a new yard

First off, here is Matt and his Dad cutting some of the patio stone. As you can see, Matt thinks he is SO tough doing this. It's pretty hot.


Here is the top soil in our driveway.


Soil progress in backyard.


Sod progress in 90 degree weather. Poor guys!



A goldfinch at my feeder. I love him.


A lemon on my new lemon tree.


New lemon tree.


Finished backyard!!






The difference between dry and wet on the patio.


The plants I potted today.


More yard. We put extra sod on the hillside because we had a lot of leftovers. I intend on planting a bunch of bushes in the midst of the grass eventually.

The patio just needs to have the edges cemented in now.

food

If you ever buy flank steak, marinate it in Stubb's Beef Marinade. Matt and I do this all the time and it is DELICIOUS!!!

updates

What I have been up to:
-had two sick days last week (totally unlike me!)
-friends in from out of town for the weekend
-lots of Wii
-lots of good food
-a graduation party
-an 8.5 mile walk down to Snoqualmie Falls
-new outdoor lounge chairs
-a visit from Danice and Nicole
-beautiful weather
-a finished patio(pics to come)
-gates on the fence

On my to-do list:
-vaccuum the house
-do some laundry
-wash the sheets
-clean out window sills (stupid little bugs)
-a little Bed, Bath & Beyond with Smesh (sis)
-get my hair done
-water my fuschias
-call my friend Nicole (a long time coming...)
-coming next weekend: top soil and GRASS!!! Yay!!
-see my friends...if we can ever connect our schedules

More randoms...

-Matt hates cantaloupe...more for me! I ate a whole cantaloupe in the last two days with frozen cool whip in the center-yum!
-What is it really that is making gas prices so high?? It's not like the demand has changed...or even the supply...
-Don't people know that you are supposed to pull over when a cop is behind you?? I was behind someone going SO slow in the far left lane today and a cop came up behind me with his lights on. I pulled over one lane to the right to get out of his way, and the other person stayed...for one whole mile. Once they realized a cop was behind them, they slammed on their brakes and pulled off onto the left shoulder. hmm.... I can only imagine what that cop was thinking.
-One of my "love birds" is apparently not a Tufted Titmouse, a la Matt...I guess I have just been calling him that because he is so fat and cute.
-I am wondering if I am still supposed to water my fuschias if we have already had a torrential downpour (they are under my eaves...).
-Why does the bird poop on my car look like an oil slick??
-Why does the garbage man always leave my garbage lid OFF when it rains? Doesn't he know that I have to then dump the water out?
-I cannot wait for those new "reality" game shows that are starting the end of this month on ABC. I love it when people fall off of things...I have laughed every time I see the commercial for them!

Random weekend stuff...warning, long post

On Friday, Matt and I headed out for a drive down to Vancouver, WA to visit some friends. Naturally, we hit traffic and it took us 2 hours to get to Fort Lewis. We finally arrived around 8:15pm. Matt was so giddy the whole ride down...I blame the Starbucks blended strawberry lemonade-his favorite. I tried to post about his silliness on the blog using Matt's blackberry, but for some reason it didn't show any "New Post" link. boo. Soon Matt was asking for a fruit roll-up...I didn't pack any food for the trip, so I am not sure why he even bothered asking. Although I do generally sneak things into my purse for him, and naturally I had a fruit roll-up in there. He was in heaven...for 2.5 seconds. I turned away for one second and that thing was GONE in an instant. Luckily I didn't have anymore or he would have been on another sugar high.

Yesterday, we did yard work. Matt mowed the lawn, cleaned out the gutters and got me some fresh soil. I planted a couple of our new plants that we got months ago :), weeded a little, and fed the birds. We LOVE the birds that venture into our yard...except for the crows. I hate them. They jump onto the fence, and it sounds like a meteorite fell from the sky. Plus, they look at you...and stare. The other little birds are adorable though. We have a Junco and a Tufted Titmouse that love each other. I am not kidding. They are always flying around together. I saw them one day about 10 feet apart on the fence and they ran towards each other and kissed. I swear. I think it brought a tear to my eye. Ever since then, I always see them together on the fence, in the yard or in the bird feeder. I love them.

We also have a rufus-sided towhee (sp?) . It is SO cute and fat. And on a walk the other day, I saw like 20 Cedar wax-wings in the same area. They have heads that look like cardinals. For your information, I do not have a bird book nor do I know any of these names on my own. I ask my husband. He usually knows or we look them up on the internet. Yes, we are that enthralled with them. :)

This summer is going to be so busy. On top of working every other weekend, we have two weddings to attend, a work retreat for Matt's work, a patio/yard that needs to be finished, and hopefully a small get-away vacation for us. Hopefully, we will make plans ahead of time for the 4th of July. It is the first 4th I will have off in a few years. Thank the Lord.

Matt called me from work the other day to inquire about a bill we got. Here is the conversation:
Matt: "how come our PSE bill is $680??"
Stef: "umm...not sure. Did we not pay?"
Matt: " I don't know, you set it up for automatic payment. I will call them."
Two minutes later...
Matt: "so apparently we haven't paid our bill in 3 months. I don't think you set it up for automatic payment."
Stef: "hmm...oh yea, I had the bills sent by email to your address. Didn't you open the bill??"
Matt: "no, I thought they were just statements saying we paid..."
Stef: "I think I will blame this on you... :) "

This sure shows my dependability, right Tarena? Luckily, they hadn't charged us a fee nor did they shut off our power. Man oh man.

As you can tell, I have had way too much coffee this morning. I better go do my laundry.

test

test test

Why do I...

...always get these stupid little bugs in my window sills??? I have had to vacuum them several times in the last month! They are all somehow dead, but yet they keep coming back!

More patio

Last weekend, Matt compacted the gravel.

...he leveled and graded...


...and they moved all the stone 1 or 2 pieces at a time to the backyard because each stone is SO heavy!


stones all piled up...

...more piling....



...and today, Matt and his Dad are out there "gluing" it to the gravel with a sand/cementish mixture...


...we are going to LOVE our patio...they have already surpassed my expectations!


And last but not least, the tree has finally been planted in a random spot in the backyard. Now it can finally grow up!!

Work

It's Springtime, which means meeting after meeting at work. We not only have meetings for various things, but we also have tons of training events that are mandatory. Last week I had a meeting and training (5 hours of OT). This week I had a meeting and more training (6.5 hrs of OT). And now I just got an email for more mandatory training for next week!!!!! It is driving me insane. It would be one thing if I was already going to be here, but it is not. It is on my day off, which means I have to make a special trip...with gas prices at $4.06 and above, I am not liking this. With both of my training opportunities for next week, I will have another 10.5 hrs of OT. GRR...

Luckily, tonight my workload seems to be good thus far. One of my patients just told me she loves me...which is a far cry from the one who tried to bite me three times a couple of weeks ago. I guess I got lucky with my patient assignment tonight. Someone else's patient just extubated himself (he took his own breathing tube out of his mouth and disconnected himself from the ventilator). Luckily for him, he seems to be doing find without it.

Backing up a bit, Memorial weekend was good. Matt and I visited with my mom and sis at the island house and helped paint a bit. Then, the group got together for Mojito Memorial Day. We had a blast playing Cranium: Turbo Edition, pool and a little Wii on the side. What a great end to a great weekend.

Room Update

We got our new bed this week!!! We love it SO much! Sorry about the lighting AND the huge mess, I was in a hurry. We will be changing out those nightstands, lamps, and ceiling lights as well. We got it delivered while Matt was working on the patio and I was sleeping. So I slept in the guest room with my eye covers and ear plugs since I had to have the window open, it was SO hot!




Here are my new curtains. In this picture, the panel on the right is pinned up, whereas I left the other panel hanging as is. I think I will be having to sew them all to that height. We don't really like them long.


Here they are on the other two windows closed and long..


Oh. I wanted to get a poll. The curtains are dark because I need to block out the bright daylight that shines through, but we didn't put a curtain above our bed because of the dark curtains on dark bed-but there seems to be an insane amount of light that shines right onto my bed while I sleep. Should I: 1. hang another curtain. 2. put some sort of cover in the window (it faces our neighbor's home) OR 3. deal with it and use my eye covers forever, which really isn't that bad.

Patio Update

Gravel was delivered last weekend (in the 90 degree weather!) so that our patio can be started. Those boys really worked hard while I slept-I had to work.

Here it is all laid out, ready to be smooshed down and leveled.


and again...


And these next few are of the patio stone that was delivered today. I took pictures so that Matt can see where the guy dropped the stone off.

I felt like I was spying on the driving taking pictures out of my upstairs window.


See Matt? Good placement-right inside your ropes. :) Nice work, driver.


You can't see the stone, but here it is!

Construction

For the past two hours, my house has been shaking like a leaf every time this stupid paving machine comes around. I could leave the house if I wanted to walk somewhere, but I am too busy at home...drinking coffee and making bread...and rice. ha. It is SO annoying and loud! But I guess I will be thankful when we have a nice new street to drive/walk/play on.



On a side note, doesn't my fuschia look nice?? I have 4 of them across my porch...one has already died and I have done NOTHING different. So, I took it down and cut it up to see if it might come back. I do not have high hopes for it. Not sure if I have mentioned before, but I have also killed my dahlias (I think they were dahlias) that were planted by the street. Ok, I think the snow killed them...I am taking it very personally though. When i thought Spring was starting a few months back, Matt and I planted some bulbs. Of what, I have no clue. We looked at them the other day, and I think I planted them upside down...maybe I don't have a green thumb after all??

Moms...

Happy Mother's Day!!!!

Lots of pictures today and they are all of yard work again! Last night, Matt worked late into the night staining the fence with a spray gun. I thought he looked pretty funny with a t-shirt wrapped around his face.





Here he is today with a track-hoe excavator thing. He was SO proud of himself for renting it and getting it past the fence on the one side of our house. He learned how to drive it from a you-tube video.


We start off quite nicely.


The gravel area there is supposed to be a drain to drain the water from our hillside-it does NOT work very well and the hill is VERY squishy. Which leads us to the track-hoe sinking and getting stuck in the mud. It ALMOST tipped over! I was so thankful Matt's dad was there to help us! Luckily, we could use the arm to push up against the hillside for leverage.


We had to use wood scraps to put under the tracks to keep from slipping in the mud.


And then the guys had to scrape mud out of the track that got stuck because the rocks and mud were making it so the track wouldn't even move!


Finally, we got it out safely!


And we now have a firepit area to work with!! After the track-hoe dug at the dirt, we had to shovel all of the extra dirt out. It was a lot of work!

Then, Matt used the hoe to tear up the yard to prepare it for soil and grass.


Here I am on the hoe posing.


This is random, but I finally was able to take pics of it. This wetland sign was put up after Matt put in the fence.


Can you see how close it is to the fence?? There are actually two of them that the city put back there-about 3 feet behind our fence. Crazy.

New curtains

I finally got some curtains for my room!! BUT, I ordered the 84" standard length drapes, and they are too short. So, I sent them back and got the next size up: 96". So now I have a problem. Do I hang the curtains at the standard "several" inches above my window and let the curtains fold over the carpet?? OR do I hang them where they will be just at the floor line, with the rod very near the ceiling?? Is it weird that I am even having this problem?? Is it the my ceiling is a weird height??