See Jane Drill

After I outlined the 10 guarantees about having teenagers in our house I realized I left one of the list.

Everyone works at our house.

Well, almost everyone.

Tim isn’t idle very often and since we both had Friday off the week before, he had prepped the area in the back yard to put in a patio reusing the stones from our previous one. The week before he built a smaller fence to the left to hide the pool equipment.

Seizing the willingness youthfulness of three visiting teenagers, he recruited them to help him.

It was also his birthday. We did not eat sloppy joe’s and French fries for dinner.

First there was the prepping and leveling of the area. Laying down enough gravel and sand to make it smooth before using the machine to tamp it all down.


The girls were enlisted to carry the stones from behind the shed to where Cary was putting them into place.

This went on for awhile due to the screams of the girls when a colony of ants was discovered between the stones.

Some fine tuning was needed near the end of the process and our technology savvy teens were shocked to see a hand saw was going to be used to cut a piece of wood.

After putting on safety googles Cary went first.


After putting on safety googles, Tim finished the job.


Wearing her invisible safety goggles, Carson wanted to try it.


Then Jane helped secure it.

See Jane drill?


They did a great job and our new patio is ready for some furniture and plants.