June:
THE
BEST
MONTH
EV-ARH!!!!
It's kind of a bummer Justin's in stupid school right now and that I have more than one job.... But seriously. June is the bomb. Summer is officially in full swing. Oh, and it's my birth month.... nbd.
This last month has been great.
Except when Richie got super sick. That was not cool. I'm not very calm when my kid gets fevers. As a first time mom I'm sure I freak out a little bit too much. But seriously, would you be calm if your infant had a fever of 103?? No. No you wouldn't.
The biggest update is that we got grass. It's seriously a miracle. Let me just say that our house is a fixer upper. Okay, that might be a bit of an understatement. Sometimes I wonder why we were so crazy to buy this old house. But then I remember that it was so cheap, in one of the best neighborhoods in SLC, right at the mouth of Millcreek Canyon, 20-40 minutes from 7 different ski resorts, has the best schools in Utah in the neighborhood, and has an amazing ward. So that's why we bought it. One day we will make it a proud house and save it from years of neglect by previous owners.
When we moved in this was the backyard.
Apparently this house was THE house of the neighborhood in the 70's. It had a pool and was gorgeous. Then some people decided they didn't want the pool. So they filled it in. With what? Well, as they were doing some remodeling they thought, "Hey, we should save money and fill in the pool with remodeling garbage." So they did. Smart, right?
Okay, so we moved in and there was the kidney shaped curbing from the pool leftover. Obviously there was no sprinkler system so any grass they had planted died. It was soooooo ghetto. Seriously. For two years Justin and I sat outside in the dirt and looked around and said to each other, "Ugh... it is so nasty back here."
Then this year we got a great tax refund. So we took some of it and used it to fix up the yard. Justin started by jack hammering the sides of the pool down about a foot. It sounds trivial but it was not. A jack hammer weighs about 60 pounds. So you pick it up, jack hammer for a few minutes, pick it up again, jack hammer a new spot, etc.... All the wAY around the 60-80 foot perimeter. It was so exhausting for him.
Then he took a saw and had to cut out all the rebar that was enforcing the concrete. Then we both spent two days loading up my parent's trailer with cut up concrete and rebar and taking it to the dump. Then he added dirt on top, and had to till up the yard. Then he needed to dig trenches for sprinklers. The soil in the foothills here is so rocky and dry. A shovel didn't cut it. So he used a pick ax. It was insane.
After the trenches were dug, he had to lay PVC sprinkler pipe for sprinkler lines. We decided since we couldn't put sprinklers in the middle of the yard due to a large concrete pool, we would do it on perimeter and have sprinkler heads powerful enough to get to the middle of the yard from the outside. So after a few weeks and with some help from his former landscaping boss when he mowed lawns in high school, sprinklers were installed.
Then, the grass came. With some help from neighbors and a few young men in the ward, the grass was laid!
Isn't it beautiful? We went a bit over our $1500 budget... But now we have our grass. Our backyard feels like a backyard finally.
Bottom line: My husband is manly and a DIY kinda guy. Love him. He's hardworking, smart, and determined. I totally lucked out with him. I may have had to threaten him in order to get him to marry me (seriously, I did, long story) but the manipulation was worth it. Now he's stuck with me and I get to keep him. Ha. Manipulation: the best foundation for a healthy marriage.
Next adventure: Jackson Hole!
THE
BEST
MONTH
EV-ARH!!!!
It's kind of a bummer Justin's in stupid school right now and that I have more than one job.... But seriously. June is the bomb. Summer is officially in full swing. Oh, and it's my birth month.... nbd.
This last month has been great.
Except when Richie got super sick. That was not cool. I'm not very calm when my kid gets fevers. As a first time mom I'm sure I freak out a little bit too much. But seriously, would you be calm if your infant had a fever of 103?? No. No you wouldn't.
The biggest update is that we got grass. It's seriously a miracle. Let me just say that our house is a fixer upper. Okay, that might be a bit of an understatement. Sometimes I wonder why we were so crazy to buy this old house. But then I remember that it was so cheap, in one of the best neighborhoods in SLC, right at the mouth of Millcreek Canyon, 20-40 minutes from 7 different ski resorts, has the best schools in Utah in the neighborhood, and has an amazing ward. So that's why we bought it. One day we will make it a proud house and save it from years of neglect by previous owners.
When we moved in this was the backyard.
Apparently this house was THE house of the neighborhood in the 70's. It had a pool and was gorgeous. Then some people decided they didn't want the pool. So they filled it in. With what? Well, as they were doing some remodeling they thought, "Hey, we should save money and fill in the pool with remodeling garbage." So they did. Smart, right?
Okay, so we moved in and there was the kidney shaped curbing from the pool leftover. Obviously there was no sprinkler system so any grass they had planted died. It was soooooo ghetto. Seriously. For two years Justin and I sat outside in the dirt and looked around and said to each other, "Ugh... it is so nasty back here."
Then this year we got a great tax refund. So we took some of it and used it to fix up the yard. Justin started by jack hammering the sides of the pool down about a foot. It sounds trivial but it was not. A jack hammer weighs about 60 pounds. So you pick it up, jack hammer for a few minutes, pick it up again, jack hammer a new spot, etc.... All the wAY around the 60-80 foot perimeter. It was so exhausting for him.
Then he took a saw and had to cut out all the rebar that was enforcing the concrete. Then we both spent two days loading up my parent's trailer with cut up concrete and rebar and taking it to the dump. Then he added dirt on top, and had to till up the yard. Then he needed to dig trenches for sprinklers. The soil in the foothills here is so rocky and dry. A shovel didn't cut it. So he used a pick ax. It was insane.
After the trenches were dug, he had to lay PVC sprinkler pipe for sprinkler lines. We decided since we couldn't put sprinklers in the middle of the yard due to a large concrete pool, we would do it on perimeter and have sprinkler heads powerful enough to get to the middle of the yard from the outside. So after a few weeks and with some help from his former landscaping boss when he mowed lawns in high school, sprinklers were installed.
Then, the grass came. With some help from neighbors and a few young men in the ward, the grass was laid!
Isn't it beautiful? We went a bit over our $1500 budget... But now we have our grass. Our backyard feels like a backyard finally.
Bottom line: My husband is manly and a DIY kinda guy. Love him. He's hardworking, smart, and determined. I totally lucked out with him. I may have had to threaten him in order to get him to marry me (seriously, I did, long story) but the manipulation was worth it. Now he's stuck with me and I get to keep him. Ha. Manipulation: the best foundation for a healthy marriage.
Next adventure: Jackson Hole!
