The Ultimate Guy Magnet

This is the Excavator we needed to rent this week. (The yellow one)

By the end of the weekend, we had to:

1. Dig our drain field

2. Pull 15+ stumps out of the ground

3. Dispose of 15+ stumps

4. Flatten out remaining soil and ground

5. Move tree trunks to central location for future bonfires

We had some good friends come help with this enormous project. Steve, Chris, David and our new neighbor Jeff.

We're just hoping we can get everything accomplished before we have to return it to United Rentals on Monday morning.

One of the blessings from this whole experience happened when our neighbor, Jeff came over to offer his help. (he is the one that handled cutting down all of our trees) It was a huge blessing because he pulled up almost every stump in a quarter of the time that it would have taken us to do it. That was important because we were being charged by how many hours the excavator was "on".

Chris also knew how to operate the machine, between the two of them, they did a lot of the excavating in a timely fashion.
The roots of these stumps were amazing! Humongous! They left a lot of holes in the ground.

By the end of the weekend, Mike had become very comfortable in maneuvering the excavator.Decker was in heaven watching this tractor at our house. As soon as we arrived at home after it had been dropped off, he saw it and started making his tractor noises.

Then once all the stumps were pulled up, Dave came by saying he could dispose of the stumps for us. Here is the dumptruck with the container.

Dave used the excavator to move the stumps from the yard into the container.
And Steve, along with Mike were the masterminds behind the piping. Even though Steve was not feeling well during this weekend, he was there to offer support to Mike and getting this job done on time and on schedule.
A HUGE THANK YOU goes out to everyone who helped in tearing and cleaning up our yard. What a miraculous weekend and getting this huge project completed! Now it's time to reseed and make the yard a fun safe place to play. :)

Bonfires and Brambles

Living out in the country has it's advantages...especially if your husband is a PYRO...and especially since the previous owner left much to be burned.

We've had fun having bonfires in our pit in the backyard.

We've burned:

The strippers' dancefloor

The leftover pergo flooring from the kitchen that we didn't end up using in the laundry room.

Baseboards that we replaced

The old kitchen floor

The old Deck

Scattered pieces of wood scattered throughout the yard.

Tree limbs that are just lying everywhere.

Brambles--more on this later.

Ping pong table

Poker table

Doors with holes punched in them

Cabinets

...and the list probably goes on...but I can't think of anymore right now. It's been a lot, allowing us to spend many evenings sitting by the bonfire. ;)

We've got a little bench for Decker that is just his size.-- it came from the remnants of the old deck that has since been replaced, but had just been left to rot in the yard. ;)

Love the smell of dandylions...

Our yard hasn't been maintained in probably years. As I've walked around in the backyard, my clothes and my skin would be attacked by what I called "brambles". I don't know where I learned this term or if I made it up, but I've been getting a lot of questioning looks when I say there are "brambles" all over in the backyard. When I say it I'm referring to this pile of weeds that I pulled out of the ground. They are thorned weeds to blackberry bushes and they just sprawl all over the yard tripping you and hanging on to your skin and clothes if it can. So I spent an afternoon pulling up as much as I could and added it to our burn pile. What a great feeling to see that all go up in flames.

As of today, 5/13, I googled "brambles". And surprise surprise: Wikepedia has a most interesting definition:

"Brambles are thorny plants of the genus Rubus, in the rose family (Rosaceae). Bramble fruit is the fruit of any such plant, including the blackberry and raspberry.

Bramble bushes have a distinctive growth form. They send up long, arching canes...Many types of brambles bear edible fruit, and many have recurved thorns that dig into clothing and flesh when the victim tries to pull away from them. Some types also have hair-like thorns."

Well what do you know? I'm not as crazy as everyone thinks. ;)

Now that we've got a lot of the yard cleaned up and burned, we now have an even bigger woodpile to burn...

We had to have six trees cut down. Some were sick and some were leaning too far into the house. It was sad to see, these fall down. But, I have a feeling that this wood will last us a long time!

LONG LIVE THE BONFIRE!

Easter

Easter morning...Mike's in Montreal Canada working, but the Easter bunny still came...

Gatorade

shape box game

Chocolate and Marshmallow Bunnies

Bathtub Rubber fishies

Goldfish Crackers

Swedish Fish

Pull-Ups for the Potty trainee

Frosted Animal Crackers

Frosted Mini Wheats

Zach Brown Band

Decker is sportin his Pooh Bear backpack...so handsome. Hidden Easter Eggs at Grandma's filled with Mum Mums.
Trying to figure out which hole the plastic shape goes in....He was so frustrated when he couldn't do it at first...now he's a master...

What a fun day!

Grandma's Visit 3/23/10

Grandma Gamble came to visit for a week while I worked at Bellevue College and then we got to drive down to Vancouver WA for my sister-in-law, Amber's baby shower.

We visited Ferrel McWhittier's Farm Park again to see the animals.

This momma had 10 of these little cuties...

Still can't fit into Grandma's shoes...

or dad's boots... One of Decker's latest obsessions...ELMO...Mike's phone does all sorts of fun things... "Elmo had four ducks..."

On March 16th, Decker went potty on the big toilet for the first time. So I decided to start potty training Decker. We used his little frog toilet that he got for Christmas. While my mom was here, she really worked with him and getting him potty trained...but that's a whole 'nother post... will detail later... ;)

And why don't I have any pictures of Grandma Gamble to share? YIKES! I can't believe I didn't get any while she was here...

Visitors--of the four legged kind

Living out in the Woods...has been fun. Our home is surrounded by trees, we have a few years overgrowth in our yard...which includes, pokey blackberry bushes sprawling everywhere, tall weeds, dandelions sprinkle the lawn with color, pinecones of all sizes sit on the ground and there are stumps of past trees that could tell a million stories about their life here if they could talk.

The first visitor we had was this little guy. Mike found him out by a junk pile left by Brian, the previous owner...mattresses, futon and frame, golf clubs, motorcycle parts, wheels, rugs, laptop bag, engine parts that I couldn't begin to tell you what they came off of...

We named him Sammy the Salamandar...someone told me that they bring luck...so, thanks for visiting...

We let him go in the more "cleaned" part of the yard.Since then, we've had pesky woodpeckers pecking holes in our house walls, It makes you jump out of bed and run off to scare them off. We've bought a little plastic owl that "hoo's" at pretty much anything that passes it's radar. Cars will set it off, visitors coming to the door sets it off and hopefully it scares away the woodpeckers. Decker added new words to his vocabulary when we got the owl--"Owl" and "Who Who"?!

There is a pond in a neighboring yard and you get the full effect of living in the country when you hear the frogs singing at night. We see these little guys and they're bright green. Decker likes to jump like a frog.

On Saturday, Mike spent half the day mowing the lawn, and trimming the edges. I think this woke up little creatures everywhere and stirred their habitat a bit, since it probably hasn't been mowed in 4 + years. We first saw a rat and disposed of him and then he found these cute little critters:

They were adorable and were very easy to catch, since they are just babies.We really kind of wanted to keep them for pets, they were so lovable, but ended up putting them back near their stump where we think they live.
Decker just loved the little guys and wanted to keep holding them like little stuffed animals. After reading about baby bunnies online, we found out that the little white stripe on their forehead was a sign that they were still nursed by their mother. We thought it best to let them go home....Hopefully we'll see them hopping around the yard as they grow. What a treat! :)

Finally Moved in March 18th, 2010

So I know it's been awhile since I've posted. So I'm going to try to do a lot of posting...some may be random and jumbled, but here goes the first.

In getting our house ready to move, we thought it would take 2 weeks. Well it ended up taking 6 weeks, after the HardWood Floor guy postponed our install...which ended up being better, because we got more of our painting completed.

We slept our first night in our new home on March 18th. We had company the next night, my brother Luke, his wife Lora and their son Dallin. So we had all the rooms ready, minus door knobs on the door and closet doors still missing.

They were a huge help in helping us get more of the closet doors primed and painted, cleaned our sliding glass doors and getting the light fixtures back in place.

We also cleaned up some of our yard of the debris left by Brian, the previous owner and some of our debris that we replaced in the house and had our first bonfire out in our own backyard.

The weather was perfect so we also spent some time at the park. Ferrel McWhittier Park.

This is a great park with a little barnyard of farm animals.--more pictures to come at a later date....

Here's some pics of Dallin--14 months and Decker-- 20 months.

If you noticed the band-aid on Decker's forehead...he fell on the hardwoods and "bumped" his head. It grew into a huge knot, and I think that the pressure was so built up that it started to bleed. He wore it for a couple of days and it healed very quickly.

Job #4 Putting the Wood in...

Randy, our Wood guy delivered the oak wood flooring a couple of weeks before installation, so it could get used to it's new surroundings. :)

Mike pulled up the pergo flooring in the kitchen--which we will probably use down on our laundry room's cement floor--and discovered the orignial linoleum to the kitchen floor. This all had to come up to get to the sub floor for the wood to be placed on. Mike borrowed Randy's toekick saw and if you notice in the next picture one of the kitchen cabinet doors is missing....Ooops! Thank goodness it wasn't an arm or a leg though... Randy's laying it all out...

down the hallway...

Then we get to choose the stain... left to right
1. Golden Brown
2. Golden Brown, Blood Red equal mix.
3. Blood red
4. Golden Brown with 1/2 Blood Red.
They look a little different, since one picture used the flash and the other didn't.

Which did we pick?

Getting the stain down. matches nicely with our cabinets.
moving the island back...

Now it's all done and Decker had to try it out. I know Randy was just cringing as Decker rode across the floor.... ;) (This is a video you have to go to the blog to watch.)



Then a week later, fridge and stove put back in and all clean and organized!

Oh, and by the way, we chose #4! We love it and are so excited!