Summer fun

Our new house has a community pool and we have spent a lot of time in it. My brothers and sisters come over along with the twins. We usually crash at our house afterwards and order pizza. It's a great way to spend my days off.

My neighbor was nice enough to let us borrow her pool toys but after we popped one we felt bad and haven't done it since.

Flooring

 Another big project we did was replace flooring. We put a wood laminate in our living room, office hallway, and master closet. It makes it look a lot more open. We had a lot of help from family and friends, especially my Dad and older brothers.

 We also ripped out the linoleum in our spare bathroom and replaced it with tile. WE will eventually redo the entire bathroom, but since the tile was given to us by my boss we decided to get it over with instead of having it sitting around.

First Project

So our first big undertaking was a complete overhaul of our backyard. This is what it looked like when we moved in:

We removed all the trees and bushes, brought in a tractor and scraped all of the rock onto one side of the yard. Then we brought in clean dirt to top the rest of the yard for grass. Ryan put in a retaining wall between the two and created a garden on the other side of the yard.

 

Now we just need to finish up the garden and get it planted. Ryan got me some baby citrus trees for my birthday and we put together a small firepit. Eventually we'll build a shed and cement in the rock side of the yard. 

 

It was nice and clean until Saturday's storm dropped our neighbors tree branches into it but it looks a lot better than when it started.

New goals

Ok, I know I haven't posted in a while but when I think about how much I haven't posted about it overwhelms me and makes me stressed so I just don't do it altogether. Over the last few weeks I have really been trying to get myself organized to get some stress out of my life and this is the next step on my list of doing just that. I will try to post at least once a week if not more. I will not catch up on the past year of our lives right away though, it will be a long process but I will get caught up. A lot has happened and I need to chronicle it all to get it out of my head so here goes.

As I've already said we bought a new house last August. It needs a lot of work and we are doing it little by little as we have the supplies and the money. Forgive me for skipping around on projects as I post them but that really is the order in which we get them done. We're pretty bad about finishing random projects but we also have been getting lucky and been given free furniture, free shelving, etc. so it is coming along slowly.

We do have a new member of the family we adopted. With both of us working all day Mera was getting lonely and started acting up and having accidents. So we decided that she needs a friend to keep her company while we are gone. Ryan has always wanted a Lab so we found Zoey on Craigslist and drove to the other side of Phoenix to get her. She had a hard time the first few days but she is only 5 months old now and we can't imagine life without her. Excuse the laundry on the bed it is clean though. And we usually don't let her on the bed this is how I found her one morning when I walked in the room, she knew she was in trouble.

That's it for today, I will post again soon though.