaving clean trees, we collected large rocks to line our gardens, we bought some flat rocks for the patio, de-sodded (is that a word?) the lawn next to the house and started planting some bushes.  It's not done yet, but here's some of the work done this past week.

How the yard looked before (this picture was taken in the spring when the lawn was nice and lush)

Collecting rocks on the side of the road

Brody starting the de-sodding (the lawn has died :( but apparently people don't water their lawns here, they just rely on the rain)

A little bit of redneckness to haul away the sod

We got the garden lined and filled, with some plants already in. Brody took the challenge of fitting all the rocks together in one complex puzzle.

looking pretty good so far, we still need to get filling in between the rocks

After the long hot days outside both Brody and Deja were tuckered out. I found them napping around the house in various places.