New gravel pit for the boys

I decided to take on the challenge of building an outdoor gravel pit for the boys.  I forgot to take a "before" picture of the area that I was going to work on, so this was one taken back in May of 2010.

We did get rid of the tree stump and the tree right next to it last summer.  We also decided to toss out the bird bath since it was leaning a little and we didn't want it to fall on either of the boys!  As for those red flowers - well, those used to be the peonies. Bobby kept weed-whacking them that I couldn't distinguish them when I was re-working the area.  :-(
Anyhow, here is the after!

Phew!  There was quite a bit of digging involved, leveling, and also dealing with the roots of those trees!

Hopefully the bricks will hold its form as those trees grow!

And thankfully after watching so many episodes of Graham's "Team Umizoomi", I have developed "Pattern Power" ;-)  I had quite the task of arranging those pavers in a specific pattern.  And it doesn't help when those pavers are so darn heavy!
The boys are definitely having a lot of fun playing in the pit.  Didn't take Charlie long to get comfortable in it:

We decided to put their sand play table in the pit too, although we're now making it a "gravel" play table.

We did fill the play-table up with some water as well and Charlie just loves splashing around!

The boys sure love to dig!

So busy!

Hopefully the gravel pit will be a good place to play for the rest of the Summer and into the Fall season. We are still trying to deal with the mosquitoes issue too.  Yikes!  Nonetheless, Bobby and I are already enjoying sitting in those bright blue chairs on the paved area :-)