'Cuz I said I would post it....

The front

Well, Adam has been working HARD on the front yard. Our original idea was to put two retaining walls up, one in the front against the side walk, and one halfway up the yard. We nixed that idea, we would have to take out the Japanese Maple if we did the second wall, so for now we have the first wall up, and a couple of beds at the sidewalk right against the house. Eventually we want to put a deck on the front so we'll see what happens...... on to pictures!

This is the best 'Before' pic I have, Adam started before I could get one. The tree is still there, but we all know it's gone now. ;-)

Squirrely helping her daddy.

A work in progress.

Cutting away my beautiful butterfly bush. It was so sad. At least he didn't rip it up at the root.....I'm hoping it'll work it's way through the top soil and live again!!

The finished product. The dirt and rocks have moved since this pic, but you get the idea. We have a beautiful retaining wall!

This pic is from last Saturday, my niece Tierra came over to watch the Hannah Montana concert (I'll blog about that later). Anyway, you can see the two smaller beds he did right up to the sidewalk in front of the house....oh and no tree! The retaining wall in the front was filled in with dirt and top soil and leveled off.....I think grass will come next year. We need to put another tree in where the pine was....any ideas? Someone told us a Crabapple tree would be good....anyone know anything about them?

New look

Maybe, just maybe, this will motivate me to blog. ;-)

Seriously though, we got a hard drive about a month ago and I've been loading it up with pics and organizing, and double checking, and searching, and blah, blah, blah.... So, once that's done, I'll blog about Billy being in town, I'll blog about the yard, I'll blog about our little Squirrely's happenings, etc, etc, etc.

For now....tell me what you think of the new layout....easy to read? cute? different colors? darker colors? ????

Yay!!

Such a big girl!!

She gets all excited about wiping too. ;-)

Potty on Elmo!

So, my friend Jasmine always give me her crap (ahem, goodwill stuff), which I gladly take! Debbie got a lot of boy clothes out of it for Jeremiah, and I got some cute girl clothes for Squirrely. There was one prize in there, a potty seat, you know, the kind that goes right on top of the toilet seat. Well, it has Sesame Street characters on it so it was quite exciting for Squirrel. She noticed it in the bathroom, so I put it on the toilet and let her try it out. She just kinda' hung out for a minute or two, then we pretended to wipe, then flushed and washed our hands. Well, later on in the evening she said 'poop?'....which also means 'potty' sometimes.....so I got really excited and asked her if she wanted to go potty on Elmo. She said yes, so we took off a wet diaper, and hopped on Elmo. I was asking Adam to get the camera, but get the other camera and take the memory card out, and put it in the other camera.....then I heard a *tinkle, tinkle, tinkle*. How freakin' cool is that??? I freaked. My jaw dropped, I was so excited for her! She was so happy and proud of herself. Adam was walking past the bathroom door (in the wrong direction, of course) looking for the camera, and I don't think it hit him until he noticed my face.....duh!!! We told her what a good job she did, and what a big girl she is, and let her know we were sooooo happy! We wiped, flushed and washed our hands again, and she was a pretty happy girl. ;-)

Of course we called everyone to tell them. I have her saying 'Potty, Elmo'. Such a big girl. I don't think we're 'potty training', but at least she's interested. ;-)

Oh, and we never did get the camera.

Thanks Jaz!!

The tree.

We had a horrible pine tree in our front yard. ;-) I've hated the thing since we moved in. It dropped needles year round, preventing anything from growing beneath it, it was full of sap and pollen.....that it liked to drop all over our cars, and it was just an ugly sight! There were two good things about that tree....the shade it cast on the living room window, and the hummingbird nest I got to watch last spring.....we actually saw the mommy/daddy build the nest, lay eggs, hatch, grow, then fly away.....it was pretty awesome. We'd always talked about taking it down, but we were afraid to because of the hot sun. Well, we finally just decided to do it.....mostly because we're trying to re-vamp the front yard. The Johnson kids (mostly Vala) expressed their sadness (the Johnson's are my nieces and nephews that grew up in this house, and played in that tree all the time.....it was a great climbing tree.....Neeka even 'ran away' to the tree one night) for the removal of the tree, but I'm pretty sure they'll get over it. ;-)

So, I called Dave's Tree Service (highly recommended) to come take the tree out. Three days before they were scheduled to come, Jonesy came over and said he wanted the (fire)wood from the tree, so he and Adam then decide they can do it! Yikes! I was not looking forward to that...though it was much cheaper...free! I canceled with Dave, and had a great time watching the guys (manly men) take the wretched thing down! I can't upload video right now (but I will), the thing had so much pollen in it, if you had allergies you would probably have died if you were anywhere near it!

The Terrible Tree

It was difficult to get a pic, I was holding Squirrel, looking into the sun, and trying to work the camera at the same time.
How do you work this thing?
We'll just cut to the chase! It's almost gone!!
Bye bye tree!! Look at that mess! I was very concerned that we would be filling our yard debris bin for the next couple of months trying to get the brush cleaned up. Thank goodness the guys cut the firewood, loaded up the brush and took it to Jonesy's dad's house and threw it in his burn pile! The only thing I did (to help) was sweep the driveway!
You might notice the new retaining wall!! I'll do another post on that....when I get the chance.

So, the tree couldn't leave without giving us some problems.

He's hacking away at the dang thing. Adam is so awesome. ;-)
Oh surprise!! I broke a pipe under my stump! (I'll post the video of the stump removal when I can) He's pretty sure it's a rain drain.....fun, one more thing to work on.
Digging it up.
Notice the concrete block!! There was a metal (Adam thinks maybe stainless steel) pipe connected to the plastic (?) pipe. Well, they didn't exactly fit together so whoever laid them poured concrete over the elbow to 'fit' them together and prevent leakage. What a retarded jerk!!

Using the jack hammer thingy to break up the concrete! Poor Adam. :-(

The stupid pipe!

Lots of concrete!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE having a husband that can do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING! The guy is pretty amazing. He got all the right parts, cut the steel pipe, fit the elbow on correctly, tossed the broken pipe.....totally fixed it up! Way to go Adam!!!
All done! He sure loved that pipe!! Lol!

Next up.....the dry rot he found a little while ago. What a pleasant surprise! Just below the vent you can see the dip in the roof.

All better!

Well, I don't have any body shots, but there wouldn't be anything to show anyway. The rash is all gone! We saw the Dr. on Monday, and it was a quick in and out, she's all better, period. These two pics are self-portraits, I let her play with the camera while we were waiting for the Dr.