Backyard: Fence and Patio

I believe that Jess and I started working on the backyard from the first day that we moved in, 5 years ago. Every year for the past 3 we have been saying that the work was soon to be completed. There was the monster clothes line that needed to be removed, the evergreen bushes, new sod, the garden, the flowers, bushes trimmed and pruned, an old shed to cleanout, bushes and trees to rip out, fences replaced, pergola built, etc. It looks like this year we may finally reach a plateau where we can say it is 'done'. Over the last two weeks we have finished the patio, put in a sand box, landscaped the very back and put in a fence along the southwest corner.
It.
Looks.
Awesome.

Here are a couple of pictures I took this morning.

Digging in the Dirt

Rees was helping me out in the yard this afternoon. I was weeding and Rees was busying himself waiting for me to be done. "This is taking forever!" he kept saying and then letting me know what time it was. While I was weeding I unearthed several worms and called Rees over to take a look. He asked me some questions about them which I don't remember and then announced, "I am going to call this one... Marvin." We buried them and he went back to whatever he was doing. Every once in a while he would come back and ask if Marvin had dug his way back out of the dirt pile. We would then unearth him (or one very similar) then bury them again. During one of these unerathings, Rees found a small snail shell. He examined it and then told me:

I am going to put this shell back. That way a slug will find it and turn into a snail and stay safe from predators.

He spent the rest of the time making his snail shell collection. All those lucky slugs!