Work day at the Cusack Farm ...

Jon, Blake, & I decided that every weekend this summer we would go do something together as a family.

So today we headed to the Cusack farm in Muir for some barn cleanup. Not an ideal way to spend a hot day, but I'll admit that I really enjoyed this time together!

Grandpa Cusack found a cool little gadget that you roll around the driveway and pick up nails and other pieces of metal. I thought that would be a great job for Blake and I even offered to pay him a penny for each nail he picked up.

That lasted about two minutes. I guess you can't bribe our son with money.

After he hauled a few things from the barn to the dumpster, he was complaining about being too hot. I decided to give him a pass from working much longer and let him hang out inside where it was considerably cooler. 

We adults, on the other hand, still had work to do. Our goal was to get a room cleaned up in the barn. We scooped some of the trash onto the tractor and Jon's Dad dumped it into the dumpster.

Hauling a load

"Are you working or taking pictures?"

I should have taken a "before" picture of this room. It now looks amazingly clean!

Our next adventure. Not sure when we'll be tackling it.

Davey's job - to get everything to fit in the dumpster properly.

Taking a brief break

For lunch, I had packed a cooler full of freshly washed grapes, turkey, ham, & cheese for mini-subs, fresh vegetables, pasta salad, cookies, cherry licorice, and plenty of bottled water. Everything tasted so yummy and refreshing! Afterwards, we decided to take a walk to visit with Mom Cusack.

Jon's Dad had flowers he wanted us to put here. Blake put them in the vase and arranged them very nicely.

I absolutely love this picture! After arranging the flowers, Blake sat and paid his respects to Grandma Cusack. He didn't say anything, and was probably just looking at all her trinkets, but it still melted my heart.

Jon was pretty excited to discover that his Dad had these in his barn. They are for our "possible" project in the backyard ... a koi pond! We saw a 1500 gallon setup at a friend's house a few weeks ago and fell in love with it. We're still in the "thinking about it" stage, and thought maybe we could incorporate these pond items into the plan. We'll see.