Hard Working Husband

Is it bad that it's 9:30 on a Saturday night and I'm already ready for bed? I'm so darn tired tonight. It's been very busy day, but I'm not sure why I'm so exhausted, since the most strenuous thing I did was spread out about 8 bags of mulch, which only took about an hour. My dear husband, on the other hand, has a much better excuse for being pooped. He spent several hours today leveling and laying out stepping stones to create a little patio at the bottom of the stairs off our deck. I wish I would have taken a "before" picture so you could have seen why this project was absolutely necessary. You can probably imagine, but after having about 160 pounds of dog run up and down those stairs for the last 8 months, and having about 125 of those pounds jump off the last few steps every day, the grass at the bottom of the stairs was completely trashed. Since our winter was such a wet one, the lack of grass there created a pretty nice mud pit right at the bottom of the stairs. It was a bit messy.

Thankfully, my husband fixed our little mud pit right up today and did a fantastic job! As you can see from the pictures it was quite a process!

He actually had to level with dirt first and then with sand right under the paving stones. Note the sod he rolled up so carefully that he's going to use to fix all the burn marks in the grass from Hope squatting in the same place every day.

There is another patio area on the other side of the stairs in a much more interesting pattern, we decided that plain squares were much easier.

He got brand new gloves for the project and wore a hole in them already!

Hope was so exhausted from the job she was falling asleep standing up!

The boys took it a little easier.

Putting town the last stone.

Adding more leveling sand to fill in the cracks.

All finished--I think it looks great! Thanks to my wonderful husband for his hard work!

Spring Has Sprung!

In between our social engagements on Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon, Chad and I made a quick trip to Home Depot to pick up several items we needed around the homestead--pavers, edging, flowers, deck stain, mulch, etc. Then on Sunday, I proceeded to spend 5 hours out in the yard potting, planting and mulching. It was certainly tiring and my back was pretty sore the next morning, but I can't complain. I love planting flowers--especially the perennials I put out front that I can look forward to year after year. I love that our new house has so much empty space in the gardens that I eventually hope to fill up!

Not all of these pictures are from the weekend--some are just beautiful skies and sunsets from this beautiful spring. We've been so blessed with good weather in the last week! I love seeing all these beautiful sights of the new season!

Great Guests

My dad called me on Monday just to make sure everything was okay, and I didn't really understand why he asked the question until he mentioned that I hadn't blogged in several days. Life has been such a whirlwind in the last week I didn't even realize it had been so long! We've had things going on every day/night for the last 7 days straight, and I'm so thankful that tonight I finally have an evening to relax. This evening I actually enjoyed the hammock for a little while and still had time to make dinner!

One of the activities during the last week that kept us busy was hosting. On Friday, I went to the airport and picked up my friend Kati from college, who I hadn't seen since she was in our wedding almost 16 years ago! How sad is it that it's been so long! We had a great afternoon together, eating in downtown Lawrence and doing a little shopping and grabbing a drink with some other college friends. Although we had separate social engagements Friday evening, she came home and stayed with us that night and we went and had brunch the next morning at our friend Dre's house. It was so good to hang out--it was obviously long overdue!

On Monday, our friend Steve came for a visit. Steve and his wife Becky used to live in Lawrence before moving to the Denver area about 8 years ago, and I hadn't seen them since our visit to Colorado back in 2007. Steve had a business meeting in the area Tuesday morning, so he came and hung out with us for a couple of hours and borrowed our guest room. Although his visit was brief, we had such a nice time chatting a little and catching up!

Nothing beats seeing old friends! We're looking forward to more houseguests in May and hope any other of our out-of-town friends will come visit us soon as well!

Stormy Skies, Stormy Stomachs

If you read my last post from a few days ago, you will no doubt see the irony in this one. Last Friday, just hours after I was expressing my extreme elation (apparently I was too elated to actually be bothered with proofreading, since I just reread the post for the first time and found a ton of typos), an icky illness descended upon our household. Apparently, we managed to give ourselves food poisoning from the aforementioned homemade pizza. For my iron stomach, this just meant that I've been battling bouts of nausea for the last several days. For my poor hubby, who has a bit of a comprised intestinal tract, this has amounted to much, much more. I'll spare you the horrific details, but let's just say this was the first time he had a bout of barfing since his hospital stay over 8 years ago.

While we're not 100% sure this has been a food related illness, we're guessing that our pizza was the culprit because of the rapid onset of our stomach problems. After an incredibly enjoyable evening, we were getting ready to fall asleep when suddenly we both felt like we could yak. The weird thing is we can't figure out exactly what made us sick. Our pizza had no meat, so our best guess is that it was the fresh mushrooms or red peppers we put on top. Since I'd eaten a red pepper from that bag the previous day, and since our mushrooms were the topping that didn't get cooked completely, we're assuming it was the fungi that were tainted with some sort of bacteria or pesticide or something. They were the kind that are already "washed" and sliced, so we made the mistake of not washing them before eating and not sauteing them before they went into the oven. That's a mistake we won't make again, as those mushrooms made for a not too happy Easter weekend! Although Chad made it to church, he came home immediately after and wasn't able to go to brunch because he couldn't eat anything except for dry English muffins! Today was the first day he was relatively normal, although he still didn't make it an entire day at work.

Speaking of today, late this afternoon we had a fabulously intense thunderstorm with amazing torrents of rain so thick you couldn't see the cars in the parking lot from my office window. It must have been zero visibility because on my way home, after the downpours were over, the police were attending to a car that was sitting right in the middle of the median. There were rivers of water flowing through the streets and it didn't even rain that long. The worst of it was over by the time I got home, so I captured a shot of the post rain sun trying to peak through the clouds with my iPhone, and then used the free Photoshop app (that I'm totally addicted to) to make a few adjustments to the picture. I think it's pretty cool!

For you Facebook friends, I edited a bunch more pictures of cool cloud/sun combos that I took on the way to work this morning and loaded them onto FB with my iPhone. Check them out here if you're interested!

Good Good Friday

I can't really explain exactly why, but I have have had one of the most joy-filled days ever today. Even though I was at work from 8-5 minus lunch, I just couldn't contain my happiness. Maybe it's because a couple of nights ago I found out that the plans we had in KC tonight were changed--and now I'm looking forward to a relaxing evening with my wonderful husband making homemade pizza and catching up on Tivo, after a glass of wine and a little blogging on our sunny deck, complete with our three wonderful dogs and chirping birds and puffy white clouds in the sky. Maybe my joy came from the first spring thunderstorm we had this morning, followed by sunshine in the afternoon. Maybe it's because a few weeks ago it felt like spring would never get here, but now all of the grass is turning a beautiful green and flowers all over the city are blooming like mad. Maybe it's because yesterday I got my first bingo in my iPhone Words With Friends game (like Scrabble) and then got another bingo today. Maybe it's because the entire neighborhood is outside enjoying this beautiful weather, and I can hear sounds of happiness from almost every direction. Maybe it's because I listened to this song a bunch of times today and I think it's about the most uplifting song ever. Maybe because it's because it's a holiday, and as my childhood friend Keith exclaimed on Facebook, "Good Friday: The most horrific event in history was the only event that could bring about unfathomable good." Maybe I'm anticipating the joy of the holiday in two more days, looking forward to celebrating the miracle of the resurrection!!!

Speaking of Easter, today I found the most incredibly artistic and unusual depiction of the Passion play. You have to check this out--it's so incredible!



I hope this brings a little bit of joy to your day too!