Photo-A-Day #1547

Slept in today, 6:05 as opposed to my usual 5:00am. I guess I slept well because I was on the Cape. Morning brought with it chores, a project and some time at the beach.

The morning weather was unable to make up its mind. First it was cloudy and then starting to be sunny and then back to cloudy and foggy. Eventually the sun and the blue skies prevailed. Allison’s parents wanted to give Eva a wagon for her birthday. However Eva’s birthday is in October and right now is the best time to use that wagon, so they had us pick one up for her. This morning my project was to put the wagon all together. The wagon is a Radio Flyer All-Terrain Cargo Wagon. I grabbed a hammer, a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, it was all I needed because this is such a well designed product. I easily assembled the wagon and it was ready to roll. I love the giant knobby tires and the chunky-ness of it.

After that was done I helped Dad with the yearly clean-up chores. The hedges needed to be trimmed and cleaned up. My job is to clean up. Dad trims them and prunes them so that they fill in nice and full. After that it was time for my least favorite job of the season. Weeding the patio. I’ve spent an entire day scratching between every nook and cranny to pull out all the miniature pieces of green. That is what it was looking to become. However, this year Dad says to me, “You know, Uncle Wayne does his patio with a weedwhacker.”

Goggles on, ear protection on, trimmer gassed up and me revving it to the max through some extreme weeding was such a satisfying endeavor. I’m picking sand and rocks out of my hair still (after a long hot shower) but it was so much better than the weeding I used to do. I wonder why I never thought of doing something like that before.

Sufficiently sweaty and tired I changed to my swimsuit and loaded up Eva’s new wagon with all of Eva’s toys for the beach (and we managed to squeeze Eva in as well) and headed over to the beach. Eva enjoyed playing in the sand with Auntie Tara and then playing in the water with Allison and I. Eva loves the water, she is such a little fishie.

Night brought us a wonderfully delicious dinner that Tara made. Eva did really well eating and was doing great eating a few strawberries until Taylor (my sister’s awesome dog) barked one too many times and scared Eva. She first looked shocked and then I could see her begin to lose it in slow motion. You know that look a child gets when they are so scared, we she had it and crushed her strawberry while crying for daddy. I cleaned her up quick and calmed her down by walking around outside. Such a scared little monkey. I hope that she enjoys the fireworks tomorrow and they aren’t too loud.