Project Yard-Renovation Complete!

A huge shout out to my dad who helped bring my landscaping vision to fruition!

We could not have done it without him.

We worked so hard all through April and May to get this all done.

I love the way it looks but I am so over weeding and planting and making decisions.  I tried shoveling dirt one evening (it's so hard when I want to dig in and get the work done but I can't and all I can do is nag people to do it for me), and Jeff walked out, saw me shoveling dirt, and scolded me.  I said I was fine, but I couldn't walk the next day.  I strained some ligaments in my abdomen (where I no longer have usable stomach muscles--blah!)  Jeff was right.  I hate when he's right.

This is where the fire pit was to be relocated.

This was a HUGE job.  My dad had to take a sledgehammer to the old fire pit.  Then Jeff and my boys had to carry the heavy stones over 2 or 3 at a time.  We had to rip out a bunch of curbing, dig up sod, re-plant a tree, haul in loads of sand, level it out and re-lay the stones.

This is where the fire pit used to be.  We had to take it all out because one corner of it completely settled about 10 inches.  We decided to move it to another corner of the yard and put the new swing set in this area.  Once again, this was a HUGE project.  My dad had the genius idea of stacking these redwood logs to make a giant play area.

This is what the front of my house looked like for a good two months.  

Bless my patient and tolerant neighbors!

Voila!

The finished design.

The new fire pit from the view of my patio.

(Don't you love the firefly lights I hung around my umbrella?)

We invited my dad over for the first tinfoil dinners and S'mores of the year.

Another view

Party at the Droubays!

 Yay!  The new swing set.

 The kids LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it.  They spend hours out there everyday.

The vegetable garden, and by vegetables I mean peas and tomatoes.

I know it's small but it's enough for us and pretty much all we can manage right now.

We planted several new trees, shrubs, and flowers.

This is along the back of the house.

Down one side.

My dad fixed the water feature and the landscape lighting. We also put some bushes and step stones in.

And I finally got a dang hose-roll-up-thinger. (What are they called?)  No more hose laying all around the yard.

Flowers

(Love Sam in this picture)

More flowers

A few new trees

(Sam again)

View from my porch

Even better view from my porch of my cute Lucy and her new beach cruiser that she got for her birthday.

Major Yard Renovation

The fairly simple project of putting together a swing set in our backyard has turned into a major yard overhaul.  

But I'm very excited about it.

It's all a mess now but it will look so good when it's all done.

Major thanks to my dad who is helping out, because let's face it...Jeff is not the handiest of guys.  

A genius?  Yes.  Mr. Fix-it man?  No.

Renovations include:

A complete overhaul of the sprinkler system

Fixing the water feature

Planting several trees, bushes, and flowers

Ripping out and relocating the fire pit.

Ripping out several sections of curbing

Re-sodding areas in the grass

Cementing in a new basketball standard

and finally

Building and putting together a large playground area with sand and a swing set

I can't wait to show the finished result!

Week(s) in iPhotos 8 - A Big Announcement

The weather has been fantastic lately.

I've been going on lots of walks.

Almost everyday.

(I'm determined to stay active this time around, no matter how sick I am.)

I've been trying to finish lots of projects around the house before the sickness hits.

Jeff and I planted about 50 shrubs and trees in our yard.

I have been so hungry lately and have gone absolutely nuts in the kitchen.

Fast food makes me gag now and I want home cooked meals with lots of vegetables.

(I mean, come on!  Look at this meal.  I am so proud of myself.)

Homemade peanut butter granola bars.

I did something I've never, EVER done before:

bought, cut up, and used jicama in a salad.

Be amazed.

More vegetables.

Can't get enough.

Man!  I love this kid.  We spend a LOT of time together while the kids are in school all day.

This is his favorite hat and he wears it everywhere.

He's recently outgrown his afternoon naps and frequently falls asleep in the late afternoon.

In fact, so do I.  I need a nap every afternoon these days.  I'm sooooo tired.

I am dog sitting my sister's dog while she is in Chicago.

Here she is sleeping on my bed.  She's a good little doggy except when I accidentally overfeed her (I had no idea that she won't stop eating even when she's full) and she had diarrhea the whole first night.  

Lesson learned.

I came home from one of my walks to find this.

All the walking,

finishing up projects,

cooking, cravings, and exhaustion because........

I am 6 weeks pregnant!!!!

Morning sickness will hit sometime this week.

It lasts all. day. long.

Last pregnancy it lasted the entire 9 months--and that was the least of my problems.

I am praying and praying that it will be somewhat easier this time around.

We are all very excited at our house, especially Lucy.

Baby will be here in December.

Flowers

The flowers that I planted back at the beginning of June....

Exploded into THIS:

AND this was AFTER I weeded out several flowers.

My flowers went absolutely CRAZY this year!

Tumbleweed Town

We live in a very windy part of the state.

It's not windy all the time.  In fact, it's not windy MOST of the time, but whenever a storm comes or cold front is moving in, WATCH OUT!  We have gail-force winds for about 4 hours.

About a month after we first moved in, we experienced our first wind storm and this is what happened in the space of about 2 HOURS!

These dang tumbleweeds blew in our backyard from the neighboring empty lots, swirled and swirled around and then stuck themselves right up against our house.

This was the view from inside the house.

We were scolded by our landscaper for letting the tumbleweeds gather like this.  He thought that we had neglected them for weeks and weeks and said they were a fire hazard.  He about fell over dead when I told him this happened the day before in the space of a couple hours.

And here's what happens if your swing set isn't heavily bolted down.  :(

Now that the empty lots have filled in around us, we don't get the tumbleweeds as bad but it's still a major clean-up project every spring. 

All these (and the umbrella) were cleaned out of ONE window well.

What do we do with all the tumbleweeds? 

They go right over the fence and Lehi City comes along and picks them up.

While the boys were cleaning up tumbleweeds, Lucy and I were busy planting flowers.

I let her do a lot of them all herself this year.

After a two or three weekends of cleaning up, weeding, hauling and spreading 3 loads of mulch, and planting, here is the finished product.

We finally, finally planted a very small vegetable garden this year.  I'm so excited for tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, peas, carrots, and green peppers.  Josh and Jake are mostly excited about the Habanero peppers.   (That is....if we don't kill everything from our lack of planting experience)

The flowers:

Until the next wind storm....