Oh, Home Ownership
Our landscaping is finally finished. Whew. That was not for the faint of heart. First of, this kind of thing is expensive, which is totally a no-duh situation. Also, it takes forever, which is also a no-duh situation. But it really looks nice and we're so happy with it. Luckily our grass was really nice, it was just the flower beds surrounding the house that had issues. It doesn't help that we let the weeds grow to obscene lengths (I hate weeding and gardening), or that the plants the people who owned it planted were a totally random mix or weirdness. That is all fixed now. And we have rocks down as well, which look great. It's a happy situation over all. The only place that doesn't have rocks around the plants is our big, wide, shallow window well in front of the house that is planted with groundcover that better be growin' for all its worth. Until then, I'll have to weed that. In fact, I'm trying to avoid it right now as I write in my LJ.
We had some seriously terrible wind storms the past months--so much so that one of our shutters was ripped off, which is quite the deal. When we found it it was pretty hashed up so we had to buy a new home. I'm hoping that tomorrow we'll be able to put that new one up. Also, we lost a ton of shingles. Fun times. The roof is so steep that Mat can't get up there and just nail a few shingles on, so when it appears that the wind has calmed for good this season we'll have to hire some brave dudes to tie off and go replace what needs replacing.
School is almost over. I'm excited about that because the rigamaroll of homework/reading/getting kids up/etc. is getting tedious. I feel like I'm graduating from kingergarten and second grade all over again from all the pushing and prodding I'm doing to the kids. The reading is especially tough. Gabe has to do 20 minutes a night. He likes to read, and he's fine doing it, but you know how it goes--sometimes we have stuff to do after school and we don't get to it that night, which then compounds and adds on to antother night. He only has Monday-Thursday to do it, plus all his other homework, so one or two missed nights ends in disaster (and much yelling and cajoling from me). I'm still going to make them read, but. Geez. I feel like I'm the reading gestapo or something.
So now I just have to find the careful balance of scheduled things to do during the summer versus just having a fun time. Too much time and they fight and whine. Too little and we're all worn out and missing the summer of freedom. It's the every summer debate--how much is too much?
We had some seriously terrible wind storms the past months--so much so that one of our shutters was ripped off, which is quite the deal. When we found it it was pretty hashed up so we had to buy a new home. I'm hoping that tomorrow we'll be able to put that new one up. Also, we lost a ton of shingles. Fun times. The roof is so steep that Mat can't get up there and just nail a few shingles on, so when it appears that the wind has calmed for good this season we'll have to hire some brave dudes to tie off and go replace what needs replacing.
School is almost over. I'm excited about that because the rigamaroll of homework/reading/getting kids up/etc. is getting tedious. I feel like I'm graduating from kingergarten and second grade all over again from all the pushing and prodding I'm doing to the kids. The reading is especially tough. Gabe has to do 20 minutes a night. He likes to read, and he's fine doing it, but you know how it goes--sometimes we have stuff to do after school and we don't get to it that night, which then compounds and adds on to antother night. He only has Monday-Thursday to do it, plus all his other homework, so one or two missed nights ends in disaster (and much yelling and cajoling from me). I'm still going to make them read, but. Geez. I feel like I'm the reading gestapo or something.
So now I just have to find the careful balance of scheduled things to do during the summer versus just having a fun time. Too much time and they fight and whine. Too little and we're all worn out and missing the summer of freedom. It's the every summer debate--how much is too much?