Beautification Project

This wasn't on my list of things to do today, but I was feeling ambitious and wanted to get out of the house. I feel so sad every time I look at my poor lawn that had been trampled by that nasty old backhoe - I had to do something to perk it up a bit.
I moved the tree slightly closer to the house - I want to get some shade out of this deal one day! I would have moved it more, but I got tired of chopping at all those monstrous roots that were left by the last tree that occupied this space.
This is my "Before" shot...


...after adding the blocks....

...some top soil and a few little flowers...and Voila! "Fini"

These are some of the roots I had to contend with. I started chopping at these with my shovel, then deciding that was for the birds, I loosened them up a bit, and then yanked them out with my bare hands!

It feels good to accomplish something like this, and my yard is a happier little place!
(Now to get some grass growing over that gaping wound...)

My new toy...

Finally got it out of the box - and it works!
Feels good to be stitching again! It will take me a while to figure out all the in's and out's of this machine - but I'm back in buisness!

Water Woes

Oh such a fun day today! (not!)
They finally came to replace our broken water line. I don't know why our builder used such crappy pipe here - we've watched all of our neighbors have to go through this over the years. I think we're the last ones.
My daughter in law brought the girls over because she thought they'd enjoy watching the backhoe dig up the yard - and they did! They both had to get up close and look into the hole etc.
The trickiest part was that our fibre optic cable runs diagonally right through the yard (how dumb is that?) so they had to be careful not to break that in the process - but they were pretty awesome - they did it.
(if you look closely at the 2nd photo, you can see the cable going across the hole)
They actually did it pretty quick - it only took a couple of hours! We have water again, and are good to go. The guy promised us that this new line would last us forever (which is pretty hard to believe, because it just looked like plastic garden hose!) They even popped out my old dead tree stump to boot! I had bought a new tree to plant there, and I wondered how I was going to get that out!
Ohhhhh but so much for a nice green lawn this summer!

One step forward - ten steps back...

The good news is that I have seedlings coming up in my garden.
So far there are Sunflowers, banana squash, and some pumpkins - yay!
















The bad news is that our culinary water line broke during the night Monday - we've got a veritable bubbling spring coming up out of the lawn, and running down the street!


We've had a weird storm front come through today - it's so cold and wet - it feels like November, not June!
I've been so antsy and depressed all day....I went and rented a whole pile of videos to keep my mind off how gloomy it is!
In other news - I got an invitation to my 35th class reunion today! Incentive to lose 30 lbs., or fuel for the fireplace?....Hmmm...

Busy Weekend

I went to Logan with my two of my sisters, a brother in law, and my daughter this weekend. My nephew graduated from High School, so we made a party of it.
I put off getting ready until the night before, (as is typical of me) and as I tried to sleep that night the thought occurred to me that I hadn't taken time to make a card for him yet. I went over the list of things I still had to do in the morning, and I knew I would never get them all done, so I got up at 3am and made the card.


We got there around 2pm. We had reservations at the famous "Bluebird" restaraunt at 4:30, so we just walked around Main Street, and saw the sights until then.
The Bluebird is famous because it has been around since about the 1920's. It's pretty cool inside - high ceilings, the old fashioned counter with the soda fountain behind it - but rather than try to describe it, here are some pic's...


My sister could only get enough tickets for herself and her son for the graduation ceremony, so the rest of us entertained ourselves by going shopping at Border's (bookstore) for a few hours, then we just went to our motel room and my daugher and I had some mom & me time.
The next morning, we went to a park that was a mini zoo. We had fun looking at all the animals...

I'm sure these two were discussing who they like in the next presidential race...


Jenny hanging with her emu (not to be confused with EMO) friend...

Another eagle - this one was a golden eagle - I just liked this shot (Jenny took this one)

My 2 sisters and my BIL looking at the ducks...

The swans were kind of hilarious - they were such posers! We were watching the cayotes pacing around thier cage, and they would just casually swim past, as if to say "this moment of peacefulness was brought to you by..." Or maybe they just thought that we had been ignoring them long enough and wanted to cut in...pretty funny nonetheless.

We met Susie's boys at a pizza place for lunch, here's my sis and her hubby sitting outside...

Then we drove out to Hyrum where there is a beautiful "hidden" lake (you can't see it at all from the road)...and we hung out there for a while.

Tried to get me some "artsy" looking shots here...

The boys being boys (the blond is the graduate)

It's a good thing we had this peaceful afternoon, because the drive home was a nightmare - road construction and then rush hour traffic turned a 2 hr. drive into 3 1/2 teeth clenching hours. I thought when I got home I would have some quiet time, but hubby arrived home from his buisness conference about an hour ahead of me, my son dropped off his 2 girls for a sleepover at grandmas while they went camping, my newlywed son came back up to stay and work....
*Sigh*