Summer! Sigh! I love summer. Last summer was my first summer not having to work but....I had to spend a good chunk of it getting ready for my first year back to full time teaching music. This summer, I have nothing I have to get done AND the kids are such low maintenance. They have new friends across the street and keep themselves busy all day. Other than feeding them and breaking up a squabble or two, it has been the easiest summer eva!
It has also been a mild summer. Good thing is that we aren't dying of overly hot days. Bad thing is, all this rain hasn't exactly made it easy to fit very much swimming in. However, it kind of has worked out perfectly because it has given me plenty of time to get the painting done I wanted to do. On non rainy days I have worked on our back yard some more. I am no where near finished, but we have made a lot of progress. It is about to come to a halt, however, as Jeff needs to start studying again for his next test and I can't move forward much more until some trees are removed. We will probably start diving in again this fall. I will say, this project has grown exponentially. What started out as one trail and a tree house grew into 3 trails, a campfire area, a treehouse, and an entire landscaped area in the middle of it all. I'm guessing it will take us at least another year if not two to finish, plus I feel a little guilty spending all that money at once to finish it. Kind of have to spread that kind of stuff out. Important thing is, the treehouse is almost done.
Speaking of rain, our house was engineered to rest on a lot of rock because the builders knew we might have water drainage issues, we do, after all, live almost at bottom of a very steep hill. On really rainy seasons the water is supposed to flow through the rock under our house (which is all covered up with a plastic vapor barrier) and on down the hill. Unfortunately, the water table has been so high from all this rain, we had a tiny spring on the back side of our house along the foundation. They tried to create a drain in our foundation to prevent this problem, but got sloppy with the cement work along the foundation which sort of created a damn in some areas along the foundation. This is BAD! My dad and I spent some time investigating what was going on. I sucked it all out with a shop vac and an hour later it was back which meant it wasn't left over rain water from poor drainage, it was ground water. This put me into a complete panic. Our house has settled A LOT and and I feared it wouldn't stop settling unless we fix the problem. I put a fan in our crawl space to dry things out, keep air circulating, and prevent mold from starting. Then I just waited until things started drying up, praying they would. It's been a couple weeks now and we've progressed to mud, no standing water on that back wall. Coincidentally, our creak is dried up and the natural spring next to it is dried up too.
Needless to say, we seriously considering having the landscaping company we are hiring to fix our slope put a french drain in on that back wall. We will also have to hire someone to come out and jack up the house so it is plumb again. Yes, they can actually do that. I just hope it stops settling between now and then. I still hear loud popping sounds in the house at night. I scares me so. I was really hoping we could start saving to finish the basement. Looks like we will have to work on our foundation first. Sucks!
In other less frightening news, I finished my painting project. Jeff has been great about letting me do what I want with my new color scheme. I painted kitchen, living room, and both hallways in 4 days. Now I've been waiting for various accessories to show up in the mail to fill in the room and make it complete. It has been very exciting. I will post pictures when it is all put together. The colors I chose were slate grey and yellow. I LOVE yellow! Favorite color.
Soon we are off to San Antonio for our big summer vaca with my folks. I am so excited, but a little sad about leaving Harry, or Hair Bear as we call him. He is always with us on these long summer days. He's a people cat. Thankfully, my neighbor is a cat lover. Although she can't spend a lot of time with him, at least he'll have a little human contact during that time.
Well there you have it. Summer is almost half over. Waaaa! What a lovely one it's been so far.
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| B learned how to snorkel this summer and can swim without her vest in the shallow end a little. Still a ways to go to be a strong swimmer, but at least we have a start. |
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| We won the neighborhood award this May for best curb appeal and recieved a $50 giftcard to Home Depot. Honestly, I'm not sure how they could give out any more awards. No one here takes care of their yards. Our yard doesn't really fit in with any of the others. I love working on my flowers and making things beautiful. One of my favorite things about summer! I wish everyone else did too. :( |
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| First wall I painted. Bye bye dark brown. Hello yellow! |
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| He was my supervisor. I think he climbed this thing a hundred times. He thought it was a cat tree just for him. |
