Labor Day Weekend

Our Labor Day weekend was just that- a weekend of labor. Kyle’s parents flew into town to help us do some work on the house. They were a HUGE help. The work they accomplished over the weekend would have taken Kyle and I forever. I’m not really a lot of help in the yard these days- at least not the kind of help for what really needed to be done.

We started the weekend by clearing out all of the junk that was left in the yard. When I say we, what I really mean is the men.

(I did a horrible job documenting before and after. Actually, I didn’t take a single picture that weekend. These pictures are mostly all courtesy of Kyle’s mom.)

There was a huge pile of wood and junk underneath the deck. That was all cleared out and hauled away.

There were also bags of weeds Kyle and I had pulled that needed to be taken away. An old metal playset was torn down, a very weathered wooden picnic table was disposed of and trees were trimmed.

BTW- apparently Hailey was not so happy about seeing “her” playground go. She saw it being taken apart and said, “don’t break my playground!” Poor girl. We never let her play on it anyway. The bars were bent and it was made for much older kids. We’ll get her a new one- someday…

We rented a truck from Home Depot for the day so we could haul it all away to the dump. It took two loads that were completely full to clear the junk away.

It rained off and on all day. Not just rained- it poured. Thunder, lightning, the whole bit. Luckily though the rain came at the right times, in between the work that was being done. Unfortunately, the ground was so saturated and soft that when we first drove the truck into the backyard it was too light and got stuck. So, now we have some nice tracks and holes in the yard. Oh well. We have future plans to redo the lawn anyway.

On Monday work was done on the tree plot in the front yard. A weekend or two before Kyle and his brother Kris spent some time pulling out weeds and laying mulch. This weekend it was finished off with bricks and more mulch.

Hailey went to Home Depot with Rara Hill and I to buy the mulch and bricks. The boys met us there with the truck after taking a load to the dump. They hauled it all back in the truck. Thank goodness, we’d never be able to do that in our car!

Goofball Hailey pretended to take a nap in the cart while we shopped.

Later, Hailey even got in on some of the hard labor action.

Here is the before:

And the after:

Much better!

While the men we working outside, the women were inside painting the playroom. The women meaning Kyle’s mom and sister Brittany. Not me- I wasn’t allowed. No pregnant women near the paint fumes.

The playroom was the only room in the house not painted. And it needed some really bad. The walls were dinged and had marks on them. It was just ugly. And it bothered me. We chose to paint the room light gray. I like it so much better! Now, whenever I happen to find time, I can start to decorate the room.

Playroom before and after. I know, it’s super hard to see the difference. Just know the photo on the left is white scuffed up yucky walls and the photo on the right is a nice clean soft gray.

Since I wasn’t much help outside with the physical labor, and I was banned from painting, I made peach jam with peaches from the peach tree we inherited. Again, I really wish I had taken pictures. Our peach tree is rather pathetic looking, but it produced A TON of fruit. We had peaches coming out of our ears. And now they are bursting out of our freezer as jam and frozen slices. Maybe next year I’ll tackle canning them- and actually take pictures.

Thank you Hill family for sacrificing your three-day weekend to help us do yard and house work! We really appreciate it!

Taking a break with Papa.