Big Changes

When we bought our house a little over two years ago, we were pleased that not much work needed to be done to it. Between living in another city, graduating from law school, planning a wedding and taking the bar exam, closely followed by starting a new job/career, we had enough on our plate without trying to fit in home remodeling as well. I must admit though, I was never a huge fan of the front yard. The bushes looked messy to me, the grass was icky, and I just generally thought it look unkept. Here's a picture:

Nothing much about this yard looks appealing to me. It just looks messy. Last summer, I took things into my own hands with those azaleas. Although I literally thought Frank was going to throw me down a well for it, they had become an eyesore for the 11 months and 2 weeks that they weren't blooming throughout the year. And they had not been trimmed in YEARS. What was left was a disastrous array of overgrown stems with a small number of blooms on the ends, that had no shape or style. Luckily, I managed to avoid being bitten by a snake while cleaning out the bushes, and although they didn't look all that great right after they were trimmed they certainly looked much better once they started to grow back. And yes, they did grow back - every single one of them bloomed this Spring.

Two weeks ago, we finally decided to hire a professional to take care of the rest of the front and back yard. Here's the end result of his handiwork on the front yard:

The back yard is quite large for a house of our size, and unfortunately the prior owners had chosen to let the sod die during a drought that occurred right before we moved into the house. We were left with dirt where grass should have been, which has been just lovely with two sweet dogs running in and out of the house every single day, all day long. Since Bebe and Lola haven't been featured on the blog, here's a plug for my first two babies (and the only baby girls in my life):

Aren't they sweet? Back to the story. The back yard was landscaped too. Here's it all set up for a party this past Friday:

Frank also deserves a lot of praise, before the landscaping was completed he cleaned out all of the flower beds back there, put in landscaping cloth and trimmed ivy off the trees. It made a huge difference, and now it looks like we actually take care of our backyard instead of letting plants, shrubs and weeds take over. Frank also pressure washed the entire driveway and all of the brick retaining wall, and in my opinion - it looks like new! We had a ton of people at the party ask if we'd just had all of that installed, so obviously it really provided a huge boost to the look and feel of the house.

I'm thrilled that Franklin will have grass to walk on when he takes his first steps sometime next summer /fall, and that Frank and I will be able to enjoy our backyard a lot more now that there's grass instead of dirt back there. And I'm sure the dogs will be happy about it too -- once the sod grows in and Lola is actually allowed onto the new grass.

And in the best news I've heard in awhile, we got a call yesterday that our crib - which was supposed to take 12-14 weeks and arrive in August - is HERE! We pick it up on Wednesday, and I can't wait to see what it looks like in the baby's room. I expect that next weekend we'll get started on putting the headboard on the bed in the nursery and setting up the crib. After that, we'll just have to put the glider where in belongs when it arrives and add the finishing touches to the room before Franklin gets here. More pics of the baby tomorrow after our 20 week scan!