Our next-door neighbors, Mo and Jim, have a gaping hole in their front yard next to their deck. Or actually two. I think the story is that their kids just dug them and they haven't filled them in. Their daughter Shannon likes to bury treasures like toy cars, lacrosse balls, and bubble wands in the hole. Luckily my guys LOVE digging in holes for treasure. So we spend some time every time we go outdoors sitting in and playing in the dirt and the holes. This is a ball Beck found in the hole this afternoon.

 We also spend a lot of time at the playground at the park nearby. We have had several sad experiences with older children wanting to interact with Beck and Theo, it seems, primarily because they are neglected by their own parents, and possibly because they are used to parenting smaller children because their own younger siblings are ignored. These children often want to pick the babies up, carry them around, and generally control their movements. Most of the time thanking them for their interest and talking to them about their lives and watching the things they want to show off to an adult, any adult, solves the problem. Sometimes the kids are more intrusive. Tara and Daddy Lovebo and I took the kids to the park last weekend and ran into some kids who not only could not keep their hands off Theo and Beckett, but also got increasingly aggressive with them as we tried to back them up. We eventually had to pick up the kids and leave. These pictures were taken on a day we had the play structure to ourselves!

I think Theo looks so much like his daddy in this picture it's insane.

 Another dirt pile. This is a large raised bed in Mark and Mindy's backyard. Today was the boys' first day wearing their new fancy sneakers from Grandma Joanie and Grandpa Stu. They light up and everything. And after about two hours of playing in the dirt and mulch and hole and everything, their new fancy shoes are pretty... lived in.

Neighbor and carpenter Jake (the guy who built our deck earlier this summer) is rebuilding our front steps. Just as in the deck project, Jake found that most of the structural supports were rotted, so it's turning into a larger project than we'd initially anticipated. But it should be done tomorrow afternoon!