House – Page 9

Productive weekend

May 21, 2012

Weekends can be a lot of things – fun, tiring, exciting. But, there are few better things to me these days than being able to say my weekend was productive…and I mean REALLY productive. Robert and I got the attic completely cleaned out and organized. We took all of our old stuff to charity. We pulled up all the old flowers and planted over 200 annuals in the front yard. We bought 36 bags of mulch and re-mulched all of the beds in the front yard and about 1/3 of the beds in the back yard. Productive, right?! Why were we able to get so much done? One reason and one reason only….GJ!

GJ got here early Saturday morning and played with Maxwell all day while Robert and I cleaned out the attic. It felt SO good to get that project done. Now the “finished” attic space is ready to be finished a little more and turned into Robert’s office/kid’s playroom!

While we worked, Maxwell and GJ christened our new sand and water table…which quickly became the murky water table. He wasn’t too good at keeping the sand and water separate!

I think it might just be a sand OR water table from now on! 🙂

But he sure had fun splashing that murky water all around!

On Sunday, GJ and I were out in the yard by 6:45 am to plant flowers (me), dig up the dead grass along the edges of the bed (GJ), and spread lots of mulch (me, Robert and GJ). What did Maxwell do? Provide superior help, of course!

Every yardman needs a good Fire Chief’s hat, right?

I don’t even know how to explain to you all what all my mom does for us and everyone in the family. I have never met anyone that works harder. Period. It was a lot of work for the three of us to get all of that done Sunday morning and I still can’t believe that she did the same amount of work by herself this past fall when she surprised us with a yard full of awesome pansies.

I had actually called a landscape guy about coming out to spread mulch and plant a bunch of annuals but he wanted to charge me $3200. Excuse me?! With a little blood (literally from the rose bush thorns), sweat (umm…lots) and tears (but only from Maxwell) we got it all done in 1 day and saved ourselves about $2500. I’m pretty darn proud of us and now I know we can do it every year…as long as GJ comes to help! 🙂

I grew up in a family of yard workers. Both of my parents were always out there every weekend working hard and we always had a beautiful yard because of it. While I can’t say I’ll ever be able to work as hard as they did, I am very proud of what all Robert and I have been able to do in our yard. My parents taught me to take pride in our yard and hopefully Robert and I are teaching Maxwell the same thing! I think it’s so good for him to see us out there working hard. Gotta start em young…

A few pics of my newly planted verbena and vinca to wrap things up.

There’s nothing more satisfying than hard work done well! Hope you all had a productive weekend too!

Random Reports

April 24, 2012

We’ve had some things going on around here that I haven’t had a chance to talk about so thought I’d just throw it all into one random post. Here we go…

Report 1: We had a little visit from GJ and Daddo last week and Maxwell was in heaven. Daddo came bearing M&Ms so he was an instant hit. Maxwell still says “Daddo!” whenever I give him an M&M.

Maxwell giving Daddo good night kisses…

He was stuck like glue to “GG” for 2 days.

These two were like peas in a pod…

He tried to work his magic on her too. First, he kept asking “GG” to do everything with him in his precious little voice. Second, when we were putting him to bed, he didn’t want to go so he laid his little head down on GJ’s shoulder and snuggled into her! If it wasn’t for me I think my mom might have stood there and held him all night! Third, the next morning she took him to school with me and he did NOT want her to put him down. He was finally bribed with a cracker to get down but then immediately reached his chubby little hands back out for GJ to scoop him up. It took everything my mom had to walk out the door and leave him there like that. Talk about pulling at my mom’s heartstrings all weekend! Needless to say, this is how Maxwell reacted when he got home from school and realized GJ and Daddo had gone back to FL…

Just kidding…sorta. GJ and Daddo, whenever you guys are ready to move to AL, I’ve got a little boy who’ll be very excited!

Report 2: The house across the street from us got demolished and it was basically the best day of Maxwell’s life. We had an excavator in action directly across the street from us for 2 days and I heard Maxwell say “truck!” more than 1352 times. He’s going to be plenty entertained watching the new house go up over the next several months.

Having a little picnic with Susan watching the action…

At the window checking out the excavator tearing down the house…

No more house!

We’ll see what goes up in it’s place!

Report 3: Maxwell is becoming a Master Gardener. Not really, but he did “help” me plant a few things last weekend.

I’m trying tomato plants for the first time in my big pots. Anyone had luck with them before? I got two varieties – one is a cherry tomato and one is more medium sized like a roma tomato. I’m keeping very low expectations but am excited to see what happens. Of course, I might have already messed up before they even had a chance because I realized AFTER I put them in the pots that I got soil that is only to be used with vegetables being grown in the ground, not in pots. Oh well. If nothing else it will be a lesson for next year!

See you all tomorrow!

A little Friday pretty

April 13, 2012

Happy Friday the 13th! For the second time this year! I just looked it up and we’re going to have a Friday the 13th in July too. Good things come in 3’s right? or is that bad things?

I realized that I took these pictures of the azaleas in our backyard a few weeks ago and then never shared them. So, here’s a little Friday flower pretty for you…

I love it when they’re all in bloom. The unfortunate thing about azaleas is that the blooms don’t last that long. That’s ok though because now all of our Knockout Roses are in full bloom and they are just as pretty…

and will bloom all summer long!

We’ve still got lots of yellow pansies blooming too!

All these flowers just make me happy. Know what makes Maxwell happy these days? M&Ms! We had a quick little visit from GJ and Daddo earlier this week and Daddo introduced Maxwell to the joy of plain M&Ms. I’ve been giving him 3 or 4 after dinner this week and he just gobbles them up…only after pointing at them and saying “Daddo!”

Hope you all have a weekend full of things that make you happy!

Weekend recap

March 19, 2012

What a great and jam-packed weekend we had! What did we do? Let’s let my iphone walk you through…

Saturday morning Robert went to work a Habitat for Humanity build so Maxwell and I hung out at home in our St. Patty’s Day green…

We then went to Target where he tried on some more silly hats…

After Target we stopped by the park. Maxwell went across the shaky bridge all by himself…

Climbed up the ramp all by himself…

Swung on the newly restored tire swing…

Swung on the swings (of course)…

and played in the play house!

Phew! All the playing made him hungry so we went home where Maxwell fed himself some yogurt…

Lovely. side note – yes, those are mini corn dogs on his tray. Actually they’re Morningstar Farms Veggie Corn Dogs and they’re really good. Maxwell loves them.

Maxwell then went down for a nap and I got out in the yard and pulled weeds, weeds and more weeds in the beds. I was pulling LOTS of clover but never found any four-leafers! Guess the luck of the Irish wasn’t on my side this St. Patrick’s Day!

When Maxwell woke up from his nap we had some special visitors…

Lulu and Granddaddy! Maxwell loved all the attention as usual.

Maxwell took a liking to Lulu’s shiny jewelry and before he could say “earring” he was all decked out!

That evening, Robert, Maxwell and I went to dinner at a new Mexican place in downtown Birmingham. El Barrio. If you haven’t been yet – go. It was SO good. The only problem was that they only had 1 high chair in the whole restaurant (what?!) so we had to make do with a booster seat. I was pretty nervous about Maxwell sitting in a booster seat for an entire meal but he did GREAT! He sat at the head of the table and we all enjoyed every second of our dinner! Maxwell clearly knew he was too cool for school in that booster seat!