Domestic Dramedy: Family Bonding, Sweat, and 800 Pavers: The Great Backyard Project
Some families spend Sunday afternoons napping, catching up on football, or eating out after church. Us? We spent ours moving 800 landscaping pavers across the backyard in the blazing hot sun. Because nothing says “family bonding” like manual labor in 95-degree heat.
Scott and I decided it was time to start making the backyard more useable. Right now, it’s sloped, ugly, and not exactly user-friendly. To level things out, we had to pull up every single paver and haul them to the other side of the yard. Enter: Spencer. Poor kid had no idea what kind of day he was about to sign up for.
We got home from church, traded hymnals for shovels and Sunday shoes for sneakers, suiting up for battle in our work clothes. We queued up some “motivational” music — Nirvana, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, and even a little MC Hammer — which Spencer immediately labeled “cringe.” He rolled his eyes so hard I thought they might get stuck, but Scott and I just sang louder.
The sweat poured, the ants attacked (yes, one found him), and breaks were requested about every seven minutes. At one point, I swear he tried to negotiate a union contract.
We quickly realized carrying pavers one by one was going to take all week. Scott was pulling them up, I was carrying two at a time, and Spencer… well, he was managing one before declaring it was “too heavy.” That’s when we brought in our trusty 4-wheel utility cart. It was the real MVP of the day. We could stack 8 to 10 pavers at a time, and Spencer became the designated driver. He’d roll them across the yard to the drop-off point, unload, and come back for another round. Suddenly, the project felt a little less impossible — though Spencer still acted like he’d been drafted into backyard boot camp.
The best moment? Spencer announcing he should be allowed to file a workers’ comp claim after the ant bite. According to him, manual labor plus bug attacks equals a hostile work environment.
We offered him a quick hose spray down to cool off, but apparently, that wasn’t cool. Instead, he sulked in the shade until I hit him with the magic words: “One more load and you can go inside.” Suddenly, the boy who had been moving at turtle speed all day turned into Usain Bolt. Amazing how motivation works.
By the end of the day, the pavers were stacked, the ground was clear, and all three of us were sweaty, exhausted, and slightly sunburned. Spencer is now convinced we violated every child labor law in existence, while Scott and I are just convinced we’ll be sore for a week.
Sometimes life feels like moving 800 pavers. Heavy, exhausting, and a little pointless in the moment. But God uses even the grueling work to build strength and perseverance in us — just like Paul reminds us:
📖 “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” — Galatians 6:9
So maybe moving pavers isn’t glamorous, but it’s planting seeds of resilience (and eye rolls) in a teenager who will one day understand the lesson.
