Second shade mounted :)

It is 10:40PM and our second shade is mounted! We are ready for the weekend. My parents are coming for Vera's (my niece's) blessing. So I am really looking forward to spending some time outside on Saturday with them and the boys:)

2:30 PM and I love my shade

Here I sit on the patio with two devastatingly handsome boys, enjoying my diet ginger ale, refreshing water gun sprays and our newly acquired shade!

Life. Is. Good.

More fresh flowers :)

I love my flower garden :)

We have shade. . . Well, 50% shade

So, we have one of two shade sails up :) I think it looks great! I am so excited to sit under the shade tomorrow.  At this point we are more then half-way done, the posts took a lot of time to set and that was the bulk of the work. Today Dave put up the first sail and tomorrow he plans to put the second one in place.

Also, you can see our new chairs, Home Depot special. Just your typical tan, stack and store out door chairs. I love that they are not teal :)

I will post more photos when the project is done.

Roses :)

I love roses. Love them. My rose bushes are finally starting to produce some blooms and I can't help but have fresh cut flowers in the house. Even though it is a small bouquet, it makes me happy. Welcome summer bouquets!

You can see my Legends rose, my Memorial Day rose and my little cluster of Gene Boerner.

Shade Sail Project

Dave has been really busy this weekend. He has been working hard on getting our steel posts set. You can see in the photos, it has been no small feat. Each posts requires a 4-feet deep hole and then installed them with cement. The two posts you can see are 7 feet and 9 feet above the ground.  (The posts were longer of course. . . the rest are encased in cement in the 4 foot hole.)

In this photo you can see I was testing paint. In the post closest to the camera the top 10 inches is painted black. I will be sanding, cleaning and painting the rest of the posts tomorrow. The metal posts are 4 1/2 inches in diameter and super heavy to move. I am glad we had them delivered.

Here you can see Spencer's and Jacob's hand prints immortalized :)

Tomorrow we (Dave) set the last post and then get going on the rigging for the shade sail. Also we plan on getting some new chairs for the patio. Nothing too fancy, but our Miami-Vice-1987-chairs are about to give up the ghost.  They were free, so how can we complain?

I can't wait to finish this project! A week from today we will be sitting under our new shade sail :)

Best boys ever!

4 day work week :)

It is a 4-day work week for Dave :) I am quite happy about that. He is taking Friday off and we will get some work done in the yard and we plan to go on a date and see "The Avengers." I love dating the coolest man in the world.

So, why is Dave so cool? He can dig a 3-foot hole for a steel pole.

Why do we need a steel pole? For our shade sail, silly.

Next question. . . a shade what?

So, we have been having the "Shade Debate" for the last 6 years. Our backyard faces full west (as Lady Catherine de Bourg would notice, no doubt.)  We get so much sun in the summer that it gets too hot to enjoy sitting on the patio in the afternoon. You need much more then a cold drink to stand the heat out there.

We looked at a lot of options since we moved in. We thought about a covered patio, but the price for adding it was prohibitive. Also we found out that if it is completely covered it adds to your total square feet and your property tax is adjusted to reflect that.

What about a pergola? I liked this option, but I didn't like the idea of having it over the window from kitchen all year round. Also, wood requires a lot of maintenance (as I have seen . . . and done. . .first hand with my parent's pergola) and composite is out of the budget. We also have a grill, you can't grill under a pergola. I want to get an outdoor fireplace and unless we only cover part of the patio, that wouldn't work either.

The last couple of summers we have had some umbrellas. They have been good, but far too small. Only a few people could enjoy the shade. Also one was broken last year when it got too windy.

Dave found the perfect solution to the Shade Debate. A shade sail, as you can see in the photo it is mounted above the area. We got 2 shade sails (in the sandy-taupe color) and will be mounting them this weekend! We (and by "we" I mean Dave) need to dig holes and then anchor them in with cement. Then put up our summer shade. At the end of the season we can take it down. I also have some fun lanterns that I can hang from our installed poles. It is perfect!

I am way excited and will be sure to post some photos :)

Viva La Shade!

Spencer's Talk in Primary

Well, it's that time again. Time for Spencer to give a talk in primary. He has been given the topic of "baptism."  I thought the Grandmas would like to see his talk, so here it is :)

Enjoy.

Photos of the yard

I thought I would post some photos of our yard. It has been a lot of work this past couple of months, so hopefully now all we do it kick back and enjoy it.  Above is our front yard, I wish I could have taken some photos when the daffodils were in full bloom.

This is a new rose, called "double delight." I got this from my mother-in-law for Mother's Day. I just love it!

 Back Bed

 Back Yard

 This is a shot of the new raised bed. We hope having it raised about 10 inches will stop our water problem in the basement. If we go 1 year without the basement window leaking, we will put in some curbing to finish it off.

 My south Iris bed.

Our future water feature.

Odds and Ends

I had a wonderful Mother's Day. The boys surprised me with breakfast in bed and the whole day I got to just relax! We had dinner with my in-laws and boys had so much fun playing with grandma & grandpa, it was a great day.

Mother's day was also a little hard for me. I could not help but think of our domestic adoption situation. I would love more children, I would love to be a mom to another child. It has been heartbreaking these last 9 months. To see a future and whole-heartily commit to that future and then have it not happen is hard to describe. This very reason is why we steered away from domestic adoption when we first looked at all our options. There is so much uncertainty and risk, emotional and financial.

Since Katie went home with Isaac our profile has been shown to a couple of birthmoms, we have not been chosen. It stings. It is hard not to get your hopes up and think. . . what if? Then you feel disappointed. This whole thing would be easier if I felt like our family was done, if I could just walk away and be happy, truly happy.

So, I am working on managing my expectations. After 4 failed adoptions (2 international and 2 domestic) and tens of thousands of dollars spent on the failed attempts, I have to ask myself; Is it okay if it never works out? I think the answer has to be "yes."

Now I just have to accept that we have done all that we can do and turn it over to the Lord. If there are more children meant to be in our family they will come. No amount of calling our domestic agencies for updates, searching the "waiting child" boards for international adoption or obsessing about it will make it happen. We have literally done all we can do, our bread is cast on the water and all we can do it wait.

I have been trying to be really busy with work and the yard.  Work has helped me to focus on something else. Also, yard work is a good time to think about the universe and your place in it.

My summer class starts in 2 1/2 weeks and I have made some updates that I hope will make it a better class. I look forward to getting it underway. Speaking of work, Dave got a promotion at work and has been putting in some longer hours. I love hearing all his stories and all the great "work gossip," even though I don't work there I feel like I know all the politics.

Our back bed is finally done!! We planted 2 trees and 5 shrubs in it. Also we bark-mulched the whole thing. It looks good. I was able to add 3 rose bushes and have high hopes :) I think our yard is done, as far as plantings for the season. We had 5 shrubs and 2 trees die. We added 19 shrubs and 8 trees. The place is really starting to shape up. We planted smaller trees and shrubs, but with time they should fill in nicely. I am looking forward to just mowing and weeding and enjoying the yard.

Breakfast in bed

From my dear husband and sweet sons! And a little charm for my bracelet was hidden in the fruit! I love grapefruit!

Jacob :)

How I love my Jacobite!

Parrot Showcase

Have I mentioned I love our library? They have some great things there. Last month they had the dinosaur expo, and this month they had "The Parrot Showcase." It was great! Jacob is currently obsessed with birds. . . aka. . "Burr! Burr!" He sat there memorized by the whole thing and to have a 2 year old sit still for 45 min. looking at birds is something amazing. He was in a trance.

At the end the boys got to pet the birds. It was great!  The bird lady brought 6 types of parrots and told us about them and they did some tricks. She was funny . . . and at times inappropriate. They poop every 20 minutes and love to shriek.

One thing is for sure however, I do not see a future parrot pet in our home :)

Friday news round-up

Here we are at the end of the week and not much to report.

The biggest  project we have had is re-grading our back bed next to the house. We brought in 4 yards of top soil and pulled back the sod to re-grade away from the house. It was a lot of work. A lot. But, now it is done and we just have a few small things left, like putting in an edge between the grass and the bed.

I also was able to mow the lawn for the first time this season! Ahhh it was great, minus the smoking engine by the end. . . I need to have Dave take a look a that.  I think we need more oil. Anyway, I just mowed the front yard. I will wait to mow the back until next week. But, don't you fret there is plenty of yard work to go around. I still have one more bed to weed (in the front of course) and a today I planted a tree (and moved one that is close to death) and also I planted a couple of day lilies.

On the adoption front, there isn't really anything to report. Our profile is being shown to birthmoms and now we wait. There was a little excitement this week, we found out there was a birthmom due in 5 days and they needed a family. However, we found out the next day the birthmom was only interested in seeing families without any children. C'est la vie.

Tomorrow Spencer starts swimming lessons. He picked out some cool Spiderman swim trunks. I think he will really like it, if the time he spend in the tub is any indicator.

Jacob also mastered a new word this week. . . "Pence" for Spencer. It is great to see his language really taking off :)

All boy

We have a big pile of top soil in one of our back beds, one dump truck, one loader and two very happy boys.