Outside updates!

Here's another peek at the outside of our house!  

Two years later and we are finally BETTER than we were pre-flood! 

(which by the way, the 2nd anniversary of the sirens sounding was on June 22 @12:57 p.m.)

YAHOO! 

HOLD UP! 

Let's go back down memory lane....

Pre-flood

 I couldn't find a full shot of the front of the house pre-flood.

June 2011

When we first were able to get back into the house after the flood....

July 2011

July 2012 (weeds make for a nice plush green lawn!)

And 2 pictures of the PRESENT
JUNE 2013 house....

Grass looks WAY better....

My sister and I planted some nice flowers in this planter while she was here on HER mini vacation. 

(thanks for the planter Ma & Pa Hoff!)

This is the other side of the house... 

We did not have this little area tilled/leveled and hydroseeded.  We will complete the project on our own.  We are still debating whether to seed it, gravel it, or just bite the bullet and pour some concrete here.

 BEEP BEEP! Back it up again for the backyard!

Pre-Flood June 2011

I don't have a whole picture of the backyard preflood that I can find right now.  

However to the left there WAS a shed...

Backyard July 2011 right after the flood

this is panned a little more to the left....

We had been working on the house for about 3 months by this point...

June 2012

And currently! June 2013

This lovely little indent is over by the big egress window. 

Possible kennel area for the dogS!

Looking out from the indented area....

This is one of our big projects for next summer.  

We will be leveling it out, adding some rock, and building a "built in" above ground fire pit.

Progress has been made! 

Hoping to get a shed back up in the fall in one of the back corners!

More Outside Shenanigans

For the record it rained all morning and most of the afternoon.  Around 3 o'clock the sun broke through and we decided to head out and ATTEMPT to weed the flower bed out front.....

This is how Sadie spent her afternoon:

Here I attempted to repot some flowers I got from a student and a colleague. I also attempted to repot the flowers we started growing for our plants unit...we'll see how long they last...

The apple tree bloomed and the raspberry bush is getting some buds now too!

Some pre-weeding shots:

My shovel broke....

And some after/during shots:

Is this a weed?

How about any of these?  Either way they are green...

Chad is currently hating this sight..which is all over our yard....

Whatever this is, it's nice =)

And lastly, this is how the boys have ended the evening, and we will be enjoying a fire...because the rain has finally stopped again =)

Lots of outside stuff going on right now.  Hoping we don't flood and the sewer doesn't go out again.  Time will tell.  

Finished....

the front flower bed....

Check out some of the before pictures here on my other post on yard work.

Well, today I finished the front flower bed.  The second before picture is what the second half of the front flower bed looked like.  I needed a machete (sp??) to get through that stuff!  I'm ready to dig up those plants and get rid of them because next spring I do not want to have to do that again!!

Here are the pictures of the finished project (which was done to the best of my abilities as a first time flower bed taker carer haha).

 first loop....

 second loop.....

 third loop....

Fancy right? I broke in the shovel I got for Easter from Chad's parents! There was a random pile of dirt in the middle of one of the loops so I took it and spread it where there were big holes (so, the darker parts of the loops are the newly moved dirt).

This is where the big pile of dirt was....and let me tell you, this was the bug capital of the flower bed.  ICK!

A little yard work......

Happy Easter!

Chad and I went to Montana yesterday, and came back today! It was a super short trip.  We got home and because we finally had an AMAZING day here we decided to get started on some much needed yard work/putting stuff away.

Chad arranged and rearranged and put some stuff away in the garage while I swept up the mess from getting the roof reshingled out back and out front.  There are/were shingles and nails EVERYWHERE around the house, so it's going to be quite the project.  Travis helped sweep up the front =)

After we tackled that I felt ambitious because of the amazing weather.  Along the front of our house is quite the flower/shrub/etc area.  It is nicely tucked in a curvy shape.  When they reshingled the roof they trampled it and the snow beat it up as well.  So I cleaned up, to the best of my abilities having never really done it before, one section of the curve.  It took me almost 2 hours or more to just clean up this little section!  There are tons of nails and shingles in there and I'm sure I still didn't get them all, but, I did the best I could!

These are how some of the plants looked before I started:

Halfway done!

This section is done! It's a little rough around the edges, I know, but I'm pretty proud of how it turned out =)