Memorial Day Work Weekend

We have a long list of "Things To Do" around the house and we don't always have the time to get it done considering many weekends we are at the track. So, we spent much of the Memorial Day weekend trying to get as much checked off that "To Do" list as we could. There were many other bits done but the major ones on the list were - - -

ü Play Set
On Monday, we had our contractor finish the assembly of the play set. Oliver had been asking for it to be assembled, once it was, he said, "Where's the trampoline?". The play set had sat in storage since he had been taken down from the old house until we moved into the new house in late November. The timing was the best to reassemble it so it sat behind the barn under many feet of snow. Once it was assembled we had to add to the list power washing and re-staining which we accomplished on Sunday. And, thanks to carpenter bees who found the play set no less than 48 hours after it was re-assembled, we had to add an exterminator to the list. It's no fun to swing on the play set when angry, protective carpenter bees are swooping down on you.

I took this photo of Matt from the back door at 6:30 a.m. Yea, I really meant he got up early.

 

The play set and trampoline are ready for play. And, just to note: I bought a ladder for the trampoline a few years back for the kids to climb into it, yet, they prefer the toddler-sized slide as a means of access. So frustrating.

ü Trampoline
Matt woke up really early one morning and assembled the trampoline. I thought the kids would be thrilled...they were until 10 minutes later when they started complaining it was TOO HOT outside. Too HOT? After the winter and early spring we had it can NEVER be TOO HOT!

ü The Flower Beds
Our flower beds were over run with weeds. The neglect of the house as it sat in foreclosure combined with some bad gardening skills of the previous homeowner meant that it was infested with dandelions and thistle. We have about 1900 square feet of flower beds totally over run with weeds. Between Matt and I we spent about 15 hours of the weekend just weeding the two front flower beds.

This is a flower bed, not a grassy area with a Russian Sage and large rock in the center. Lots of weeding.

ü Storage in the Barn
The barn is a hot mess of clutter. Matt has wanted some garage storage shelves and we knew Memorial Day would be the time they would go on sale. We loaded the kids in the car on Saturday morning and hit a couple of home improvement stores and Se#ars in search of the best sale prices. S*ears won out and we spent a couple of hours picking out what we wanted and then ordering and backordering the items.

It's coming along nicely, but the list is still long on things we need and want to do. I'll start including posts on house progress and updates soon.