Braden's Birthday!

Braden celebrated his 9th birthday this week. I can hardly believe it.
Congratulations!!!


This is Braden playing it cool while we sing Happy Birthday to him.


Have we mentioned Braden really likes Spiderman? This year it was Halloween themed spider web cupcakes.

Oh yeah, and they were pumpkin chocolate chip cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. The boy knows how to pick them. Mmmm! Yum!

The final harvest of 2009

Before heading to Hurricane last weekend we decided it was time to get the last of our viable vegetables out of the garden after dealing with several days of freezing weather that messed with our tomatoes pretty bad despite our attempts at covering them.

This was it, all she wrote, el fín. Our Golden and Sweet Red peppers that still hadn't reached full ripeness. :(

Project of the Year 2009, Part 2

Tuesday our rock arrived thanks to our neighbor, Matt B. He dropped off a full dump truck load of 3/4" crushed rock. When I came home that evening and saw the pile, I was concerned if it would be enough. It just didn't look like that much. The numbers told me it would be more than enough, but I wasn't sure seeing it sitting there.

Well, it was plenty! I had invited a few neighbors and friends over to help me move it that night. (They did a great job!) We carried quite a few loads out back to the shed foundation. I lost track how many it was, but it was a lot.


This is the finished foundation after preparation and a day of rain.


Next we spread the rock down the side of the house. That's when I really understood how much extra rock I had. Hehehe.

Because it is kind of narrow down the side of the house we had some overflow onto the driveway so we moved about a dozen wheelbarrow loads over to one of our neighbor's house who is also doing some external renovating. That cleared the drive way but still left me with the pile of rock kind of visible in the picture above. More of that will be going down to the aforementioned neighbor. He just needs to put up some of his fence so he is ready for the rest of the rock. We're in no hurry thankfully. I hope to help him out this week, anyhow, since he has loaned me several tools and taken some of my excavated dirt. :)

Friday I took the day off work to enjoy with the kids(UEA weekend) and to supervise the delivery and building of the shed. In typical construction fashion the crew didn't show up until after lunch, but they did a good job, put up with me and it was still done in about three hours. We even salvaged the tree limb that sits about 1-2" off the finished roof. (Going to have to keep an eye on it, but we want to keep the shade it provides.)

So, here it is in all it's primer glory:

The funny thing is it will probably be a similar shade once we paint it, just with white trim.

Now to flush out the inside with shelves and hangers and such so I can start moving stuff inside. Getting closer to use and more exciting!

Project of the Year 2009

Our project of the year is putting in a garden shed and some crushed rock. We decided to put a shed out in the back corner of our yard so we could move some of the hardware out of our garage for more important things like toys, bikes, etc. ;)

On the side of our house we have this nasty black lava rock (or crushed slag from Geneva, not really sure which) and it is the worst. It tears your shoes up, tries to roll your ankles when you walk on it and is a pain to move anything across.

Since we need good rock for the shed foundation I decided to rip out the black rock at the same time and put in some nice normal rock that we can actually walk on and pull things across.

Here are some pictures from the beginning and the middle of our work the past few weeks. We'll follow up after next week when we get the rock and shed in.


Foundation hole in back yard.


Black rock gathered up.


Relocated Rhubarb plants. The only plants kept from the corner.


Borrowed wheelbarrows that moved lots of dirt.


Black rock gone, dirt cleaned up and leveled out waiting for weed block.


The rest of the black rock gone, dirt cleaned up and leveled out waiting for weed block.


Foundation borders in place, leveled and staked down waiting for weed block and rock!

And by the way, I haven't moved so much dirt in ages and will try to remember not to do that anymore.

Uh, as soon as the rock is in place. (See previous picture of wheelbarrows which will be moving all the rock to the shed foundation next week.)

Ugh.

Ow, I hurt...