We spent this weekend working in the yard and gardens, weeding, working the fall compost down into the veggie garden. The kids helped plant seeds in the herb and vegetable gardens. We planted basil, dill, cilantro and echinacea in the herb garden and lettuces, broccoli, beans, sunflowers and cucumbers in the veggie garden. We also set in some tomato and hot pepper seedlings. It's so interesting to see the different shapes of all the different seeds! Sam also helped me overseed the yard, and we're supposed to get some rain over the next couple of days which should help that along.

Jim got the kids' climbing wall built for the climber on Saturday, and they just love it. It's amazing what natural climbers kids are--full arm hangs and mantles are second nature! We decided to make the climbing wall vertical, and it's challenging but not overly so. If we had kicked it out any, it would have been much too easy and lost it's appeal pretty quickly, I think.

As it is, the kids are having lots of fun mastering the new activities on the climber as we get them done. Julia's still the only one who will slide down the fireman's pole, and the little monkey actually climbed the whole way up the thing this weekend! She climbed up an 8 ft. smooth, galvanized pole! She may be tiny, but she is incredibly strong and such a good climber!