Landscaping

Here are our pictures of our landscaping...everything is still kinda young. We have 3 palm trees with a couple of banana trees behind the waterfall...and another kind of plant that starts with an "a" - aspirlia? something like that...

We have a small sago palm tree in the flower bed beside the table. There are also a couple of day lilies.

Jeff's orange tree is planted...yes you heard it right...it is in the ground to stay...no more carting it in and out if it gets a little cold! HALLELUJAH! Beside his tree are some more day lilies and lamb's ear. The lamb's ear is really soft.

We have a walkway coming from our gate to our decking. It goes through the flowerbed to give everyone a nice experience. The first thing they have to walk through is the 2 trees (dormant right now) - which are vitecs and then a Japenese Yew (it is the green bush).

The fence post is lined with jasmine. Jeff's blackberry and raspberry plants are in there somewhere too.

We have a spot for our future garden. I want to plant tomatoes and bell peppers. In front of the garden, the landscapers put Jeff's strawberry plants....I dont think they will make it there. We might be making another trip to the nursery for more of those.

Everyday Jeff wants to go to the nursery to see what plants they have in. He is itchin to buy, buy, buy...I am trying to hold him off till it is a bit warmer and we don't have to worry about a flash freeze to kill the plants.

The landscapers also bricked our front flower garden, replanted 3 new trees and fixed our sprinkler system. WHEW!

I am sure in the summertime it will all be worth it.

It was fun to sit outside Thursday night. It was warm, we had the lights on and we ate dinner in the chaise lounges. Can't wait until summer!

Adventures in Babysitting

So as a YW group, we are doing a babysitting fundraiser for girl's camp. We did this last year and had a lot of success with it. Things went great last year. We had no fights, no crying...it was awesome. We had 3 different dates. We had about 20-26 kids...$12/kid...you do the math...

So of course this year we were pretty psyched about doing it again. Our first day was Valentine's day and thought that would give us a great turn out. Well we had 29 little kiddos....something we overlooked - Laurels want to have a Valentine's date. So we didn't have as many YW as we would've liked...

All was going well until I heard..."Sister Nelson...someone peed on your couch." Not words you want to hear.... but as parents were dropping off their kids a couple of them said..."by the way, we are potty training." - Why they wouldn't they just bring them with pullups on - I just don't understand... So I grabbed the spray and headed upstairs. Once up there I was informed that it wasnt on the couch (whew!) Someone went into a closet and peed. - Luckily the kid sat on a bunch of sheets & blankets. When I asked who the culpret was so I could get one of the girls to change them, they informed me that it was a 10 yr old girl. ....She is the sister of one of the beehives. The beehive was mortified. I felt so bad for her. She called her parents to get clothes etc. Unfortunately, they went ahead and picked up the beehive too. She wasn't able to go hottubbing after babysitting.

All in all, it was a good money. Hopefully next babysitting we will have more girls to make sure noone pees in my closets.....

You'd be surprised!

So we are doing the landscaping, finally! We had several people come out and make bids and show us designs, etc. We decided to go with the guy, Mark, that was recommended by our pool guy, Brandon. So Mark puts the bid together and tells us to do the sprinklers in the backyard he estimates about $1600 - probably less. He put a cap on the job of $2000 - so if, by chance, it did cost more than $2000, he would cover the cost. Jeff & I both told him ok, but that it would probably be closer to $2000 and to put that in the bid so we could have an idea of how much it would be at the most expensive end, and if it was less, then we would be happy. Mark kept assuring us though this was not necessary - that we would be surprised at how much was still intact. Jeff & I exchanged looks and said, "OK.".....

So the landscapers started yesterday and the first thing they needed to do was to test a cut wire that led from the front yard to the back. They tested it, found the 5 zones in the front of the house that were still intact. - this wasn't a surprise since noone touched the sprinklers in the front. They then were going to "jump" it to the valve box on the other side of the backyard closest to the control box. This would show them what was working in the front yard .... So they found the valve box and dug it up - all three valves were busted. They dug on the other side of the box to find the wire - dead.... they dug a little more & found were it was severed....after an afternoon of digging, and finding this line severed in 6 different spots, they "jumped" to right outside the box. This is were I found them yesterday afternoon when I came home from running a few errands. Mark looked at me and said, "Your sprinkler system back here is a mess!" He told me about the job of finding the wire and how many times it had been cut. I said, "You know how you kept telling us that we would be surprised at how intact this all was, and we kept telling you that no, you'd be surprised!" Well, he was.

Cruise Animals

These are the animals that were left on our bed each night of the cruise. The monkey was my favorite. It was made on the 3rd night and left hanging for the rest of the cruise. It was fun to see what would be there each night. The first one is a dog...we couldn't really figure out what the 2nd one was....the 3rd was the monkey....the 4th one..we disagree on - Jeff says that it is a swan, I say it is a snake...the 5th one was an anteater?...and finally a seal.