Holy Crap

Wow what a day. My child has officially gone crazy, I think I may have lost a bit more of my own mind, and my dog... completely bonkers.
At 8:15AM Matt's phone rings, Joe decided since he had been up all night that 8am was a good time to get up and building the gazebo; forgetting the detail we still had to go get it from Sears and they don't open until 9:30 or 10. So the house was up, I managed to drift back off while Matt showered and Tori watched cartoons for a few minutes, and then all hell broke loose.
We all got up Tori started hollering about how she wanted cookies for breakfast; finally got her to sit down with a bowl of Lucky Charms, not the greatest cereal I know but at the moment something is better than the nothing she's been way more interested in eating lately. So then we load up and head to Sears. Not such a big deal other than the fact that we had to make two trips since the chairs came pretty much assembled so the box was HUGE!!! (yes that needed to be bold, a few sizes bigger too)
So we get home and already the boys are saying they need beer, but the problem with that is whenever they get beer they stop working so they weren't allowed to have any until they were done. Silly me thinking that would be added motivation to work quickly. We started the project at ~11AM and I just got inside at 5:30PM. A much longer endeavor than I originally planned on is an understatement. On the plus side my gazebo is up and now they're motivated to build a semi-permanent deck for it to sit on.
We originally thought that just having the dirt underneath would be fine but as the rain proved today, not such a great plan. The ground is mostly sand here so Joe started sinking. That was hilarious by the way! He's sitting in the chair, says "I feel like this is slowly leaning back more and more, almost like it's getting shorter too." Matt "Um yea you should get up, you're sinking into the ground." He had about 3" of the back legs buried. Hopefully the deck won't be too terrible a job. I have to try to find something that resembles a plan to follow or I have to sketch out what we're looking at making too so that we actually have a plan and I don't just have men with wood and power tools making a mess of the back yard.
It is nice to have a nice place to sit and relax outdoors too. It's surrounded in netting too so we can keep the bugs out. Now I just have to come up with some sort of lighting. The little ground lights I put in by the sidewalk are nice but definitely not enough light. I'm actually contemplating garage sale searching for an old chandelier, something I can put candles in and not care when wax drips all over it. We have no outdoor electric so anything like that is out of the question; I am not running an extension chord just to be clear too. so we'll have to look around. I love the whole solar powered concept but with the roof over top there isn't much chance for sunlight to come in; though I guess I could try to find something that I could set out during daylight to charge and then bring in as the sun goes down. We'll see. As for right now, the boys went to go help our friend Mike with his car for a minute and I have to figure out what to make for dinner. I feel like beef is definitely on the menu!

Oh and I'll fill you in on the craziness of Tori and the dogs later.