This is an extra long post because it’s a 4-day weekend! Actually every day is a weekend for me at the moment! But seriously, Jim had Thursday off which made Wednesday a Friday and we treated it as such with our ritual of cracking open a bottle of beer right when he walks in the door, we sit down and unwind and plan our weekend. Except we didn’t relax for long! We already knew what projects we were going to tackle!
Jim finished the play structure project while I trimmed and reshaped our spiral tree, then I tackled six shrubs in the front yard giving them tight haircuts again.
And when we were done with everything at 10pm (yikes!), we came in and I gave Jim and Trevor both haircuts. Call me crazy!
Saturday Thursday morning I made a cobbler for our 4th of July evening festivities, then we headed out to do more yard clean up (although I trimmed the bushes the night before, I didn’t rake up the debris!), Jim worked on securing our utility trailer bed because when I leaned against the trailer last weekend to lift the sofa, it had lifted the back end of one of the boards (I didn’t know it) and my thigh was pressed up against it. When I put the sofa back down, the board also went back down and took my skin with it! OW! I had a nice purple pinch welt all week. So we decided we need to secure the boards.
While Jim worked on the trailer, I took apart the fountain AGAIN to see if the pan is leaking. Last weekend we took it apart and put it back together and filled it and left it turned off….and between 5pm and 10am the next morning the water level had dropped a total of 2 inches. We should not have that much evaporation in an 18-hour period! Even at 92-degrees outside! The ground was wet surrounding the pan, but that doesn’t mean there’s a leak. There’s one way to tell though- emptying it and holding it up to the sun and looking for “light” spots. So that was my project for Saturday Thursday morning. No go. There were no wet spots or anything.
So I put everything back together and filled it up again and put the river rocks back in place and got it all set. I added rocks to the top, too, to lessen the volume of water. And I hooked up both sprinkler lines to it, but later pulled out one. It now gets about 2 gallons of water added every day and so far it’s holding up perfectly! Yay! Here’s the finished product:
We quit working around 2:00pm, ate breakfast lunch (strawberries & waffles!), took showers, Jim took a nap while I typed this up. We had a 4th of July BBQ to go to at 6:00.
We had a great time at Tera’s BBQ, although it was considerably cooler outside than I’d anticipated. I had thankfully changed into pants (instead of shorts) and brought a jacket with me, but by 7:00 that jacket was on! When it came time to watch the fireworks at dusk/dark Tera and her girls were scrambling through their house grabbing all the extra blankets they could find- a lot of us were cold!
The kids had a great time and were in charge of lighting all the fireworks again.
Here’s a link to my photo album: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10201578420888105.1073741831.1405301649&type=1&l=cecc9fb9e0
Driving home we went over Cooper Mountain and as we came down 174th we could see all the ‘illegal’ fireworks flying up in the air in the neighborhoods below- it was an interesting viewpoint! When we pulled into the culdesac our neighbor were still lighting fireworks, but Jim and I were exhausted so we went straight to bed. He had to be up at 5:30 since Friday was a usual workday.
Friday morning- I met with the carpet stretching guy at 9am so he could see the job (he’ll be back Saturday at 9am to DO the job). Ufortunately we have to empty out the giant armoire in order for him to do the job right. Doh! Guess we know what our evening project will be!
Somebody came and got our couch off Craigslist (yay!).
Then I got a phone call that Kenna’s lab work came out abnormal so they wanted me to take her back in for another blood draw because it was her platelet count that was off- everything else was fine (white blood cells, red blood cells, thyroid, etc.) but there’s definitely concern if the test was accurate. So a quick trip to the vet, a stop at Bi-Mart for marked down fireworks, a coffee from Starbucks and we were back home before 11:00.
I decided to tackle some random projects- cleaning the trim in the bathroom and caulking and painting it (it was originally installed in 2007 and we never “finished” it!), and I caulked the trim in the playroom around the slider door that was installed in 2011. So I’m pretty happy that I took care of a couple “odd” things that needed to be done but were never on a list. They weren’t even on my July to-do list! I’ve got to stop doing that!
I also repainted some tiki masks that I picked up at the Dollar Store (wanting to give them a more worn look- the original is on the right)…
Then I hung them in the backyard:
I also cut a gutter in half and put endcaps on it to make a bookshelf for the daycare:
And did a sweep of the circle patio to drop the sand granuals into the paver cracks.
Parkour at 5pm, then home to unload the armoire:
If you’ve seen this thing in person you know how much of a project that was! Geesh!
Also on Friday night- we had two people come over and check out the elliptical- the first person couldn’t get it to fit in his car, the second person went ahead and bought it but couldn’t pick it up until Saturday morning (borrowing a truck).
So…. now that our actual weekend has started….
Saturday morning we got up at 7:30.
First up: move the elliptical to the garage for pick-up. Then move the Bowflex to the garage for pick-up.
Second: carpet stretching guy came over and we had him start with the Family Room, then he stretched the Pass-Thru, fixed a loose section in the playroom, and fixed the entry area. He was done in under 2 hours and I think he did a great job! Sadly, I forgot to take a before picture of the ripples…..so there’s no point for an after picture.
Third: elliptical person showed up to haul it away- and the bowflex buyer came and picked that up.
Fourth: everyone was gone by 11:15 and the task of reassembling the armoire began. Ugh.
I should add, that while the carpet was being stretched, Jim worked on reinforcing our dining table and I worked on hanging the kids’ black boxes on the wall above the table vs having them sitting on the table (first I had to cut and paint a board to fit):
My parents and Grandma Lois came over for a brief visit around 3:00, the girls put on a karate demonstration, then Trevor and Brooke showed some of their parkour skills. I know how I’m going to clean the canopy on the playstructure now- Trevor climbs right up there!
After they left, Jim and I went to the library to return some books and check out some new ones for Brooke, then went to Bi-Mart to stock up on more fireworks for next year (40% off).
Back at home, we had 45 minutes before we needed to leave for our 2nd party of the weekend. This one was a kid-free event! Good burgers, too!!
We weren’t out too late, since Jim had to work on Sunday- this time he had to be AT work at 5:15 (not up at 5:15). Unfortunately, someone’s dog was barking ALL. NIGHT. LONG. Maybe not all night, but it was barking when we went to bed, I woke up at 12:30 and it was still barking and someone was yelling at it, it kept barking, I was dozing in and out until 1:30 when Jim finally got up and closed our bedroom window out of frustration. It was awful. If I wasn’t so tired, I would have called non-emergency dispatch to report it- I don’t know if the dog was locked out or if the owners had an injury and couldn’t get up to let the dog back in or what- but the stupid dog barked every 2 seconds, almost like a pattern. For a minimum of two hours straight. Ugh.
I slept in (of course) then moved a little slowly to do little odd things here and there, like sorting the newspapers, cleaning out the office to make room for the new weight set, doing a couple loads of laundry, scrubbing the playroom doors to prep for painting, and putting a few things away in the armoire. It’s about 10% reloaded. Egads that’s going to take a while to do!
After Jim got home we hooked up the utility trailer and headed to my parents’ to pick up the Precor weight set. It’s a little bigger than we expected, and it was a slightly bigger deal to move (bulky, taking it partially apart, heavy, etc.) but we got it moved and reassembled and set up and here it is:
Yay! So much more room in here!
Before:
Once that was done we decided we were tired, so we took a nap! Trevor went to a friends’ house, Riley was at the pool with the neighbors and Brooke hung out with us playing some games on the tablet. Dinner was cereal.
We still have a ton of things to do. Thank goodness the daycare is closed or we’d be in trouble! The dining table is full of garage sale stuff, the playroom is full of armoire stuff, and the family room is full of clean laundry! Hazards abound!
This week I’ve deemed my ME week. No house projects, only things that give me personal gain- like scrapbooking and photography stuff. Except that this week is only a 4-day week because Jim has Monday off, too! Oh wait, that makes this a 5-day weekend!
Elisa's Ramblings 