Just stuff

I can't believe March is half way over already! Tomorrow I will be saying I can't believe summer is ending. Ok, not really, but it will be here and gone before we know it!
March is turning out to be as busy for us as Feb, and I have a feeling April is going to be more of the same. In the next two weeks I have school egg hunts, church egg hunt (which I have no real involvement in), school dinner with Ryan, Easter parties, and then spring break!!! Not to mention soccer practice and games and my regular bible club prep. We also have an adult church retreat next Friday and Saturday!
Brad has been doing a lot of things around the house and up at the church in all his spare time, which is few and far between. We tore down the parsonage, where I lived for about 6 years when we moved here. It was just going to cost more to fix up than tearing it down. Of course, my husband would be the one to volunteer to take on that project. I know he is capable of doing it but finding the time between work and weekend soccer is the impossible part. He can't finish things on a timely manner no matter how hard he tries. He just has too much going on. Anyway, him and a guy he works with did end up getting the house demolished last weekend and now all that's left of that mess is burning the piles of wood. He is on call for work this weekend so he can't really go start a huge fire in case he needs to leave for work. So this weekend he has been focusing on the huge stump that is right outside our front door. He cut the tree down last summer but has not been able to get the stump out of the ground. He finally had someone come look at it (why are men so against that?!). That guy said this kind of tree has a secondary root system that can either go straight down or out for many feet. Of course, that is the kind of tree that is in our front yard. So the guy said he could bring over some big equipment and rip the stump out but he won't be liable if the root system goes out instead of down and it rips the front of our house off. Yes, that's what he said. Obviously we weren't going to take our chances so Brad rented a stump grinder and has been grinding it away all day. It really is disappearing in the form of saw dust all over the yard!
His next project is to widen the driveway and then fence in the front part of the yard. We really, really want to get those two things done before we leave for Gatlinburg the first week of April. Brad's grandma is kind enough to come over and take care of our animals whenever go somewhere but she is in her early 70's and it isn't easy. Our dogs are a handful for her. So we want to have the fence up so all she has to do is open the back door and let them out. I'm just praying we can get it done! On top of that, one of my dogs in on 3 separate medications right now which I'm going to have to explain to her. She is going to hate me after this.
Now that the weather is warming up some, I'm already back to dealing with tons of neighbor kids coming over all the time. It would be ok if they (my kids included) would play normal games instead of digging holes and tearing stuff up. Not to mention leaving toys everywhere. One mom has already given me permission to throw her boys' things away if they get left in our yard. So I need some ideas for this summer. I can't handle anywhere from 4-8 kids here all day everyday. The only way to make them go away is to make my kids come in, which I don't think is fair. I don't want to have to make my kids come in after an hour just to get all the other kids to leave. Do I just ask all the neighbor kids to leave? They don't stay away, even when I do. Is it rude to tell the parents to keep them out of our yard after so long? I know you guys are going to say I should be able to request that the kids leave after so long but it isn't that easy when you are in the situation!