Roly loves the gravel in our backyard.  He like to scoop it up and put it into buckets.  We had planned to get him a sandbox to play in.  Toby kept putting it off because she didn’t like the idea of him coming into the house covered with sand.  He is the child that can only do something for a few minutes by himself.  If no one is around, then he will wander until he finds something.  Toby knew this would involve many, many trips between the house and the sandbox.

She was inspired one day and asked me to buy some gravel for Roly’s gravel box.  She bought the wading pool, and I bought the gravel.  I first ran the pea gravel through a screen to get out all the loose gravel dust.  Then I washed the gravel, twice, to get the rocks really clean. 

Roly is very happy.  And instead of piles of sand all over the house, we have little pieces of clean rocks, which are much easier to clean up.

Our tomato plants are nearly over-producing!  We have so many good tomatoes that Toby can’t keep up. 

So she and the kids decided that they could sell some of our bumper crop.  They made a sign and took a small amount around town (not on a Thursday so as to avoid competition with the farmer’s market) and sold out very quickly.  Max did pricing research by checking out what Vons was charging for organic tomatoes.  They did so well, and the plants kept producing, that they went out again and again.

Our neighbor, Mike, generously donated a bag of avocados for the kids to sell as well.  The kids are expanding.  Max wants to rip up the watermelon plants (which haven’t produced yet) and grow more tomatoes.

School starts early in Carpinteria.  But Toby likes to *ease* into it.  Among the ‘first day of school’ activities the kids made hot cocoa and an iced lemon cake.  Wish I had been there.

The cake went nicely with the homemade pizza that our Italian exchange student, Sonja, made for our family.  She made the crust from scratch and it was de-lic-ious!  Lucy and MoMo helped with the toppings.

Earlier this summer, Poppa came over an planted a few plants in our back yard.  About the middle of August the zucchini and tomatoes started producing, with the tomato plants going crazy.  Toby says they are excellent and is really enjoying have fresh tomatoes every day.  Although I don’t like the fruit, I like being able to share some with our neighbors.

What?  No shooting? We drove all the way up to ‘The Glass Factory’ only to find the shooting area closed.  Rats.  On the way down, I saw the earlier sign that I missed that said the area was closed.

Roly discovered the adventure of climbing into the dryer.  A fun little place just his size.  Well, Lucy thinks it is just *her* size, too.

Max was 12 on 12 Aug 2012.  He very much wants to be outfitted for Boy Scout camping.  The family obliged and most if not all the presents were camping themed.  He didn’t really know what to do with the Coleman camping toilet paper, though.

For my birthday, I got a kayak and it has been a ton o’ fun.  I have been a bit frustrated on how to get the kayak to the beach.  I bought the cheap end kayak dolly, but the tire popped on that before I even got a chance to use it.  I put the kayak on top of the van for a while, but it irked me to have to drive to the beach.  I a more expensive dolly that I used once.  The dolly kept ‘rolling forward’ and putting my kayak on the ground, so it was back to the van.  Once at the beach, I saw someone dragging a kayak on what looked to be 2 furniture dollies, with 2” or 3” casters. 

I liked that idea and spent a Saturday coming up with my own kayak dolly.  I tried using some PVC in an early iteration, but it was too flexible to go over some of the potholes on the way to the beach.  I ended up going with all wood, and I am very pleased.

Roly was my test pilot.  He loved riding around the block in the boat during our shakedown runs.

Roly loves his new kitchen.  Toby bought some extra kitchen supplies and he runs up to us and asks what he can prepare.  I have had eggs and pancakes and coffee.