Happy Easter

We had a quick but great Easter weekend!

The Husband is NOT a big reader - like MAYBE one book per year if we're lucky.  With the movie Water for Elephants coming out I finally convinced him that he should read the book because it is an easy read and a great book!  He started the book last Thursday, so I agreed to drive to GB so he could read on the way.  More on that later...

After we got to GB, we made a chimenea while we waited on Jared to get back from Hays.  Jared also brought his new GF, Mandie home!

He also brought some pretty tulips for mom...

Saturday morning, we got up early and made the annual Bunny Rolls and Crescents!  

Mandie helped me mix them up!

We decided we wanted to go see Water for Elephants on Saturday night, so the husband was anti-social ALL DAY LONG trying to finish the book!!!

Then it was time to dye the eggs... 

We played Monopoly in the afternoon and Jordan demolished us! :(

Meanwhile the book worm continued reading in fact he finished the book just in time to go see the movie with us!

Sunday after church, we took family pics (Jared and Mandie had to leave Saturday night, so they were left out).  

Then we stuffed our faces with fantastic food before heading home to see Miss Bailey!!  Oh yeah, Miss B had to miss out on the GB Easter festivities this year.  But Auntie Randine stayed with her over the weekend.  Miss B kept Randine on her toes all weekend!  Randine even taught Miss B to play cards...

Hope you all had a great Easter Weekend!

We're Still Alive...

So apparently we've been busy!  Not quite sure doing what after looking at my camera as I don't really have too many new pics!  Here are some of the highlights of the last week...

After fixing the sprinkler system, the Husband kept testing it and Miss B was quite the curious cat...

Where did it go??  She did this and barked for about 5 min trying to get it to come back!

We played with "sticks" - yes that is the trunk to our Christmas Tree

Yes this was that same Christmas Tree 2 weeks ago - it's ghetto, but we're cool with it

We frolicked joyously...

Uncle Troy brought over some extra tennis balls from coaching

Which brought on the 'Crack Eyes'

As well as the 'Bow Ears'...

When she gets hot her ears always go back like this and it looks like she has a pink bow on her head - or mouse ears - depends on how you look at it.
Apparently she was half way cooled off here...

Saturday I was cleaning house and our vacuum finally gave up on us.  This vacuum goes WAY back - in fact it was my parents old vacuum, then it went to college with me and it made it through 4 years of marriage with us!  So it is probably close to 15 years old - if not older!  I am TOTALLY a bargain shopper, so it KILLS me to have to buy something - big or small - without doing my research for the best deal.  Unfortunately, I had no choice this time but to get a new one that day - we had company coming and muddy footprints all over the carpet - darn rain!  So I called my mom and she phone shopped with me!  Finally we settled on the Bissel WindTunnel - Paws Series.  BEST DECISION EVER!  The old vacuum was a bag vacuum, the new one however is a bagless, so in other words you get to see everything the old guy missed!

The thought crossed my mind that we might be those dirty people you look at and think eww they need to clean more, but then I reminded myself that this was a foreclosure and we haven't gotten new carpet yet - so it couldn't possibly be us... right?!   Anywho... I totally enjoy vacuuming now, in fact I've vacuumed at least 3 times since we bought it Saturday - that might be a little excessive, but it's fun. :)

Curiosity killed the cat...

WARNING - VERY LONG BLOG!


As promised, here is the final product from the last weekend update!

Friday the husband took the day off to work on our office computers & get some mulch.  The computer issue was supposed to be a quick thing, but turned into quite the ordeal... he was there all morning long - We Love Him!!  He has pretty much taken a second job as our small business computer guy which is nice.  After speeding up our lives, he went to get mulch which was being sold by the city for $10 a trailer load!  We managed to use the entire trailer worth of mulch in the back yard along the fence.  This area hated grass, but loved mud, so it was pretty much Miss B's own mud puddle - if this was on facebook, I would strongly DIS-like this comment!!! So we covered it up and the results were instant since Miss B can no longer imprint our carpet with muddy  footprints.

Don don don..... Saturday

Saturday morning the husband and I embarked on a tour of Lawrence nursery's and plant sales to find the best deals and plants for our new garden and flower pots. Unfortunately we didn't get a whole lot of veggie plants yet because the nursery lady strongly advised we wait since we are in Kansas and we would probably get another few freezes over the next few weeks.  We did, however buy some flowers and some cold weather veggies. We planted onions, broccoli, and romaine lettuce. The picture below is from a really cool nursery here in Lawrence. - Sorry the quality isn't that great - still learning the settings on my new toy!

After a busy morning we came back to the house and started planting. The husband then said to me "what about the sprinkler system?". Let me fill you in. In case you just joined the blog Nathan and I bought a foreclosed home last November and we were not even able to test the water when we bought it. In fact we didn't even know there was a sprinkler system! Long story short we have been steadily working on the house to bring it back from the shape it was in. When we first moved in there were piles upon piles of grass against the house and all over the yard. Turns out a few weeks before we even saw the house the grass was around 2ft tall according to the neighbors. So, there in fact is a sprinkler system and once we uncovered the main box where the darn thing started we notice that the valve letting water into the whole thing was completely shattered. This was probably due to the fact that the previous owner hooked up PVC pipe to galvanized steel which apparently doesn't work so well in the winter - hence the shattering!

Nathan decided to replace the valve because all he wanted to know was "does the system even work" if it did we were going to have a working sprinkler system!!! If not then we would have about 1000 ft of random PVC pipe throughout our yard - as a broken sprinkler system is SO not in the budget!

To even get the valve off of this thing we had to shut the water off to the house. Upon examining the valve and it's connectors Nathan asked well how committed are you to this project? To which I said "we already started lets just keep going" SIX HOURS LATER and a few phone calls/visits from our friend Travis, all we had was a new valve that was closed so we could have water in the house!!!! There was problem after problem getting this thing hooked up. Apparently there are not  very many parts that hook up a 3/4" smooth copper pipe to a 1" galvanized back flow connector. The problem wasn't getting the valve off it was getting the valve connected to another piece 8 inches away and Nathan cannot sweat (new term the sweet old man at HD taught us for soldering copper). Anyways by the end of the night he was so mad - and dirty - we just had to call it quits not because he wanted to but because Home Depot stopped us (they were closed). 

This morning Nathan got up early before church and assessed the situation and with the help of Travis, had a plan to get the thing going. Keep in mind we don't even know if the sprinkler system would work. With all the frozen pipes we had in the house when we bought it lord knows we probably had more outside! After coming back from HD and hooking everything up he looked away, squinted and crossed his fingers as he turned the valve...... IT WORKED!!! NO LEAKS!!!!

But does the system work!!! He went over to the control panel in the garage and tinkered with it for a minute and after about 45 seconds of being on sprinkler head came bursting through the ground flinging years of grass off the heads.... He came into the house and was just screaming because that is what he does when he is proud of something he has figured out. Then we both went outside and UH OH..... There was a massive puddle building up on the side of the house. He quickly started digging through mulch and dirt and up FLOATED a sprinkler head..... What a mess....

Turned out that all we had to do was replace that sprinkler head and that is the only thing wrong with the system. After years of not being used this thing works!!!

As we were walking around the yard looking at the sprinkler heads Nathan kept seeing little puddles of water and then we would dig and BOOM up pops a sprinkler head. This seemed to be a repeating process all day. We thought we were in the clear until four more sprinkler heads magically appeared... OUTSIDE of the fence we built last fall!!!!!  They should be easy to move, but we felt pretty cool watering our fence all afternoon as we played with the system. 

Another interesting thing is we can't find 2 of the 7 valve boxes that the control panel says we have. What is funny is every time Nathan mows he always comes back in and says "found a new sprinkler head" or "found a new valve box" and the valve boxes are 6 inches in diameter!  That just shows how overgrown our yard was! So when we mow and weed-eat this week we hope to find the missing sprinkler parts!

After a hard few days of work, we got to enjoy our hard work with some tea from our porch (which was my weekend project)!  We Love Our House and all the projects Big and small that come with it!!!

Weekend Update

I know, I know, I'm a little late for a weekend update, deal with it.
So the Husband and I have been attempting to make a garden area in our backyard for the past 3 weeks.  Do you remember back at the beginning of March when we had one nice weekend??  Yep that was when we began this never-ending project.
Weekend #1:

Railroad Ties in, Side Boards Up & Dirt in...

I LOVE SPRING!

Miss B couldn't be out with us the whole time since the gate was open, but that didn't stop her from trying...

That was SO in my way!

That's better... What's up guys?

Weekend #2:

It snowed...

Weekend #3:

It snowed... 
& rained :(

Weekend #4:

Sarah D. came to visit and I put her to work - Bailey monitored her work for me :)

Then she helped me for a bit... 

(check out my fancy new gloves, husband votes I spent way too much mulla on them, I vote they are super cute and totally worth it!)

That was WAY too much for her, so she went back to monitoring our work

Finished Product...

Oops!!  I forgot to take a picture and it's dark out now, so I'll get that to you with the next post!

Next Step - actual plants!  Unfortunately I'm having quite the time deciding what it is that I want to plant.  I'm thinking tomatoes, snap peas, green peppers, squash, lettuce and if I get really spunky maybe even some asparagus - Oh and some jalapeños!  Hopefully we can get some home-made salsa going!  Any other ideas/suggestions?