Roger's family was all in Denver for his birthday. We had a picnic at Clement Park with the family. This is the next generation. It was a lot of fun to see everyone and 3 new babies we had never met.
We went to watch Bryce's soccer practice one night. It was fun to play with the girls. Solena is very talkative and friendly right now. She loves to sing and play. Samantha is growing and doing so many new things.
. This is his museum wall. He has made all kinds of creations out of paper plates, pipe cleaners, popscicle sticks, tape and whatever else he can find. He started kindergarten his last week and he loves it.
This is the new granite stone lantern that Kent got for his birthday. Now he is just waiting to finish the Japanese Garden ponds to place it in one of them. We'll show you that when it is ready!
Kent tore out the old deck in front of the tea house. He has been building this new one out of trex. Our neighbor tore out his trex deck to build a much larger deck, and this is the "recycled" new deck.
You can see the new "extended" deck. Also now the hole is full of rock for the fountain to drain into. Next step is to cover all the pond with weed barrier, and then put black rock everywhere for the new pools to be complete.
Here's the completed path. It is beautiful.
This is Kent showing Jackson and Heather Westenskow what the pond looks like when we first turned it on. Jackson and Heather are living with us for a month while they are waiting to get into their new home. We've had a lot of fun with them.
Now Kent has ripped out the deck to the t-house. He will be building a new deck out of gray trex. It will stick out over the pond.
This is the new fountain. It has a much smaller pond at the top than before. The water runs over the falls and now down through one pathway into the hole. This is the hole that you have seen before with the carpet and rubber liner. The carpet was to protect the rubber liner from rubbing against the cinder blocks. The black piping now has the pump in it. It has holes all around in it so the water can get into the piping, but not the rocks. The next step is to fill rocks the rest of the way to the top of the rubber liner, then covering the whole thing with weed barrier, and then putting black round stones all around the whole old pond. The water will disappear into the rocks and recycle back up to the top. The rest of the pool is a "dry pond" that you see in many typical Japanese gardens. The only problem right now is that the pump used to pump from the lowest pond up to the top pond and need to have a lot of pressure to do it. It is almost too strong for this small fountain. The water runs very hard. Kent has also discovered a leak on the right side where the pond connects with the old deck. I'm sure he will figure out what to do. It is really beautiful. You should come and see it!
This rock is about 850 pounds. Now Kent is a very, very strong skinny guy! But it was wonderful to have Brian's very strong muscles to help!
