Settling Back In

We had a very nice spring break last week, but whew! -- I'm glad to get back to some usual routines this week.  Kat is back to school, Shane is working out of town 4 days a week, which has become almost "normal" for us, and winter appears to finally be settling down into spring.  Here are a few highlights from the weekend:

Kat was with her mom and step-dad for the weekend, and they took in a special Doctor Who event at a local theater.

Kat, my son-in-law M, and friends.

Meanwhile, Shane did some work on our back deck - by himself on Saturday and with my dad's help on Sunday.  The condensed story is that we had a deck, we removed the railings to put up a sun room.  We decided against the sun room in favor of building a larger deck, then we decided against the idea of a larger deck and in favor of just putting the railings back up. 

Of course, the original railings were long gone, we we had to buy new lumber.   We used some extra fence pickets to put a privacy wall at one end of the deck.  We'll be the first to admit our own yard is pretty junky looking right now, but our neighbor's yard on that side is a real eyesore with a shed that is falling in on itself and a trampoline that is hanging in shreds.  We'd rather not see it, and we'd rather not have their dog go into a barking frenzy every time we step out onto the deck, so the privacy wall helps with both of those issues.  Looks pretty nice, too, if you ask me.

Our deck is a tall one, 6-7 feet above ground level, so we still need to buy siding of some sort to underskirt it, and of course we need to stain and seal the new lumber, but this is a nice start.

While the guys worked on the deck, I managed to fix breakfast for us, do several loads of laundry, and prep and plant one of the raised beds with snow peas and onions.  We ended the weekend with a nice meal out with my dad and some friends.

I have a full week planned.  I plan to back outside to plant more of our raised beds, make a batch of soap, complete my menu plan for April, return to my M-W-F blogging schedule, and possibly start my next craft project.

What is on your schedule for this week?