Before and After

When Justin and I built the house it was such a PROCESS that we decided to take a year off and forget about the exterior for a while. We wanted to move in and finally enjoy it. Seriously guys, I was grouting tile while nine months pregnant. When the house was done, so was I.

So we took 2007 off from any sort of house maintenance, and the landscaping remained a severe mess.

Come the summer of 2008, I discover that I'm pregnant and convince Justin to put off the landscaping for just *one more year*.

2009 became the year of paying off specialists, so our landscaping fund dwindled away to a few pennies and not nearly enough to even buy a few petunias.

Finally, 2010 became the year of the lawn. Especially because my neighbors started giving us the stinkeye.

So a few weeks ago, Justin ordered about a hundred pallets of sod because our front lawn was a wide expanse of nothingness. He and his brother had filled, flattened and otherwise readied the dirt for the sod. When the truck came to drop it off, it was about 1pm in the afternoon and I was bored. I'd laid sod before, so I hauled the kids outside and decided to get a start on it before Justin got home from work around 5:30.

So slowly, ever so slowly, I started heaving sod pieces out and laying them down. I hadn't been at it more than three minutes when a man came to ask if he could help. He had a nice English accent, so I said alright! He hauled them while I placed them until my father in law came down to help. My father in law informed me that I was doing it WRONG and needed to wet the ground first. So, with Addison as my helper, I peeled back all of the pieces and soaked them, and went on with laying them on my own. About five more minutes passed when the teenage boys of one of my neighbors came out to see if they could help. I said "sure" (obviously) and they started at it. Before too long, a boy from across the street came by, and another neighbor. By the time we were in full swing, I had seven or eight teenage boys doing the work while I sprayed down the dirt. THIS IS WHERE I LIVE, PEOPLE.

While we were out there laying, another neighbor came out because she'd seen us working and wondered if we'd like some smoothies. By now, I was feeling like I was on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and looking for Ty to jump out with his megaphone and for that blond chick to say something stupid.

All in all, the job was done before Justin even got home from work.

THEN!! That weekend we decided to head out and buy the plants and flowers for the landscaping. We made the wholly unwise decision to just point at what we wanted and ignore the price completely. We needed them anyway, and decided not to concern ourselves with penny pinching when it came to shrubbery.

$450 and a day of planting later, and we finally feel like grownups. With a real house. And a real yard.

I'm not going to lie. I spend more time out there than he kids do. I put them down for afternoon naps and then head outside to lay around and read books. Why did we not do this sooner?



The before shot. This picture is from 2006 and all we did to the lawn was cover it with fill dirt. It was a BEAUT.


After the neighborhood sod-laying party. That's me in the garden planting something or other. I had so much grass and dirt down my shirt it wasn't even funny.


What? We have a garden? Like real people? Weird.

And so me and Justin continue on our quest to become like, a real family.