A New School & a New Back Yard

Yesterday and today I have been really nervous. Mom and Dad had to go out of town and so we had to find a daycare option for Kaylea for the week. We are letting her try out a new school and she will be there all day every day this week! Yesterday she cried when we left. Today, she grabbed the teacher's hand and ran off towards the playground not looking back and said, "Bye mom!" I guess I am more nervous than she is! Anywho, keep your prayers going for Kaylea this week and for mom and dad as well. They need it!

Now onto a new garden. In an attempt to keep my activity level I've decided to switch some of my chores with Eric and handle some of the outside duties. I'm rather proud of myself too! We bought a new lawnmower on our Home Depot card (no interest 12 months deal). Well it had sat in the van for two weeks as I was out of town, and Eric was working and hurt his side so he couldn't lift that week. So, this past week I got it out after work put it together, oiled it up and mowed our front and back lawn! (This reminds me of that Annie get your gun skit "I can do anything you can do better, I can do anything better than you!") Well I won't say I can do the lawn better than Eric, HOLY COW it takes a lot of muscle strength to mow Florida lawns. You Kentucky people don't know how easy you have it! In Florida our ground is all sand. ALL SAND. No dirt! So when you go to turn the lawn mower the wheels just spin holes in the sand! It was such a workout to mow the lawn that I actually had a vein pop out of my arm near my elbow whenever I flexed my muscle - after mowing! Crazy! I don't wanna be a body builder! Good news is after mowing I lost all the water weight I gained on the cruise! LOL

So seeing the results from the weight loss I decided to continue and not give up. I vaccuumed the pool and cleaned the filter twice and dug half a trench for a garden on Saturday. I was pooped. Utterly exhausted. So, Sunday, Eric helped me finish the gardening area.... he helped me dig the rest of the trench and we went to Home Depot to use our coupon before it expired and bought 2 Bottle Palm Trees, 2 Hibiscus Plants, 2 White Lilies and 1 elephant ear plant... and some little green plants as fillers to go in between. We also bought 15 bags of dark colored stones to lay on top. It was hard work just loading and unloading all this stuff! Thank God for Eric's help on Sunday! I wanted my father's day present to him to be this nice renovated backyard... but I gave up doing it on my own and had to recruit him to help LOL. It is hard work... (yes I know Eric you told me so!)

So we finally got all the plants planted and called it a day around 4:30pm. Pooped again. Tonight we have to even out the sand and put the stones out. Eric's uncle Tommy is going to help us build a deck, and I still need to get the pool area pressure washed, plant more plants, build a pathway to the deck, and get a hammock and more and more.... I'm totally renovating our backyard... cause this summer I actually want to use it! I will post new pictures to show our progress as we go!

PS - yes I know our grass is brown and dead... thats Florida for you! I called True Green Chemlawn out for a spray and a few waterings it should be back to normal. See in FL water is short so we can only water our lawns I think once a week - we aren't priveleged like Kentuckians with beautiful bluegrass. I'm praying it rains here...we had dark clouds this morning... but now its blue sky and sun. Rain please!