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! ;)

Been Awhile...

So, it has been a little while since we've given an update. I don't have any exciting pictures to post to go along with my stories, so this one will be boring ;)

The main event lately was taking a quick trip to "the coast" (as people in Idaho call it) to see my parents as well as Peter and Marissa! We went this past 3-day weekend and drove from Boise to Olympia, WA (about 9hrs) arriving at my parent's house at about 12:30am. We woke up early on Saturday for our Starbucks ritual with the parents and also to surprise their good friends, Gretchen and Dave. It was hilarious to see Gretchen's reaction to seeing us -- you have to know her to truly understand the humor :-P
The rest of the day was spent talking and running errands. Mom and I split from Del & Dad to do some shoe shopping while the guys hunted for a new BBQ for dad. Just after arriving back at base camp (home) the guys proved their worth by showing up with Valentine's day roses and cards. That was where Dad made Dellas look good...after 30+ years of marriage, Dad has learned many things and it's nice to see him teaching Del a thing or two ;-P Dellas admits he didn't intend to get me anything for the holiday (neither of us take V-day too seriously) but I'm hoping Dad's influence will stay around for awhile :)

We stayed for meeting on Sunday and it was great to see people I haven't seen in many months. After a little more time at home we hit the road south to Portland for a quick visit with Peter and Marissa (Del's sister and husband visiting from D.C. area). Sunday night went quickly but it was filled with laughs and stories and some much needed visiting time. This trip was only the 2nd time I'd met P&M but it's wonderful to have family who, no matter how little you see them or how far away they are, you have an instant bond with and can enjoy your time together.
(Peter & Ris: you guys are hilarious and so much fun -- hopefully one of these days/years we can go on those fun trips we keep talking about!)

Monday morning came too fast and we hit the road for the remaining 6hr drive back home. We're happy to be back with our spoiled mutt, but we also wish work/school/responsibilities didn't exist so we could keep traveling around to see our families who are spread all over.

Well that's about it. Told you it'd be boring! But that's what you get for wanting updates ;)