I bought a bunch of 2×4′s at Home Depot this afternoon to use as the framework for putting lattice under the deck. I realized that I could use one of them, plus some old molding from creating Gavin’s shelf and chair rail, plus some composite “plywood” scrap that I had to create a 48x48x12 garden box.

Here are a few photos of the work area and the boys painting the outside of the box. I forgot to take pics while I was constructing the box itself, but that’s ok. Nobody needs to see me sweating and swearing at chunks of wood with a circular saw in my hand. There are also photos of the boys just hanging out this morning in the TV room.

Three sides are now painted, and as soon as they dry, we’ll paint the 4th. After it’s all done, I think Melissa is going to superglue shells from this summer at the beach to the top molding, and we’ll stencil the boys’ names on the outside too. All this has to be done before Aunt Joann shows up Thursday to help pick out plants with Melissa and the boys. They’re very excited to be starting their own garden.

Ben stayed over last night while Melissa and Alice went to see Duran Duran at the House of Blues in Atlantic City. I forgot to take any photos of the boys playing all day, or watching Star Wars movies, or anything like that, so Melissa took these when she and Alice got home.

Logan was promoted to Yellow Belt this evening at Karate. Here are a ton of photos, about half of which are completely unfocused. Here are four short movies from class as well.

Brian and Beth stopped by to pick up Madeline and Alexandra on their way back from NYC with Taylor.

While we had Madeline, Nana and Pop-pop Skoletsky had Alexandra at their house. It was another stinking hot day, so they all came over and played in the pool on the deck to cool off.

We had the boys’ cousin Madeline stay with us for a few days this week. Here are the kids all playing nicely together out back.

Landon stayed over last night. Today Pop-pop, Aunt Joann and Uncle Rick came over to hang out and we had a little cookout.

Aunt Joann investigated the wild rose that is all over the woods out back. She’s pretty sure it is on the list of the Top Ten Invasive Plant Species in Pennsylvania. Maybe we can get rid of it!

Here are two of the darkest, most difficult-to-believe-I-bothered-posting-them photos ever. I’m pretty sure that they are of the boys at swimming lessons…at least I think they are.

Gavin and Logan had their first swimming lessons today. They both loved it!

It was crazy hot outside today. We set up the inflatable pool on the deck and let the boys play in it all afternoon.