an oasis in the city

Oh, hi blog! I remember you!  Now that my class is over, my student teacher is finished, and it's almost the end of the school year, hopefully I'll be able to hop on here more often.

To start, let's take a little look over the past few months and one of our biggest house projects to date...  the backyard.  Remember a little storm back in August named Irene?  Yes, last year.  Need help remembering?  Click here.

So yeah, our deck got a bit messed up, but luckily, we got a really nice insurance check for the damage.  It was so nice, we were able to replace the entire thing if Brian did the demo work.  So, waaaaaaay back in March, he did this...  Yup, super rotten support beams.  Awesome.

Take note of the lush green grass.  Oh wait...  I'll get back to that soon.

A few days later, our "guy" and his two friends built us a new deck in about three hours.  I was amazed when I came home for lunch and saw this...

That night, we had our first dinner out on our new deck.  Remember the really warm weather we had at the end of March?  Here's Cassidy in her swimsuit after swim lessons.  Ahhhhh!  Look it how chubby Molly was!

Then...  during April vacation Brian and Joe busted their behinds in the back.  Joe moved their wall over a few feet and we had 12 yards of soil delivered to the alley.

the two of them spread the entire 12 yards that afternoon

then came the stepping stone configuration

and grass seed planting!!!!

Joe also created this really sweet play space under the Rhododendron for the kids.  It's like a fort!

baby grass!

Brian is working on a second space for the kids where the sandbox will live.  We're getting really tired of cleaning sand off the patio and this way, the patio will be open for the grownups.

So...  that last picture is from a week and a half ago and we've had a TON of rain since then.  But, if I keep waiting to update the blog because I haven't taken the next set of photos, we'd wait forever and I have time now.  The next sunny day around here, I'm on it.  But let's just say, Brian has mowed the lawn TWICE already!  Woot!  Woot!

EDIT:  Maybe just one?