LUCY!!!

This is how Lucy spends her days!

Weeping Mortar, ARGHHH!!!

So you may have been able to tell from the pictures of our last post, but we have a special kind of mortar around our bricks. This is called weeping mortar and it is the absolute stupidest thing ever invented. Our thought is that some mason tried to make some short-cuts and save time so didn't finish the job. He then decided to put a name to it so he could pretend that it is suppose to look like that and look good. For some reason, several houses in our neighborhood look like this. We decided to rebel and smooth it out. First of all, this is not the funnest job in the world. Took most of the day to just get the sun room done. Will spend all Sunday trying to get the outside finished. We started out with a hammer and hand chisel. What a chore. Finally Hazen rented an electric chisel and it started going much faster. Be warned, these pics are pretty boring as they are mostly of a brick wall.

Needed lots of breaks. Hand chiseling this stuff off the wall isn't easy on the hands or the back.

Finally got smart with the electric chisel.

This also makes quite the mess.

Working our butt's off

Finally got the front yard to a respectable level. As usual it was more work than expected but we really enjoyed getting it to look good. I am pretty sure most of the neighbors think I am on some type of speed drug. Now everyone wants pavers and water features and new plants and lots of other crap that I really don't want or have time to do. Still need to finish off the job with lighting but the front is already rigged up with wiring so all I need to do is buy better lights. How come nobody told me that when you get a house you don't just have to worry about the mortgage there are a zillion other must buy, must buy, must buy. Oh well, I guess you are never too young to declare bankruptcy. Just kidding. Everyone is invited to the Housewarming party on June 21st. There will be plenty of the cheapest beer possible to go around. Hopefully the bar will be finished just in time (Don't worry, I'll have it finished). Cheers

(Before) - or about 10 minutes before. I got a little excited with the excavator and forgot to take a pic before I started. (Before) - The only plant I saved was the yellow shrub but I did relocate it to the center of the window and flanked it with a few junipers.

(Before) Lots of Ivy and unidentifiable nasty plants (UNPs).

(After) Water Feature - Its no GeoHeights but should do for the Lazer pad. I think the pic really makes it look like crap. Much better in person.

(After) - I hope you can tell the difference between the before and after and if you can't just lie to me because my back is really sore and I don't want to hear anything different.

If you can't tell the plants are a little small because... well damn they were cheaper!

We Have Furniture!!!

Well we have been in our house for about 3 weeks now and it is finally starting to look like home. We ordered furniture a couple weeks ago and it just came on Friday. We got some pictures up on the walls and most the boxes are unpacked. We can finally start to relax a bit. Hazen is working on a small waterfall for the front of the house and will eventually get to a larger one in the back yard. We will have to get some photos up of that as soon as it's done.

Master Bedroom

Upstairs Living Room

Downstairs Family Room

Spare Bedroom

Workout Room

Office

Just working on house stuff

Seems like we have been pretty busy lately. We got the keys to the house a couple weeks ago and have been going crazy cleaning/moving/fixing up things. The house was left pretty dirty by the previous owners. They packed up their stuff and left, not sweeping/vacuuming/wiping out cupboards or anything. Luckily we had the rental for a couple weeks after we got the keys so we weren't rushed to get everything in the house. We had time to clean and do some painting before we moved stuff in. The rooms don't really need painted, but we are doing them anyways so they are what we want. We order furniture last week and it should be coming this week. As soon as everything is finished painting and furniture in its place, we will take some more pics for everyone to see.

The living room with wall paper. It doesn't look that bad but we aren't big fans of wall paper. Started out to be a b**** to remove but Aubree figured it out and it went pretty quick.

This is what the wall paper looked like.

We gave ourselves a break from house work today and took a nice little hike to Halverson Lake this morning before it got too hot.

Lucy enjoys the water but still wont fully get in.

Old bridge near Celebration Park on the Snake River.

Same bridge, different view.

Lucy can't get enough of her back yard. This is how she spends most of her days.

And this is what she is watching.