It’s not us, it’s just our yard, we promise…

We’re seeing progress on the yard! The sprinklers are in and functioning as planned. Friday we (Bryan) spent the day putting on the topsoil/mulch/fertilizer. The scientific name is “BioSolids.” The funny name is “humanure.” The truth of the matter, and the name we all affectionately call it is “poo dirt.” Yep, it’s just tons (literally) of human poop out there on our yard. We got 10 yards of it from the Davis County Sewer District and Bryan spent the day spreading it all around the dirt. I won’t lie to you…it stinks. But, everyone we’ve talked to who has done it has said that it’s totally worth it and that the grass/flowers/trees/shrubs will be beautiful and will grow very fast. So, we’ll see if all the hype holds true. We’re crossing our fingers, because otherwise it would be a really big bummer to have all this crap in our yard for no good reason! And, luckily, the smell diminished significantly on Saturday when we had Bryan’s friend come with his tractor to till it in. Saturday afternoon Bryan leveled all the dirt so we’re ready to plant! We have the curbing installation guy coming this Wednesday and we’re hoping to have the grass seed planted this weekend. (By the way, a big thanks to all our family and friends who live in Davis County for your “contributions” to the growth of our yard! I know it was a hard job, but someone’s got to do it, right?)

In other news, we enjoyed Mother’s Day weekend by celebrating with both sides of the family. It’s always good to get together. Also, Tess had her Preschool Graduation this past Saturday (I was a little afraid to go because I thought the whole family might smell like poo dirt, but luckily the ceremony was outside so I think we were OK.) The kids sang songs for us and they all got diplomas and wore cute little graduation caps. It was pretty cute. Tess is a twerp though…during the whole ceremony she and the girl beside her just pulled off each other’s caps and/or hit each other with the little plastic American flags they were waving. Bryan keeps wondering if she acts this way because she’s still so young, or if she is just destined to always be a little twerp in school. I told him that if she’s like this forever in school, there is only one parent we can blame it on, and it certainly ain’t the “teacher’s pet” sitting here typing this. (I was such a good little girl in school that it’s enough to “gag a maggot”—Bryan’s term.) Now that preschool is over, I admit that I’m worried to be able to find stuff to keep Tess entertained and to keep me sane. She’s doing swimming lessons in June and I may try to get her started in tumbling in July. We’ll see what the summer brings.

Lots of pictures this week: Miles & Tess with Daddy on the four-wheeler, Tess at graduation, Bryan shoveling the poo dirt, Tess after applying some makeup we got at the dollar store, and Miles chewing on a big ol’ pork chop bone.

Yard Work

Well, we began the yard work at our new house, and I can really understand why Bryan always said that he never wanted to put in a yard—it’s a LOT of work! (Of course I’m not the one doing the work, poor Bryan is, but I help out when I can, and I sympathize when he’s out there). We were going to pour some new concrete to extend our patio, but the home builders had to come and replace a window well that was pulling away from the foundation of the house. In the process of pulling out the old one and putting in the new one, they dug up a lot of dirt and “fluffed” it all up in the process. I’m sure there’s a better term for it, but basically the dirt had lots of air in it and when Bryan put some water on it just to see how much “fluffiness” there was, his shovel went easily down about 4 feet into the ground. So, needless to say, we didn’t want to put concrete on top of that. We’ll let the ground settle a bit.

So, Thursday night we debated and debated about whether or not to trench on Friday. We knew that if we trenched, we were committed to everything because we couldn’t wait around and let the trenches fill in with dirt and/or rain. The forecast looked good for Friday, but not so good for Saturday…but we decided to just go for it! We want grass this summer! So, Bryan took Friday off and rented a trencher and dug all the trenches on Friday. We had a great neighbor and great brother-in-law come help Bryan on Friday afternoon to start laying all the pipe. I went out Friday night and flagged all the spots for the sprinkler heads (my measly little contribution, after the kids were in bed). So Saturday morning we were pretty well prepared. Unfortunately the weathermen were all correct when they said it would rain…the guys were all SOAKED to the bone, and unbelievably muddy. Luckily they worked really fast and got all the pipes in and fitted by about 10:30 that morning. (The sprinkler heads weren’t set yet, but that can wait for better weather.) I just want to thank from the bottom of my heart our wonderful helpers, Russ, Aaron, Burke and Nathan so much!!

That afternoon, around 12:00, the skies cleared, the sun came out, and we had several hours of beautiful, warm sunny weather. Talk about a kick in the pants…the muddy pants! Oh well.

Bryan is off to California again this week for work. He’ll be back on Wednesday and we hope to get the sprinkler heads all set by this weekend. Then, we just have to bring in the mulch/topsoil/fertilizer and get it tilled in and we’re ready to do the curbing and plant the seed! Yippee!

In other news, Tess continues to crack me up with her cute little stories and big imagination. 1-The other day she told me a story about when she went to the dentist. The dentist was named Dr. Jackyjill and the nurse was Minnie Anymen. There was also a (regular) doctor at the dentist office named SillyBillyJillyJill. 2-She’s been asking me lately about what kind of clouds she sees in the sky as we’re driving in the van. I’ve been trying to remember my elementary school science lessons on clouds (cumulus, nimbus, cirrus, stratus, etc.) and I’m a little rusty. So, I give my best guess, but she never seems satisfied. She says, “but what’s IN the clouds?” So I told her that all clouds have water in them. Then she proceeded to tell me about the “pricket clouds.” Confused, I asked her what a “pricket cloud” is and she told me “there was a big giant pricket cloud with lots of prickets. And they were eating all their food! But then, the birds came and ate them all up, and they were saved!” I had to laugh when I realized that she must’ve learned a lesson in Sunbeams about the Mormon pioneers, the crickets, and the seagulls. She’s a cutie.