Terrible week...but productive weekend!

Last week was a long week for us. You know when you have times that are just "off" and you're all sort of cranky and tired, and nobody feels normal? That's been our week. Will had to go up to Vail, CO for work a couple of times and those are always kind of long/rough days for him with everything he has to do. Thursday was a birthday party for Kaylee's friend, but for some reason (my brain wasn't working??) I thought it was on Friday so I got the kids all pysched up but then realized we totally missed it. I thought the kids would never stop crying! I took them to Chick-Fil-A with the same friends to make up for it, but we're still sad we missed it.

On Thursday Will's truck started acting really weird, overheating like crazy and shaking all over the place. On Friday morning we took it in to the dealership (he has some deals there for free diagnostics and oil changes) and...the engine was shot. Due to a leak in the radiator it overheated so much that it cracked a cylinder and the entire engine would have to be replaced. UGH. So Will got it from the shop to about 4 blocks from our house when it totally died and we had a guy come out to tow it/scrap it for us, and of course we got barely anything for it. So lame. I wish we would have sold it last year when we were thinking about it!! We're still down to only one car (which I'm not worried about, it shouldn't be a big deal), and we would have made so much more money on it if we'd done that. Oh well. Life goes on! And I'm really, really glad it didn't break down when Will was up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. It was good timing, considering.

That night we were still all sad about the truck, and we got some texts and emails from our bank warning us about a possible fraudulent charge on our card - which it was, luckily we have that all taken care of. It's just been kind of a stinky week for us! We're glad it's over.

We had a really good Saturday, however, and we made even more progress on our front yard. Our neighbors think we're insane with how much we're out there working. Last weekend we finished a few little things and we got grass seed planted. Our new grass is growing in now, we bought some more roses and a Japanese Maple, and we finished our little rock area for the trash cans on the side of the house. We're very happy with how everything is turning out so far. Our new tree lost its leaves pretty early, but we're not worried about that - transplanting is always tough.

Yay, little grass seedlings! Grow grow grow!!

 

I don't know if you can see the Japanese Maple or not. It's just to the left of the big bush there and looks like a little purple haze. It's VERY tiny, and it's never supposed to get very big. We love it. We have all four rose bushes that we want, now the question is, can we keep them alive?? The one on the middle left looks pretty bad, it had a hard time this summer. It's doing okay now though and I think it'll be just fine next summer. The summers here can be a little tricky because they'll go from really wet to really dry all the time, so we have to watch out for that. Also, I apologize for the trash in front of the garage. I was too lazy to move it...

One of our neighbors walks by our house with his dogs fairly often and every time he does when we're out there, he tells us how awesome our yard looks. He says he's been in the neighborhood for 20 years and it's never looked better, which I don't know if I completely believe because it's just...not that great yet, but hey, I'll take it!! Nothing like some nice compliments for a bit of motivation.