Disney World

So the whole family and the in laws went to Disney world for a week.
Uncle John dog sat my father in law's dog and Six Pack aka Gordon, painted our stairwell. The stairwell was painted the same color, Hawthorne Yellow by Benjiman Moore.

Disney World was an adventure and was 5 days of non stop park hopping. Needless to say we will not go till Ryan is 5 years old...

The Mantel

When we bought the house a mantel was left in the garage. So Six Pack aka Gordon got to work on it and started stripping it. The mantel itself is Oak but has only one column which is slate and the side tiles are also slate. So we had to buy two new legs and not sure what to do with the slate?? The mantel will go in the living room.

The Fence!!

So still chugging along on the home improvement front. At least this work is not invasive.

We had the Fence in the rear correctly aligned and then we extended the fence in our driveway to give us more space. Still working on the front garden. we moved our Japanese maple from the back of the house to the front, which looks much nicer. Today Larry from J & L is going to plant our Holly tree, some box hedges in front, and then the wife will plant some more flowers.

Now if we can only get the grass to grow "at all" in the yard. Our yard faces East so we get the morning sun and the late afternoon we get sun on the North side of the yard only. The wife would love to take down our double car garage which takes up almost half the yard and blocks a lot of the sun.

What do other home owners do in there yards where "The Sun don't Shine"

P.S. 217 PLayground or Garbage Dump?

Since I now live closer to the PS 217 playground it's more convenient than taking the kids to the Tot Lot. Over the last couple of weeks as the weather has started to get nicer the state of the the Playground has gone from.. a few scattered bottles to a complete mess. Every time I get there it is a complete mess. I try to be positive and check the garbage cans. Now if they were overflowing the problem would obviously be those who are supposed to maintain the garbage cans in the playground. Every time the garbage cans have been half full or close to empty. Today I learned a few things:

- Mike an Ike candy now comes in $.25 boxes. I love Mike and Ike's and so does my 15 month old, who managed to pick up 4 empty boxes in various areas by the play set.
- Apparently the people who come to the playground like Pepsi products, because there was 15 empty bottles that were primarily Pepsi products (Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi)
- The people that frequent the basketball courts and the traffic are strict water drinkers-- I counted at least five clusters of empty Poland Spring bottles. No Gator/ Power Ade to be found.
- By one of the hoops was was a bunch of styrofoam takeout boxes. I guess they had time between hoops games to eat but not throw out their lunch/ dinner/ breakfast.
- There was too many chip bags to count. I gave up after 20. Besides, every time I had to take an empty Mike and Ike box out of my 15 month month olds mouth hand-- i lost count.

Part of me felt like I should have been picking up the garbage instead of carefully cataloging it for this post. However, I had to stop at one point because my 5 year old threw his bagel wrapper on the ground. I told him to put in the garbage. He asked why, since there was all that garbage on the floor. Also, my 2.5 year old wanted me to teach him how to slide down the pole.

Now that I am done ranting I have a couple of questions:

Is this the way the playground always is?

Does the playground have a cleanup crew visit it once a week to clean up like the Tot Lot?

Do you think signs at the playground encouraging people to clean up their garbage would help?

How about a patrol men stationed outside the playground with summons in hand for littering?

It's hard to imagine that the playground has turned into the place not to go so fast. The playground opened up in the last year.