Home Improvements

I'm going to start off by saying that I think the builders of our house jipped us on our yard. They knew that we were first-time-know-nothing home buyers and got away with a scandalous deal! We were allowed to pick out the fixtures for our home but were given a budget that the builders had set. We went over the budget by about $300 and the builders said,"Well, tell ya what, we will leave the landscaping up to you two and call it even." So, of course, we thought that sounded GREAT! Idiots that we were. Now we know that it will cost much more than that to landscape.

Now, here we are, 2 years and 3 months later and our yard looks like a desert. Seriously, we live in the basin between two houses and ALL of the rain runs through here. There are deep canyons in our back yard and no grass. It looks terrible. We don't really have it in our budget to do what we need done to it. We have had lots of helpful advice: barricade the end of the yard to catch all the run-away soil, sod would hold the soil in place once it rooted, haul in new dirt. All of these are great ideas, except it costs money. :o) We could go get railroad ties but we don't have the equipment to put them where we need them. No tractors or any heavy machinery. Enough whinning. I have really gotten tired of looking at it all. We are in high gear of doing what we can with what we have. We were in the yard all day today and got a lot done.

We burned a lot of brush and tall areas that have been an eye sore and harboring evil devil snakes. We saw one running for it when the flames were coming up. Alex mowed the rest of the tall stuff down and used the weedeater. I worked in my flower bed to get some weeds out and get some new plants in. I stained the posts on the back deck and plan to stain the shutters tomorrow. Our shutters are funny. We ran out of stain (like a year ago) when we were staining them and so they are two different shades. I will show you some pictures of our ghetto-ness when I finish them.



Focus on the tall pole in the middle.
Before













Our neighbor, Andrew, came over after school and played. He is an okay kid but he does not know when to take a hint that it's time for him to go home. I can not think of one time that we have been able to go out into our yard without him bugging the crap out of us(unless he's at school or not home). Alex has an overwhelming fear that with three daughters Andrew will end up being a relative some day. Lol.


They were preparing to race eachother. And you can see one of the ravines that run through the yard behind the kids.

See the small child bent over in the distance? That is what Andrew does when we ask him to go home. He stands right on the property line and yells to everyone.

We had supper out on the deck, and then let the girls roast marshmallows. It was Livi's first time at roasting and she lapped up those marshmallows. The gooey center caught her off gaurd though.


Supper Time!

Ready to roast.


It's a flamer!


Livi's first mallow.

Marshmallow face