Playing Catch Up (again).

Well, I'll not going to bore you with all my excuses about why I haven't been keeping up with the blog.  Life's just been busy lately and taking photos and then blogging them has fallen to the bottom of the heap.  Anyway, I've resolved to do better this year, because I really do enjoy looking back over the years at photos and videos of the kids.  At this rate, if I don't commit to taking more photos to have something to blog about, poor Luke may never have a non-cell phone photo of himself!

I'll try to do a brief catch up from fall and then if I can get my act together, I'll try to post some current pics of the kiddos :)

First up, I'll pick up where I left off (before Luke was born) with the house tour.  OK, so the outside:  it was rough.  This house was vacant for the better part of a decade before we bought it and no where showed it more keenly than the yard.  We bought it from a guy who flipped it and his strategy was basically to remove everything in the front yard (seriously, there is not a single shrub, bush, flower, tree, etc.) and leave untouched everything in the backyard (8 years can allow for a TON of overgrowth, let me tell you!)

Before we could really address anything, we had to clear out what was in the back.  In the process, we found a sidewalk (!) about 40 hornets' nests, a few families of mice, a snake or two (not earning their keep, since the aforementioned mouse problem was out of control), a clothes line, tons of old bottles, an old model airplane, and lots of other wonderful treasures. The family who sold this house tot he flipper had been the original owners and it seems (from both the condition of the yard and from talking to the neighbors) that they had been too frail to address the yard in any capacity for the last 15 years they lived here.

Here are some photos of the process of 'weeding out' the crazy brush in the back yard:

After we got most of the mouse/wasp/snake-harboring plants out of there, we addressed the problem of grass:  ie:  There was none.  It is dry out here, very, very, crazy DRY, and nothing grows unless it is watered.  Period.  We have had a lot of success at past homes in NC sowing seed and getting grass to fill in nicely, but it became clear that if anything was going to grow, we needed to install sprinklers.

So, we spent the summer and early fall saving our money and becoming more and more dusty from the barren wasteland that was the yard.  Here's some photos of what was going on back there:

We also discovered after finding a bunch of glass and other random trash in the yard and from talking to the neighbors, that these homesites used to be used as an impromptu dump in the 1930s and 1940s.  Lovely.  We have found all kinds of odd things back there, some with dates from almost 100 years ago!

Truly, the yard's only redeeming quality is a mature, established apple tree, which we do love and were careful to save :)

Finally in October we were able to put sprinklers in, which meant we could put some grass in.  I can't tell you how much it improved my overall mood!  I hate to sound so shallow, but I didn't realize how depressing it is to look out your window everyday and just see brown, dusty, dirty, trashy ground.  I had gotten to where I didn't want the kids playing out there because they'd come in hurt from falling down on the rock-hard ground, or filthy dirty, or carrying pieces of broken glass to show me their 'treasures'!

Here's some sprinkler installation and topsoil progress (we had to add topsoil over both the front and the back as the ground was just so hard and devoid of any nutrients after being neglected for so many years):

 

     

After all the hard work of removing the overgrowth, installing sprinklers, and prepping the soil, it was finally time for the grass to go in!  Yay!!!!!!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Finally, some green in my life!!

Daniel built a table for the patio (photos of the finished product to be added later... forgot to take them and it's now dark outside :)), and we bought some old wicker furniture off Craigslist and painted it and voila!  Our once-wasteland is now a wonderful spot for the kids to play and enjoy the beautiful Colorado weather.

Speaking of weather... the yard looked like this less than a week after these nice, green photos were taken:

This was on October 5th!!

(This is the trail that runs behind our house)

Campbell waiting for the first snowflakes to fall.

Gramps and Mimi sent an early Christmas/Birthday present for the girls:  A Playhouse!!!  They actually ordered it from a shed company which installed it for us.  The inside was very spartan, so Daniel spiffed it up a bit for them. 

First, we added insulation, so that hopefully they would be able to enjoy it for a larger portion of the year.

 Next, some drywall.

There's a skylight in it to help keep it warmer on cold days... how cute is that!!?

After a coat of paint and some clean-up, the girls were ready to move in!

 They put their kitchen in there and stocked the shelves with all their goodies (Campbell was pretending to have a baby in her tummy!  This was taken a day or two before Luke was born :))

 Aunt Deborah sent them some mirrored decals to decorate with and they had a blast adding the finishing touches :)  

Though we still don't have a single shrub, flower, or plant, we've really, really enjoyed the yard!  The grass and sunshine in the back have helped to provide endless hours of play for everyone and I have a feeling that playhouse will have to come with us whenever we move from this house :)