Sunday 28 April 2013

Happenings

Our week turned out to be a gorgeous spring one weather wise. I started out the week by doing some light yard work raking and cleaning up from the winter. A couple of rainy days, impromptu meetings with friends, doctors appointments and such kept me from getting as much yard work done as I wanted to this week, but in between going here and there I did enjoy the beautiful weather as much as possible.
Thursday night we had out first BBQ of the season. I think it was the warmest day we had had up to that point this spring. I spent the day in Bangor with a friend, and on my way home Matt called me to see if I felt like a BBQ for supper. I was all for it, so he brought a tank of gas home and we proceeded to enjoy our tasty grilled supper. There is just something so much yummier about a burger cooked on the grill. :-)  Here we are enjoying our first BBQ.




After our BBQ, Matt's Dad and Mom and some of the girls came over and helped us stake out the measurements for the deck we are going to build on the back of our house. It is so exciting to finally see things getting underway after talking and planning about this deck since last spring!!



As you can see there was A LOT of debris from repairing and shingling the back of the house, not to mention a bunch of junk of all sorts left from the previous owner that never got cleaned up. Saturday found Dad and Mom McFarland, Charity and I cleaning up all of that mess. The weather was even nicer than Thursday had been, and I enjoyed being outside to soak it up. We spent most of the morning cleaning up the vinyl siding, wood, metal, glass, and anything else immaginable and loading it into the back of the truck to take to the dump.



Once we had all of the junk cleaned up, Dad used his weedwacker to cut down the blackberry brambles that had grown up, and got his chain saw out to cut off a few stumps. Charity and I raked up what he had cut down and deposited it on the burn pile while Mom worked away at picking up bits and pieces of broken glass and plastic.
After lunch, Mom and Charity and I headed to the dump with our truckload of junk, and Dad stayed behind to split some wood that needed to be taken care of at our house. I felt like the Clampets from the Beverly Hillbillies show driving down the road with our truck piled high. :-) We had to stop twice before getting to the dump to either pick up something we had lost or readjust our load, bit we finally made it there with all of our load in tact. I was bracing myself for how much I might have to pay to get rid of all of that mess, however I was pleasantly surprised when the man at the dump said "Five dollars to get rid of the wood, the rest doesn't cost anything." I quickly wrote him a check and Mom and I and Charity unloaded the junk. What a great feeling that was to know that all of that mess was gone from our backyard and I would never have to deal with it again!! :-)




Compare this picture with the one above where Matt and Dad are staking out the deck measurements to see how much better it looks now.
When we got back from the dump, Dad was finished splitting the wood and had cleaned up a bunch of brush around our garden and added it to an ever growing burn pile. His intention was to burn a big pile we had out back and one by the garden. He had picked up a burning permit earlier that day, but the stipulation was that he couldn't burn till after 5:00 that night. That worked perfectly because Matt was out of work by that time which meant another set of eyes and hands to help with the fire. He and Dad touched off the first pile while I got burgers and hotdogs on the grill.


By the time that pile was burned down, supper was ready and Pam and Rachel had gotten home from work so the whole family sat down for some food. After supper, Mom and the girls helped me clean up, while Matt and Dad lit the second pile.



We all ended up back outside to watch the fires, and the girls helped me carry a bunch of old cardboard boxes out of the basement that needed to be burned, and we added them to the pile. By 9:30 both piles had burned right down to coals, and when Matt and I got up this morning there was just ashes left where the huge piles of brush and logs had been. We were all ready to call it a day when we got done, but it felt so good to have SO much accomplished. Not to mention being able to enjoy looking out the back window to a much cleaner property! Thank you so much to everybody that helped!!

Wednesday 17 April 2013

Baby Room Prep Part 1

Rumor has it that our house is expecting a visit from the stork this summer. Matt and I couldn't be more excited! But in light of that fact, we needed to fix up our spare room so that we will have a place to keep the precious bundle that the stork leaves behind. *wink*
It is a work in progress, but we are slowly getting it inhabitable. Our first project was to lay flooring. The original flooring was just pine boards painted white and had pink play dough stuck all over it from the previous owners' children. Matt had also had to cut a corner out of the floor last year to repair the back wall of the house, and we had never replaced it. On a couple of Matt's days off we went to work and laid this flooring. We love how it looks and how easy it was to put down!





The hardest part of the whole process was nailing down the subflooring that had to go underneath it. Once we got that finished, laying the flooring was a piece of cake. :-)



Step one of room remodel completed! :-) 

Saturday 13 April 2013

It's been awhile!!

Between bouts of morning sickness, and periods of internet, sketchy internet, no internet, and then internet again, my blog has been severely neglected. Thankfully the morning sickness has subsided and we are into our 26th week of pregnancy. The internet problem has also been fixed for the most part, and I am typing this post from my phone. I say "for the most part," because I can't get the laptop to connect to our WiFi this morning. I'll have to ask Matt about it when he gets home.
It's supposed to be spring in these parts!  I'm aching to see tulips and daffodils blooming, and feel the warm sun on my face, with a warm breeze playing at my hair. Instead, we woke up to a white dusting of snow on the ground and a cold drizzle dripping off everything. Not my idea of a spring morning!! I'm trying to console myself that spring has got to come soon whether it feels like it or not, and I may even sneak to town today and buy some bulbs to plant when spring actually does burst forth. :-)
In the meantime I'll watch my pepper seedlings push through the soil in their little tray on my living room window sill, and enjoy this beautiful bit of color that my darling man brought home for me the other day, just because he is THAT sweet!! 



Isn't it beautiful???
I'm hoping to post more frequently now that we've passed the morning sickness stage and we have reliable internet here at the house again. We have some home renovation projects coming up that I'll be sure to take pictures of, and many preparations for baby that I will want to share with you. :-)