Which is more Important?

There comes a time in your life when you must ask yourself a very important question.

Is it more important to punish a little girl who has gotten into something she isn't supposed to?

Or is it more important to get a camera and document it?

I'll let you take a guess as to which one I chose...

Some fun with Stairs

My children are weird.  One night they came running to find me to say "Come look what we found out we can do!"

They figured out they could slide down the stairs!

Dylan never really got the whole point.  He would lay his head back, and sorta climb slowly down that way.

Goofy toddler Kelsey just wallowed all over the stairs.  I don't know why she took off her shirt, but she didn't last very long without it.

Kaitlyn got a little faster than Dylan, but her hair kept getting caught.

See?  Down.  Up.  Down.  Up with his head.

Kari, however, was a little torpedo!  She was very fast!  She did it so many times, she had a carpet burn on her back AND chest for days afterwards.

Kaitlyn said her back started to hurt, so she decided to try her bum.  This picture looks weird to me because her cheeks look slightly un-Kaitlyn-ish.  It must be the force of the stairs hitting her bum or something.

All the way down at the bottom.

The unfortunate thing is that I can't say that I have never done this kind of thing myself!

The Backyard, The Finale

So we left you Saturday afternoon, during a thunderstorm.  We kept plugging on.  The system that seemed to work best for us was that hubby (and the girls) transported 1 or 2 pieces at a time and I crab crawled between the pieces so I could unfold/straighten/and push them up together.  Pallet after pallet.  Piece after piece.  We did some calculations and decided we had about 1.5 pallets too many, so we called around and found a friend who wanted a pallet of sod.  They borrowed the truck, and we were one less pallet of sod!  We also stopped trying to get every single piece of sod off the pallets.  As the day grew longer, the lower we got on the pallet, the more the sod was in shambles.  It wasn't worth it to try to piece together every little bit if we had extra.  So, once we got to the bottom 3 or 4 layers, we would drag it out and start the next piece.  By Saturday night we were exhausted.  Like, thoroughly done.  My knees were killing me and hubby's back (who has a bad disc) couldn't do an more.  We finished the day having done 9 pallets.  So, doing the math 16-1.5(given away and/or trashed)-2(done on Friday)-9(done on Saturday) = 3.5 pallets to finish.

Ironically, earlier in the week I had been asked to substitute teach in Sunday School, so I couldn't skip church.  But, I DID get up super early so hubby and I could finish Sunday morning.  Hubby, unfortunately had a really slow start, so I was outside by myself for about 45 min.  It came to the point where I HAD to go or I would be late, so hubby said he would finish because I had been out by myself for a while.  I went to church, tired, sore, and grateful it was going to be done when I got home.  Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned.  When I arrive home around noon, hubby still wasn't done.  Between his back and things just taking longer, there was still a pallet to go.  I grunted and screamed, and I even shed a few tears.  I was exhausted!  But, I changed back into my dirty clothes and helped hubby finish.  I took these pictures the next day (and using a new picture stitching program I downloaded, stitched them together).  So, there is the new fence, hiding all the lawn debris to the left.  There is our single surviving shed.  Beside it is the space we blocked out to put either the above ground pool again, or the playground stuff.  And there is our new deck to the right.  It looks pretty dang fabulous, am I right?

This is up on the side of the house.  The yard was improperly graded, and we took out about 12 inches right AT the house, and had to come down several more inches to get a trough going AROUND the house.  Thankfully, we were able to use all that dirt around the back yard, filling in trenches, holes, low spots, etc.

The back corner.  Ain't it purty?

Sunday afternoon, again in a horrible sense of timing, we were having guests over.  We had been trying to get with these friends for weeks, and this was the first time our schedules aligned, so after laying the sod, I went inside to shower, and clean the house.  I warned you that laying sod is a dirty job.  There was dirt inside EVERYWHERE.  Lots of sweeping and vacuuming to be done.  We did enjoy our friends company, so at least that was worth it.  Poor hubby had to go back to work on Monday, and I took the day off.  Seriously, I pretty much took the whole week off.  I am not sure I have ever been so sore in my entire life.  My knees hurt for WEEKS afterwards!  All my muscles ached and I thought I might prefer to lay like a landed fish several times.

It took us about 48 hours to lay 14 pallets of sod (we gave away 1 and has about 1 pallets worth left over once you add all the parts and pieces together).  It may be a decent amount of time to lay that much sod.  I don't know.  I will say that I will never ever ever ever ever ever ever lay that much at one time again.  Maybe 6-7 for an entire weekend.  I would say I would never lay sod again at all, but we are already talking about finishing the front yard so it looks as nice as the back.  Yeah.  I know.  We just might be mentally disturbed.   I would also make sure to start AS SOON AS the sod is delivered.  Friday night seemed so easy, that we didn't realize how quickly it could go downhill.  

A week later, after we had somewhat recovered, we went back out to take care of all the pallets.  We had to move the empty ones somewhere, and empty the partial ones.  The last pallet had the most on it, and was therefore the heaviest.  We thought we could pick it up and move it, so we could put some of the sod underneath it.  Hubby and I deadlifted the thing, but because the pallets are pretty cheap, hubby's side broke and fell.  All the weight and suddenless of it made me drop my side and it landed on my ankle.

My stars.  I thought I was going to die.  I jumped around a bit, and screamed once or twice.  Tears may or may not have been streaming down my face.  I sat down and immediately elevated it and put ice on it.  After a few hours, I could move it pretty well, which in my head means nothing is broken, but I couldn't put any pressure against it.  Which meant no shoes.  Except my flip flops.

I am happy to report that I still don't think it was a broken ankle (though I can't be sure it didn't chip anything as I didn't actually go to the doc).  Now, 2 months later and an automatic timer on the sprinkler I can say that the sod is difficult, and not as great as we thought it would be.  The grass immediately greened up, and we thought we would be ok.  Then, we hit Alabama in July and August, and it started to turn brown.  We kept watering it, and it looks semi green in some areas.  We hope it comes back.  Also, some areas continue to die, and we think that is because those areas don't get enough sun.  We still haven't really let the kids run around on it yet, because we are still trying to baby it.  And according to hubby's landscaper on the job, it would be best to let it root itself for about 3 months before you put heavy traffic on it (which means that the summer was a total bust!).  We still have the gate to finish in the fence (that is located behind the shed).  And we decided to put up the playground stuff in that little area; it is cheaper and less up keep, plus it may help to save the grass if the kids have another area to play in.  So, of course, we aren't 100% finished with it.  

It was back breaking, sweaty, dirty, difficult, hard, nasty work.  Would I do it again?  I honestly can't say that I would, and I certainly wouldn't look forward to it.  However, by laying the sod ourselves, we saved about $1600...  So, was that worth it?  I still don't know.  

The Backyard, The Sod

Alright.  So, last we left you, we had finished the deck, and were having a picnic.  We placed an order for sod to come the following weekend, but had a few things to do before it came.  We went with sod for a few reasons.  Firstly, we were fast approaching the summer, and the whole point of the backyard renovation was to have a place for the kids to play.  Well, if we had to wait for weeks for the grass seed to grow, and weeks before the kids could play on it, that defeated the purpose.  The second reason being we hoped that in the end it would be easier to take care of, even if it was more expensive.  

First things first.  After cleaning up the fence line ourselves, we decided we didn't want the sod to go all the way to the fence.  We didn't clean it super duper well, and didn't want to have to go back.  So, we got some of that plastic landscaping stuff, and rolled it out along the back fence line and side and staked it down.  We ended up doing two wide stripes (instead of one) on the back fence because it just seemed to fit better.  Then we covered it with pine straw that we ordered and had delivered (best decision ever).  Pine straw degrades pretty quickly, so we will have to replace it annually, but it was cheap, and quick.  And hubby was out of town, so me and the kids were able to do both jobs by ourselves in a less than 3 hours.

Then our sod arrived on Friday.  The gentleman on the phone with whom I was arranging the delivery didn't know the exact time it would be delivered, so I planned my Friday as usual, and planned to spend Friday night and Saturday laying sod.  When we looked online, people were giving estimates ranging from 15 min/pallet to 1 hour/pallet.  We did the calculating for our back yard and decided we needed 16 pallets.  We actually ordered the sod before we put the black stuff around the fence line, which actually would have made us use about 2 less pallets.  Oh well.  Surprise!  The sod was delivered Friday morning.  Like, 8:30 am Friday morning.  Not cool.  I knew the sod would last for a few days, but the longer it sits there, the less good it is.  So, here is my new backyard!

Hubby was coming back Friday from being out of town in time to go to a doctors appointment, but I made him carve out 15 minutes to show me how to do it (in case it was difficult) so I could get a head start.  We ended up spreading about 2 whole pallets ( 1 whole and half of two pallets) that night (which is the super green stuff in the picture below in the back corner).  For those eagle eyed among you, we also put pine straw around the house.

Saturday morning dawned, and hubby and I got an early start.  Around 6 am, we went out to start spreading.  You can see the significant difference the overnight stay on the pallet made.  The super green stuff vs the yellow/brown stuff.  Each time we did a pallet, I was amazed at how far it went.  It just never seemed to end!  We got 3 pallets finished by breakfast (so the 2 halves and one more whole) at which point we went inside to eat and take about an hour break.  We thought we were doing ok.  Then went out to work until lunch.

When the delivery man delivered the sod, he set out the pallets at intervals in the yard so we wouldn't have to walk as far with each piece.  But remember when I said we ordered 16 before we had finished all the work?  So we had 2 pallets extra and they always just seemed to be in the way.  Also, if you have never worked with sod it is heavy.  So, we couldn't just move them.  Hence the truck (in the picture above).  We tied a pallet to the truck, and drug it out of the way.

By afternoon, it was hot.  And we were kind of done.  We hadn't gotten near as much laid as we needed to, but we were sore, and covered in dirt.  Like, layers of it.  It was hot, and sweaty.  Anticipating the heat, I bought an 8 pack of gatorade and some of the powder mix, so we could just refill them.  I think I drank about 8 myself that day, and only peed once.  In the middle of the day, we had a thunderstorm.  We weren't sure if this was a good thing, or a bad thing.  It gave us a much needed break, but it also meant we wouldn't get things done.  And we noticed, the longer it took, the more the sod disintegrated.  The sod we got was in 12x18 squares (approximately), so each piece had to be moved individually.  Again, this stuff is heavy, and covered in dirt.  The pieces on Friday held together nicely, and could be "thrown" pretty well.  By Saturday afternoon, they were starting to rip in your hands.  (Remember, they are less than 36 hours old by this point)

The girls had been taking turns helping us too.  One would stay inside with the two littles, and the other would come out to help.

There was thunder too (which was one of the main reasons we took a break).

The kids were thankful for the break :)

To be continued....

Duh duh duuuuuuuuun!

The Cat

Pa has a cat.  A particularly scraggly looking, outdoor cat who has been around as long as I can remember practically.  Which makes him decently old.  In all my years of going to Pa's house, I don't remember the cat being particularly friendly.  Nay, I can't be sure I have ever even touched the cat.  I distinctly remember a time when one of the older girls wanted to pet the cat and got scratched for their concern and trouble.  And yet, at the end of our weekend at Pa's for his 95th birthday, we were sitting on the porch, relaxing for a last few minutes before getting in the car and heading out.  When low and behold, who should appear around the corner?  But Kelsey...  Carrying the cat.

 If you can't tell from the picture, it doesn't look like a particularly comfortable position for the cat.  In fact, several of us questioned whether the cat was still alive or not...  The majority of the cat is hanging off her hands, and she appears to be holding it mostly by its hips and back legs.

 It was such a strange occurrence, Kelsey got pictures from more that one angle.

 Then, Kelsey put the cat down, and proceeded to pet the cat.

 And apparently, all was right in the world.  

Moral of the story:  Sometimes, kids do strange things.  But sometimes, maybe cats are weirder.

The End.

Family Pictures

Pa is my Grandfather in Law technically.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), I see him more often than my biological grandparents.  Thankfully I can say that I really do love him.  When hubby and I first got married, he was still living by himself, driving, grocery shopping, house cleaning, etc.  But, his wife had died several years before and everyone knew his health was declining.  So, nobody thought he would live until the ripe old age of 95.  He has been "dying" practically since we got married. I keep joking that he is going to hang around just long enough for all of my children to get really attached.   However, in the last year, he has gotten significantly worse than significantly worse.  He doesn't walk anymore, and he has someone stay with him 24/7.  While he was well enough to celebrate this birthday, we aren't sure how many he has left.  So, since EVERYONE was there, and since I had my trusty camera, we gathered together and took a few shots.  

K & J, with cousins Taylor and Ashley.

 M & S, with cousins Karley and Kelly.

 All of the great grandkids.  Yes, this one went about as well as you expected.

 At least we got them all in the shot :)

 The Grandkids, S, K, and hubby.

 One sibling, plus spouse (Nana and Pop).

 Other Sibling, plus spouse (C & D)

 Our family, plus Pa.  I imagine him saying "Squirrel!"

 Hubby's parents and siblings, 3 generations.

After that, some of us had to pack up and skee daddle.  But it was a nice weekend, and fun to have everyone together, no matter how squished.

Playing Around

Remember when I said you would do anything to keep a nap deprived toddler happy?  Well, that includes a couple games of toss me up.  Check me out.  I am using new technology!  Isn't it cool?

 The rest of the weekend was a bunch of people hanging out with each other.  18 people to be exact.  In one house.  Yes, it got tight at times.

 It is a good thing children don't understand personal space.  Otherwise, it might have gotten crowded :)

 This weekend seemed to be a fun time for Kelsey's attack personality to come out.

 Such a cute little "angry" face.

 Can you just imagine the roar?

 Grrrrrrr!

 It had been a while since Aunt K, Cousin Taylor and Cousin Ashley had been able to come down.  And one of the first times in a few years that ALL of the cousins were there at the same time.  It was also the first time that Aunt K's new husband was able to come to Pa's house, so there was much exploring to be done.

 And what better way to do that than in the back of a pick 'em up truck?

We are in Alabama, after all.