Patio

I decided that I wanted a patio in the backyard. Luke would have preferred a deck, but is now very pleased with a patio. How do you decide how big and what shape to make a patio? Well, I hauled out the extension cord and roped off the size I wanted. Luke thought it looked too big and tried to convince me to make it smaller until I started whining about having people and a table and it being too crowded on the patio. My dad loves to be outside and did a huge chunk of the work for our patio.
He started out by making a frame for our gravel/crushed stone base. We had stone delivered and he spread it out and stamped it down.After that we had stone dust delivered (it reminded me of cinder track stuff). We used the stone dust at the recommendation of someone my mom works with. It turns hard over time and acts like concrete... a bonus is that weeds and moss stuff can't grow between your pavers. My dad leveled (well, at a barely noticeable, slight slope so water would drain off the patio and away from the house) and stamped down the stone dust. My mom showed up with a truck load of pavers one night and we hauled them to the back yard. Our lawn was still soft from all the rain and the truck that dropped off the stone dust almost got stuck--with his 4x4. The next day I arrived home to find: