The first few days Marc worked on the garage and we got rid of a ton of boxes out of the guest room. Then we decided to tackle painting the exercise room and doing the side yard this week (well we had the master bedroom on the list but then got into things and decided that was on hold for a bit), so Marc did his research and while I was in Cincinnati last week he rented some tool and smoothed out the dirt on the side yard. Here's what it looked like after he was done:
He also picked out the perfect stepping stones at our new neighborhood Lowes which we have become very acquainted with:
In addition to the tilling, or whatever it is he had to do, and picking out the stones, he also visited 3 rock quarries and we finally settled on the one in Dublin which promptly at 8:00 AM on Thursday morning dumped a ton and a half of red lava rock in the street in front of our house. Marc was out at 8:00 AM shoveling the rock into a wheelbarrow and bringing it into the backyard so as to avoid an HOA fine (we live across the street from a board member - nice). Lucky, for me, I had a date with the DMV to renew the license I got 2 months ago and is set to expire in 2 weeks. I returned home at about 10:30 and bundled up to assist Marc in what we thought would be a 1/2 day project:
Marc double dog dared me to post this picture (for the record I was wearing 3 shirts, a fleece running sweatshirt, a North Face fleece, fleece gloves under my work gloves, a fleece running ear warmer and a beanie and I was still COLD!). Not the brightest crayons in the box picking pretty much the coldest day of the year to work outside. For you East Coasters it was in the low 40s.
Now that you all had a good laugh, Marc and I got down to business laying out our weed blocker which we bought a year ago at Costco and has been in our garage all this time, that's how long we have been procrastinating this project. So here's the weed blocker all laid out and ready to go - pretty right?:
After we rolled out the weed blocker we took our lunch break and then got to work setting out the stones, we got them all nice and spaced out (after much debate on how far apart they should be - we finally settled on my recommendation of a foot apart after I demonstrated that 2 feet apart was way to far for my 5'4" self) only to learn we didn't buy enough and they wobbled! So back to Lowes (for the second time that day - we are obsessed with the new Lowes down the street, they know us there and I am the only wife ever there). So back to Lowes, mind you it is still freezing out, where we picked up 12 more stepping stones and learned about all purpose sand, which compacts and hardens when it gets wet - who knew! So 12 stones and 2-50lb bags of sand later, along with me bailing on my scrapbooking night (sorry MaryJo) we are back in the side yard trying to beat the rain and running out of daylight. Oh and it is getting colder as the storm comes in and the day progresses. So we lay out our 100lbs of sand and I get to wet it while Marc lays out and sets the stepping stones:
Lo and behold, the stones don't wobble. Now it's time for our ton and a half of lava rocks:
So we had a nice little assembly line in which Marc loaded the wheelbarrow, dumped it on the side yard and I spread the rocks in a nice 2" layer around the stepping stones, which I did with my hands until our neighbors got home and I was able to borrow their shovel. I also had to crawl under the kitchen window to spread the rocks out which totally freaked me out, think spiders (good thing I read MaryJos black widow story after crawling under the window). We did this for about 3 1/2 hours, the last hour or so in the dark until we ended up with this:
We beat the rain even though we both hurt tremendously today and our 4 hour project turned into like a 10 hour project, but how many people get to say they actually shoveled a ton of rocks...Marc and I do (Marc actually shoveled them twice).
Stay tuned, next shenanigan...Operation Paint coming soon!
fine cuisine of Chinese cooking. We had a great time with Adam and Michelle, especially because they are moving to Mississippi soon (Adam in 2 weeks and Michelle in 6 months when she is done with her MBA). Adam currently coached on the UC football team and just got a coaching job at a school in Mississippi. We very happy for them and excited to tease Red-Dawg about living in Mississippi! After our yummy dinner, we headed to a wine bar where we caught up and brought out some Cancun stories, Red-Dawg was my partner in crime in Cancun.
