This and That

There's been a lot going on around here.  I don't think I ever posted about Easter.  What a great reason to celebrate.  I'm so grateful for the atonement for so many reasons.  Easter gets better every year.  This year we were able to have dinner with Jake's family to celebrate his grandma's 83 birthday.  She's a great person and we were happy to be able to celebrate with her.

I've been doing a lot of cleaning and de-junking.  I think Jake and the kids are getting fed up with it, but I'm on a role.  When I packed from the rental I was too busy to do any cleaning out.  I remember throwing complete junk into boxes, but having no time to do anything else.  Then when we unpacked I was so exhausted that I didn't take the time to organize everything well.  So finally, a year later, its happening.  I still have a few things to do, but I'm getting there.  The thing that's made me the happiest is getting my pantry cleaned out.  Now I smile every time I go in there.  My kids think I'm obsessed, and maybe I am.  But its awesome to have it clean and organized.  If only I can keep it that way....

We've also been de-junking the outside of our house.  Since we moved in we've had huge piles of pot rock, construction wood, and wood that we got from cutting down some of our trees.  Last weekend we finally got rid of these piles.  It was an all day job, but we got everything moved.  I'm so grateful to have a tractor and dump trailer!  We couldn't have done it without that equipment.  Now that those piles are gone our yard looks even bigger.  I had no idea we had that much space right there!  De-junking is awesome!

Sage had her first grade program on Friday.  She did a great job and was so excited to perform.  She's definitely not shy.  She's in the spanish dual immersion program so she got to do a latin dance.  Doesn't get better than seeing white blonde Sage speaking in spaninsh;)

The last few days we've been immersed in landscaping - specifically in planting.  We found out about a wholesale tree place in Oregon.  We were able to use them because Jake is a contractor.  The prices were really good, so we made a big order along with some other people.  The plants all got here on Thursday.  This company doesn't offload the plants and trees, so that was up to us.  Of course we ended up doing this in horrible weather.  It varied from rain, snow, hail, and wind.  Awesome.  Thank heavens we had our tractor to help get the trees off, but it was still really hard work.  One other person and I ended up dragging 100+ pound spruce trees from the back of a big semi trailer to the end so we could load them in the tractor.  There were like 30 trees we had to do this for.  I don't know that I've ever done anything that was that hard for so long.  By the end I needed help dragging the trees I was so exhausted.  Anyway, we all worked hard and got everything unloaded.

Then came the planting.  This happened yesterday, luckily in decent weather this time.  We're so grateful for family who came to help us.  We never could have done it without them.  Dan and Alicia came with Owen (my girls need some major babysitting training).  And then my dad came and Tracy.  It's so great to have family who can help you out when you need it.  We all worked really hard and got everything planted.  We have one tree that's like 13ft tall.  It about killed us getting it in the ground.  I'm sure everyone who saw us got a good laugh.  Anyway, our yard is looking lots better and almost ready for grass.  Hooray!

Moral of this story:  Landscaping is not for sissies.

Cute kids on Easter

Sage in her first grade program

The massive pile of wood we split and moved

This is the huge truck that delivered our plants.  The driver had mad skills and managed to back down our driveway without hitting anything.  Awesomeness

Everything we had to plant - it was a lot

Trying to get the huge tree in - truly a team effort

After we're done.  Hard to see but I promise it looks great!