We're Still Alive!

Figured I should post a little update to show that we haven't fallen off the face of the earth! We've just been staying busy workin to make money, then spending it on the house and to have fun :) I'll just cram some of the main events in to catch up on the last 6 wks or so.

Oakley recently made a new friend in my co-worker's new puppy, Bear, who came over for a visit the other day. Bear has already grown since this picture and is starting to hold his own against Oakley.

Of course, we've been continuing our work on the yard. My mom came over for a week to visit and for church convention and with her she brought some plants from her yard. It was fun to get some spaces filled in the front planter beds.

I feel like it's finally at a point where it can be enjoyed and just maintained instead of torn up all the time!

I think in a previous post I ended it saying that Del's goal was to finish exterior painting by mid-June. Well, that didn't happen, but that's ok! It gave me a little more time to contemplate paint colors and get used to some samples. Below is the concept I first started with...I'm not saying what the decision is, but I'll debut the finished product one of these days!

With all the work we've been doing (ok, Del has been doing most of it to be honest since he's home for the summer!) we decided to take a weekend off and take our first camping trip of the year! Not only was it the first trip in general, but it was our first trip with the trailer and first with the pup!

We headed down southwest of Boise about 2hrs to Bruneau Sand Dunes State Park. Neither of us had been there so we thought it was worth a look. The weather was spotty, but in general pretty good! We woke up Saturday morning and climbed to the top of the Dunes (about a 500ft vertical climb) which was harder than we anticipated! No matter how big of step you took, you'd end up sliding 1/2 way back down in the sand! But we made it to the top and took in the view!

We ended up with one TIRED pup through all this, but he was a good sport!

At the top with Oakley...was a great view!

Well, I suppose that sums up life in the Clark household over the last little while. We've had some great times to lead us into the summer season and already got most of the summer booked up...I can't wait for it!

The Grass is Always Greener...w/new SOD!

After hours of labor, and weeks of waiting, our new sod finally arrived! It arrive Wednesday afternoon and Dellas jumped right on getting it laid. I didn't get to be part of the fun, due to work, but when I came home that I night, I came home to THIS: !!! :) :) :)

Here's from another angle, which also shows our handy clean up work in the flower beds. They're all now ready for planting...now just need to decide what!

So that's all for this one. Just had to show off our pretty, green grass!! Now the trick is keeping the neighbor's little dogs off of it....grrr.

Yard-Work Starts to Pay Off

After a lot of hard work, our front yard is slowly getting to a point that I can start to show it off! And this will also explain a lack in postings for the last month! So, for the last month, some of you know that we decided to start fresh in our front yard. As you can see in this picture below, it didn't look so hot. We had some bad kind of grass taking over and killing it to re-seed just didn't cut it, so we cut it out!

Del and I rented a sod cutter for a few hrs and took on the task of ripping it out ourselves.

After 3 hrs of sod cutting, 5hrs of loading and hauling it out (and bring dirt back in), and MANY sore muscles, our yard got to this point...

Sadly, that 8hrs of hard work still wasn't enough. Over the next week or so we slowly finished getting rid of the grass and spreading the above mound of dirt along with 1 more we brought in later. Our front yard is now equipped with brand new sprinkler heads and a nicely leveled layer of top soil awaiting its new sod delivery, which is scheduled for this coming Wednesday! Can't wait!

While we've been waiting for the sod to be delivered, we turned our attention to the main flower bed in front of our living room. One weekend we took a trip into the mountains and brought back some very big, but very FREE rocks to add to the bed. (We later learned that this is illegal...so good thing we got what we wanted!)
After many trips to several stores, we settled on some plants from Lowe's and got them placed.

Here's a little different angle...it's funny how the look changes from every view. I thought I'd stew over the placement of everything for a few days...

but instead Del and I took initiative and dug right in...we made a quick trip to D&B Supply and got a 1/2 wine barrel we'd had our eye on for some time. We placed it in the center and will fill it with flowers as we buy them.

We knew we wanted the grasses as a background and I'm a HUGE fan of these lilies so this was the obvious starting point.

There's still a lot of fill in work to do but at least we've got more than just dirt!! And even since this picture was taken we added a few bunches of Blue Star Creeper to spread between and around the rocks, and a couple of Crimson Pygmy Barberry shrubs for the outside corners.
Del told me today that his goal is to have the front yard done, a lusher back yard, and the exterior paint done by mid-June. Sounds like a good goal to me, just have decide on a paint color! I'll try to make sure I update again before then though.

PBR 2010!

This past weekend mom and dad Vance came over and stayed with us a couple days. As a surprise for them, Dellas and I bought tickets to the Saturday night PBR (Professional Bull Riding), which was in town for the weekend. We grew up going to rodeos and all but when it came to pure bull riding I wasn't sure if they cared much. But apparently they follow PBR close enough to even recognize some of the riders and were very excited to watch it in real life! So we enjoyed a few hrs watching crazy short guys cling for dear life to very irritated bulls and then run when they fell/jumped off. Luckily there were no major "tramplings" that night. Here's a few highlights:

On the way, I bought my dream truck! A brand new Ford F-150 King Ranch.
*Sigh* I wish...Del still needs convincing on the whole "Ford" thing. Hey, they make good trucks!

There was about 2hrs of bull riding and it's hard to get good pictures! They won't stay still!

But I managed to capture a few decent rides.

Somehow, I coaxed Del into taking a picture. But with him, 1 picture turns into 5 pictures. I finally got a decent one of us :)

Oakley's New Trick!

So I just had to post this because I'm so proud of our pup! Last night I worked with him for about 1/2hr on learning to shake and he was very hit and miss. However, tonight when I let him inside for a visit, I tested his memory, and he got it right away!



My friend, Pam, has tried a few random times to teach him this trick but he seemed to think "shake" really meant "bite my hand" "play" or "lay down." I'm not sure what's gotten into him, but maybe we have a semi-bright dog on our hands!

Spring has Sprung!

The weather is finally getting nicer around our parts and we’ve been taking advantage by working hard and playing even harder! A few weeks ago Dellas finished re-doing the front gate on the right side of our house. He’d pretty much torn everything out over there (including all the grass) and, during a few nice days, he’s gotten it almost done!

Another house project we took on as soon as weather turned around was digging out all of the rock the previous owners decided looked good in a planter out front. It might have looked good at one time, when it was maintained, but we’ve been itching to get it back to soil since we moved in! When all was said and done we hauled away at least a yard of rock, and now we need to haul IN some nice top soil and get something planted in the near future.

We’ve also been battling our lawn already. We noticed as soon as the sun started to shine, some green started sprouting and quickly took over our front yard. However, it was obvious it wasn’t “good grass.” So Del dug up a small piece and took it to a place in town who told us we’ve got basically what amounts to pasture grass…fabulous! Now let’s get some horses!! Or not…instead we get to kill the entire green area and start over by over-seeding and fertilizing. Which, as you can see in the above pic, is pretty much our entire front yard at the moment. So I'm anxious for the weather to be consistent enough for us to get this lawn whipped into shape. (So forgive me for not posting pretty pictures of our yard…but we’ve still got a LOT of work to do!!)

As I said earlier, we’ve been working hard but playing even harder…this past weekend we jumped in our pickup, threw the pup in the back and headed out to the desert. Even though it was a bit windy, we had a blast tracking down whistle pigs and watchin’ our dog enjoy complete freedom!

It’s still a bit chilly out for the whistle pigs to be moving around too much, but we found a few and got some shots in. And I must brag…on my very 1^st shot this year I got one! Dellas doesn’t want to count it because the lil guy was alive enough to scurry back into his hole, but really, I know he’s just afraid to let me show him up so he had to think of some excuse!

Well, that's about it for us lately. Dellas has spring break fast approaching but has to get through 2 more wks of work and school then he's free from both for a bit. However, I'm gonna be putting him to work at home on our guest bath, finally!! It's about time the government pays us our tax $$ so we can get back to work stimulating the economy! ;)