For the past week it has been freezing outside! In the single digits at night and in the teens during the day… brrrrr! But, boy are we thankful. Last night Kevin was going for our nightly ice cream fix and noticed our freezer was dripping water inside. We looked a little closer and noticed the ice cream was practically melted (but still good enough to eat :)), that’s when we realized our refrigerator was not doing it’s job… keeping things cool. Great! Now what do we have to replace???!!! First thing this morning I called the appliance repair shop and they were able to squeeze us in and come look at it this afternoon. Luckily it’s a small part that won’t cost an arm and a leg but they won’t be able to get it till Monday afternoon. So PRAISE GOD it’s cold outside b/c our garage is doubling as a refrigerator right now. And not doing too bad a job, might I add. I just have to remember to go to the garage for milk.

Not a bad time to clean the refrigerator

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This post might not be very exciting for you but we are very excited that our house is starting to look more presentable from the outside.  We got our front yard “installed” this spring.  Kevin took down a bunch of trees not only out front but also in the back yard.  Everything was so overgrown and old that it just needed to come down.  There was poison ivy everywhere and ground cover took over half of the back yard and most of the front.  And basically we just wanted grass for the boys to play in.  So after putting in some of our own sweat and time we decided to hire out the back too.  A few weeks ago they came out and “installed the back yard.

Over labor day I worked on planting bushes and Kevin surprised me one Saturday by spreading all the mulch.  I think it’s finally looking pretty good.

Here are some before and after pictures.

The front yard when we moved in:

The front yard this spring just after seeding:

Currently:

Close up of my cute plants

Back yard BEFORE:

AFTER:

Now we have moles!!!!!  Can you believe it! Can you see their runway?!

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The shed is finished!!!  Although we didn’t get much time to relax this weekend, it’s done and we’re glad for that.  Kevin had some friends come over on Saturday to help with the roof and they finished it up on Monday. Kevin only fell off once.  It was about 7:30, Monday morning…  I was sleeping and when I heard the steady pounding of nails stop and a loud crash, I just knew someone fell off the roof!!!  When i ran outside to see, I was glad to see Kevin standing and just shaking it off.  He walked away with a few scratches and a brused butt. :)  Praise God, b/c it could have been a lot worse! 

Here’s some pictures of the finished product… he did a great job!

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Because of all the work we’ve been doing at our house we have had the opportunity to meet many neighbors… they all come over to check out what we’re doing and some have even jumped in to help.

One of our neighbors behind us (not the grumpy old man), came over last weekend and helped Kevin hang siding.  He came back the next day and wanted to take a picture of Ethan and Kevin in front of the shed.  Here’s how the picture turned out!  I LOVE IT!

(sorry the quality’s not that great… i had to scan it)

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Kevin’s been dreaming up his ideal shed for our back yard all summer.  He wanted to get started on it before he had to go back to school for the fall.  We had 2 weekends lined up for him to work on it… one we had torrential downpours so he couldn’t get much done so that left this weekend to get things started and hopefully done before our landscaping crew came to install our backyard… Here is what Kevin has been working on non-stop since Saturday morning (he even took Monday off work to get more done).

Our good friend Jens came over to help all day on Saturday and some Sunday afternoon!!  Thanks for all you help Jens!!

He ended up finishing all the siding and some of the trim on Monday.  Next weekend he’ll shingle the roof and hopefully we’ll be able to paint it. (Any suggestions on what to paint it?  Our house is white with green shutters and a green roof… what do you think about a green roof, light beige siding and white trim???)

My hubby workin’ hard!

Ethan was a big helper too (I’ll have more pictures of him later - had to get out the SLR for some better shots).

Pray for nice weather this coming weekend so we can get it all done.

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Yea… we can put a car in the garage finally!!! We haven’t been able to put a car in the garage since we moved in. We were waiting to have the time to put a floor in the attic so we could move all our storage boxes to the attic. Last weekend Dave and Melissa (friends from Michigan) came down to visit and Dave helped Kevin install the floor. This past Saturday Kevin spent the day cleaning the garage and putting all our storage boxes away!!! The result? We can finally use the garage for what it was designed to do… store a car! And just in time cuz it’s been snowing like crazy.

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I’m finally posting pictures of our new driveway and sidewalk! We got our new drive the weekend of Labor Day and it was quite a process! Two days to tear up the old cement, dig up the beast of a tree stump that caused the driveway to crumble, a weekend in between and one day to pour the cement.

Ethan loved all the action in our front yard. He would stand at the window and watch the big truck and backhoe tear up the driveway and yard. The workers enjoyed “showing off” for him too.

One of the guys (your typical, stereotype construction worker) decided to take a short cut and not help break up a larger piece of concrete to put in the backhoe to then transport to the dump truck… instead he decided he would use his own weight to balance it on the bucket while the driver of the backhoe would lift it to the dumptruck. They were successful in their endeavor until the guy was making his way down when the driver moved a gear and, “crunch”, his hand got smashed in the gears of the bucket! I was, of course, out taking pictures when it all happened and, ugh…. all I could think was “oh my gosh… it just cut off his hand!” Needless to say they all left and took him to the hospital, and the guy was back working in 3 hours! He ended up only breaking a finger. Such excitement!

Besides the “finger” incedent, everything was going great and on schedule until they started in on the stump. We were told in the beginning that they could pull out this monsterous tree stump no problem and that they would do it for no charge. We knew cottonwood trees were known for their massive root systems so we made sure it was ok with them to do it… they said ‘no problem’… boy were they kicking themselves when they started in on the whole process. It set them back a whole day just to get the stump out! At one point they had dug a trench all the way around the stump about 5-6′ deep and it wouldn’t even budge!!! They finally managed to pry it loose but not without a lot of frustration!

The pictures should tell the rest of the story… check out the album by clicking on the picture below.

Categories: House, New Photos
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