Easter weekend

We had a nice relaxing weekend here at home. Saturday mainly consisted of yard work, and a trip to Costco. Sunday we went to the Easter service at church and then had a nice lunch/dinner, or what I like to call linner, at the Hammagren's.

Saturday was beautiful here. (FINALLY!) Blake was up way earlier then normal Saturday morning which worked out good because it made us get up and get going. We were at Home Depot by 8:30am, way before the, its-the-first-nice-Saturday-of-the-year crowd, it was great! Russ spent most of the day working out in the yard. I spent sometime time pulling weeds and Blake even got to enjoy the sunshine playing in the pack n play while Russ and I worked on the ever ending weeds. We have a lot of yard work to do, but I'm glad we have started on it now so hopefully this summer we can enjoy it.

 I worked on weeding this path. It was weed free by Sunday evening. (And man was I sore, I didn't know how much of a workout weeding can be, or I'm just in really bad shape haha. Maybe I should start weeding more...)

 Russ spent the better part of the day Saturday working on this mound (it doesn't really look like a mound in this picture but trust me it is). By Sunday it was mostly weed free! We are thinking of planting a couple arborvitae trees along the fence to create some privacy and also maybe a nice ground cover. 

Blake did really well hanging out in the pack n play. I can't wait till he can walk so then he can run around the back yard!

Sunday morning Blake had fun checking out his Easter bucket (although I think mommy might have had more fun buying things for it :).... 

He even crawled to it on his hands and knees! 

(he still prefers the army crawl, so this was pretty exciting)

I think he would have been happy with just a bucket full of "grass"

After church we headed to the Hammagren's for a nice Easter lunch with lots of yummy food :)

 We tried to get a picture of Blake and Luke together since they looked so cute in their Easter clothes but all Blake wanted to do was grab Luke's face... 

Then we thought maybe if we held them we could get a good one... 

this was the best, can you see how I'm still trying to hold Blake's hand down. 

We did mange to get a somewhat decent one of the three of us. Although Blake looks like he's being tortured. He is so hard to get him to sit still these days!

Thank you Hammagren's for hosting Easter. It was fun! 

Bathroom redo and other happenings form the week

Before:

Taking everything out

After:

I love my new sink! 

Thank you Pam and Grandpa Wright, you did a great job!!

The bathroom is so small it is hard to get a good picture.

Other Happenings from the week:

Grandma Z was hard at work pulling weeds! Thank you for all your hard work!!

Next summer I hope to plant tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, lettuce and maybe some carrots in this area!

Tearing off the old boards

Putting on new ones!

The boys and their floppy hats. Blake still has a little growing to do till his hat fits well!

The snake we found on the front porch. I don't think he liked all the disturbing we did to his habitat.

We know how to fill a dumpster!

Russell reading Blake his first book; Curious George Goes Fishing!

Blake laying on the quilt Great Grandma Z made for him!

The little guy is all worn out at the end of the day!

The roof is almost finished! It's been too hot to work on it in the afternoon. So they work on it for about 5 hours in the morning and then a couple hours in the evening. Tomorrow morning they should be able to finish it up! 

Now its time to go eat some homemade peach pie with homemade ice cream, YUM!!

Day 5

Okay, so I have been kind of frustrated with this blog posting thing. Uploading pictures had been an challenge for me, trying to get them in the right order and it seemed like if I did them large it would take forever to upload. I was just playing around with the settings and came across an updated editor! I think this will make my blogging a lot easier! I am very excited to play around with it!

Today Don spent the day again in the yard. Lets see, I think we are now up to 4 yard debris loads and 2 dump loads! Who knew there would be so much to get rid of! The weather was beautiful today but the rain is on its way for tomorrow, actually it is already raining, I can hear it now. 

Here are some pictures from today:

The back yard. 

Not quite sure what we are going to do in this corner... maybe some tomato and cucumber plants! 

This evening Russ and Pam hung the trim in Blake's room! It still needs a coat of paint but it is really close to being done!

Tomorrow's projects... Finish the trim in Blake's room, paint the door, and more yard work!

Raven has loved having someone to spend her days with this week!

The yard...

Day 4: No new pictures of today. These ones were taken from a couple days ago, but it will give you an idea of what Don was up against today! Lots and lots of yard debris! Unfortunately Russ had to go back to work today. Don spent the day cleaning up the yard, Pam painted the trim for the chair rail in Blake's room and pulled some of the never ending weeds!

The huge pile of debris left from the tree that fell over before we moved in.


3 loads later and it is mostly all gone. We were able to dump it at a coworkers of Russ who lives on some property where he will burn it which was great!

So after today the back yard is pretty much cleaned up! I will try to post some pictures of it all cleared out tomorrow. With all that debris I didn't realize how big of a yard we have. Soon it will be time to plant a garden!

Then and now...
Just thinking back to last year at this time when we still lived in the duplex. Here was our front yard then. Which we spent a weekend sprucing up.


Our yard now...
Quite the difference! We won't just be doing yard work for one weekend in the spring anymore! There will always be yard work to be done!

I dislike picking out paint colors.

Don and Pam (Russell's parents) arrived today. They came up for spring break, Don is going to help Russ put up a short fence in the front yard and do some yard work for us and Pam is going to help paint Blake's room. Here are some pictures from day #1.

The first project of the day: Paint Colors.

I have learned that either I do not have an eye for color or orange is a really hard color to pick out! For Blake's room we are going to put up a chair rail and on the bottom half I really wanted to paint orange and the top either white or a light blue. Little did I know 3 samples of orange later and we still wouldn't have a color I was happy with :( (we were also contemplating stripes but we have decided against that)

So after many trips to the paint store, we decided to go with brown for the bottom and light blue for the top. We are going to use the brown on the right side. I really wanted to stay away from brown and blue because it seems as if that is what everyone is doing these days for a baby boys room but I think after it is all done it will look really nice. Oh well, maybe someday I will be brave enough to paint a play room orange. Or Russ says he now has a lot of orange paint to use in a tree house someday.

Second project of the day: The Crib!

We got the crib today! I couldn't be happier with it! I LOVE it! And since it is white I think it will look really good against the brown wall!

Russ and Don putting the crib together, Raven thinks she is helping too.

And it's finished!

Third project of the day.... Fence.

We are going to add a little 3ft fence around the front yard to give us some more privacy. Russ and Don did a little measuring and then off to Home Depot to get wood!

2.5 hours and a few hundred dollars later and we have a fence in the making! Let the work begin!

All loaded up!

Will post more pictures as we get things done! Praying the rain holds off so we can get some work on the yard done and the fence started tomorrow!

Timberrr

This HUGE tree fell over before we bought the house. We wrote in the offer that we wanted the seller to remove the tree. But since the house was bank owned and the listing agent was clueless to what was going on half the time, the tree was never removed. Oh well, it wasn't going to be a "deal breaker" for us.

We asked my uncle (who has a wood stove) if he would like to come chop the wood and it would be his. He took us up on the offer and this Saturday came and took it off our hands!

Here he is working hard.

The tree is gone! And the backyard feels ginormous- we still have a ton of work to do back there!

Now we have a huge pile of branches... bond fire anyone??