As of 8:00 PM this evening, we are the proud owners of a new retaining wall!!!!  After a long day's work moving 72 lb. wall bricks (yes, each one weighed this and the caps were 50 LB each) and arranging them Andy completed our new retaining wall.  I looks great and will be super fab once we get the colorful mums planted!!!   New pics are in the gallery and will post more as we complete the planting.

Cheers and Good Night!

Kathleen

PS: Andy also learned how to use a masonry wet saw to cut the bricks and he was really good at it!!!

We are not even halfway through September and have had yet another couple of surprises.....good and bad!

This week we won tickets to a special preview screening of the new movie, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs".  Andy and I were a bit skeptical of how good the movie was going to be but were quite delighted at how funny the movie turned out.  Both boys also loved the movie though Nolan just thought it was perposterous that it could rain meatballs.....until he realized it was part of the storyline!  Considering the number of duds we've rented lately we were very happy to spend 2 hours at the theater for this movie.  Lots of humor (including subtle humor which is a favorite of mine) and imagination.

The screening we saw was in 3D which turned out to be a very wicked experience.  This was my first 3D experience that did not involve the blue and red glasses and I was hesitant because for some reason my eyes don't process the 3D images.  Heck, I can't even do those "magic eye" puzzles in the newspaper.  I could stare at them until my eyeballs bleed and I will never see anything come off the page at me.  Yesterday's experience with the new polarized 3D technology was so awesome.  One of the first things you see is this dog chasing a ball.  I swear to you that ball was right in front of me.  Then the dog jumped for it and it just leapt off the screen!!!!!!  I can now see what it is I have been missing all these years and if you get the chance to see a movie (especially this one) in 3D....DO IT!!!!!!  You won't regret it!

The past couple of weeks I have felt like something was "missing" in our front yard.  Granted we haven't done much landscaping but we have no flowers or color out there.  So we decided to plant mums in front of the steps.  Now, this is an area that the grass ALWAYS dies and is perpetually yellow/brown.  Andy was convinced that there must have been alot of rock under there (we have tons of rock in our yard) that was preventing the grass from taking root.  So we decided we'd kill 2 birds w/ 1 stone and dig out the rocks to encourage healthy soil for the mums.  Oh, how I wish this is where our little adventure ends.  Of course if you own a home you know full well that any little, simple project 9 out of 10 times will turn into a large project.  Yes, this was one of those times!!!!!  As we are digging down, we hit something with the shovel.  Turns out we have a cement slab that extends across the whole length of the steps all the way to the driveway.  Not only that, the slab is about 6 inches deep!!!!!!  So we spent the rest of the morning cursing....I mean politely chastising builders :) and ended up digging the whole area to install another retainging wall so we can put in a raised bed to plant the mums!  ARGGGGGGG!!!!!  Needless to say, BAD SURPRISE!   Tomorrow we'll start the wall and if there is time, we'll be planting.  Check out the photo gallery for picture updates on this project.

Cheers,

Kathleen