Grass!

They finally put in my little tree.  I'm not sure what it is, but I love it!  Look, it has tinges of pink in it -- how perfect is that?

Caught one of the workers here, they were just finishing up.

Seems so weird to have green....a really good weird.

Landscaping Update

We finally are seeing some progress again.  Over all I fairly like it, think there's a few things I'd like to tweak, but I'll live with most of it for awhile and see if I'm still feeling the same down the road.  There is another tree coming in hopefully today that will go in the area about an inch above my shadow in the picture above.  The three closest bushes here are lilac bushes, supposed to only get about 3 feet tall.  I guess I mentioned to our landscaper that I liked lilac bushes, because when I commented yesterday about them, he said that's why he put them in. 

The center island as well as in front of the pillars will all be in flowers.  Our landscaper doesn't plant flowers, he said he's had problems with people letting them die and wanting him to replant them.  It will be a little while before I'm able to get those in.  In the center of the "eye-land" you can see some grasses that he did put in that will return every year and fill in that center area and the flowers will go all around the outside of them. 

This is one of those areas, not totally thrilled with it, though I have a few ideas.  Think I'm going to look for something to go in the center of the lower level, something ceramic or metal.....will just have to watch for something that rings my bell. Of course all this will look a bit better in a few years when the bushes have a chance to grow and fill in areas better. 

I'm liking the big rocks :)

This is a white flowering cherry/crab apple (?) - non fruit producing tree....can't remember what he said now.  I want to say it's the same tree I planted in front of our Twin Falls house and that is a beautiful tree.  Reserving judgment on this area, too.  The rock walls would look much better if there was bark instead of gravel in these areas, there would be a much better contrast in color - and I really like bark (actually soil pep is my preference) much better. But we've watched the yards that have bark up here and it just blows all over the place with the wild winds we get.  I really didn't want to deal with that year in and year out....so rock ground cover it is.  A couple of my ideas is maybe to bring in larger rocks and put into that area around the tree...giving a different texture.  Or....maybe even spray paint some of the gravel a dark brown in various planting areas in the yard....giving the dark color of the bark I can't have.  (Dave will fight me on that one...just watch!) 

Here you can see better the indention where the other tree will go.  It's some kind of miniature willow.

There's 3 more lilac bushes over here too.  They wanted to leave that area flat, because of the boxes there in the front....but I really didn't want any planted areas flat...just don't like that look.  So they built it up and now the gravel wants to fall onto the boxes.  We may have to build some kind of barrier around them. 

Heard last night that they are to come today and prep the ground and sod goes in tomorrow!!

I debated over what to do on the side here.  Finally decided that eventually a fence will probably be between us and whoever builds next door, so this isn't a very important area of the yard, plus it's where the truck drives out from deliveries to the basement of the house so it's always a concern if there are heavy vehicles driving over grass.  Just seemed easier and cheaper to put this area into low maintenance gravel. 

Surprise Birthday Party for Ashley and Molly

You know how the best made plans don't always work?  Our son-in-law, Dave, made arrangements for a surprise birthday party for Ashley and Molly.  Invited friends, bought food, everything.  He ended up working ALL DAY at the hospital and missed the whole thing.  Of course Ashley didn't know anything about it, and the rest of us are kind of.....hmmmm, do we know enough of what he planned to pull this off without him?

Dave had told Ashley that we were going out to dinner that night, so she didn't plan any food.  We knew friends were supposed to be showing up...sometime....so we were trying to put off Ashley wanting to go out to a restaurant...."we're not really hungry, can we just make sandwiches or have left overs?"  "Actually, let's just let the guys be in charge of dinner tonight....pull out the hamburgers."  Here Ashley is, looking a bit frustrated about how dinner is not going the way she thought it was supposed to.  We're all hoping the friends show up quickly!

Little Molly with her birthday balloons

Friends finally came and brought part of the meal, and Ashley was surprised and then understood what we had been trying to do behind her back.

Molly really liked watermellon

 and immediately decided to try and eat the big ONE candle on her birthday cupcake.

Lots of food, cake and ice cream

 cupcake aftermath!

Ashley's sweet new friends in Rawlins that helped pull off the surprise party.  We made a plate for Dave and told him all about it when he got home.  So sad.

Memory Lane

 

Still working at cleaning out photos on my camera.  Here's some pictures we took...sometime...on a trip to Idaho, we drove past some of our old homes and neighborhoods and took some pictures of what they look like now.  This one above is from Twin Falls.  A very pretty home we liked quite a lot.  I planted that tree in the front and the one showing over the corner of the back fence, they have grown so much.  Hey, I just noticed it looks like they brought the wishing well from the back yard and have it in the front by the porch....interesting.  Not a big fan of stuff like that in the front yard, but it's cute and fun in the back. 

 

 

Obviously not an old home.  This is Kennedy Elementary in Rexburg, don't think Chelsea ever went here but the other kids all spent a number of years in this school which was right in our neighborhood.  I even worked at a teachers aid for a year there. 

 

Probably my favorite house - (if you don't count the one we're in now).  Rexburg, the last one we lived in there.

 

One of my least favorite houses, no curb appeal at all, and the layout of the house was just awkward.  But it was the only one for sale in our old neighborhood and ward when we moved back to Rexburg for the 2nd time.  If  was fine, we redid a lot of the carpet, painted, redid tackily done things.  We did like that the backyard was right off the school playground - it looked like our yard went on forever :)  Stayed here until the house above came on the market....we bought it and moved down the block! 

 



 

Our first home in Rexburg.  It used to have a ton of trees in the front - you couldn't even see the house!  And some awful railroad ties all around the grass (never could figure out why someone would do that.)  All that is gone now....really changes the look of the house.  This was one of those moves where I never saw the house until we moved in....we had a couple of those.  It was just easier for Dave to find something than for us to bring all our little kids miles and miles and house hunt.  He usually did a pretty good job picking out something for us. 

 

It's always nostalgic to return to old homes, especially Rexburg where I really thought we'd live there forever when we returned the 2nd time.  Even though the weather is horrible in the winter, I really love Rexburg. 

Landscaping - cement edging

 

No matter how much you try to keep control of things, it always doesn't work out.  We were bound and determined to be around when anything was done on the yard.  Well, we were out of town when this edging was done.  When we realized it was going to happen that way, the landscaper came over the day before we left to draw the lines out just as I wanted them, and then commented before he left, now we're doing the colored cement with a stamped design, right?  NO!  We're doing the curvy edge with regular grey cement.  We had discussed that months ago with him....but very easily we could have ended up with the wrong thing - while we were out of town.

 

When we got home the edging looked very brown -- but as it dried it became more grey.  The wind was blowing dirt all over, so we think most of the brown was the dirt.  We were a bit worried there for awhile.

 

I don't like the sudden drop-off of the cement at the end of the side walk, we've had it tapered off on previous jobs we've had done at other homes, but it looks like this is what we're going to have here.  I would have had them fix that....if we'd been home.  It's just always a good idea to be around for stuff like t his.

Conference Weekend

 

Tara brought crafts for the grandkids to make over the weekend.  These masks were a great hit!  Who is who?!

 

Trying to get photos of the kids is hilarious.  We can not, Not, NOT get all of them to do the same thing at the same time.  While trying to figure out which one was the best, I decided I actually like the funny ones!  Their wonderful little personalities just shine through :) 

 

See :)

 

I don't think we ever got a photo of Addie smiling.

 

Of our three little families, this one was the only one that was complete (Dave and Spencer weren't here), so no one else wanted family shots.  Elizabeth already knows how to smile for the camera!

My mother's visit to Roosevelt

 

We have lived in this eastern corner of Utah for over 8 years and a few months ago my mom came to visit for the first time.  She actually had some business that needed to be done here, which prompted the trip, but it worked for us :)  It was over conference weekend, so 3 of my 4 children had made arrangements to come anyway, so it worked out well for some photos. 

 

This is my sweet sister-in-law, Anne, who has moved in with mom now to help her out with things.  Anne has lived on the east coast for many years, and we haven't had a chance to see her often.  My son, Blake, didn't even remember meeting her before.  It was nice to have her here, too, and now we hope to see her much more often.

 

All of my grandchildren with their great grandmother. Kinsey, Molly, Addison, Elizabeth, Tayton, and Austin.

Landscaping....finally!

This will be our 3rd summer in this house, and we're finally going to have the front yard put in.  We have the worst ground here, it's mostly rock with a little dirt around them - it's awful.  We tried to figure out how we could take care of it ourselves, but finally decided it was beyond us to dig up all that rock and have several feet of new top soil brought in on top of sprinkler systems....before any plants are even thought of.  We saved up the money and are just paying professionals to do it.

 

A whole crew worked all day and ended up with this wonderful, no rock, end result!  Even just this dirt looks so much better than what we had before.

 

Unfortunately, here it has sat for a couple of weeks now.  I had to be out of town for almost a week, and I didn't want the yard to be put in while I was gone.  (Been there, done that - did not want to come back and have things not the way I wanted it done.)  Evidently the cement edger person only works on Saturday -- so we're waiting until this Saturday for that to be done, and I guess that means that maybe we'll have the rest of the yard done next week. 

 

We do have a little retaining wall already, though I think we're going to ask them to make it a little higher.  Stay tuned, we hope to have green stuff soon :)