Yard work and some other recent stuff

Here are a photo of some recent work we did.  "So what?" you say, "its a lawn."  Well it is a lawn (good job), but its a lawn that Lori and I and three church boys (thanks Arnetts) put in on one long and miserable Saturday.  Our yard is pretty big and so this was quite the undertaking.  After we had finished, I tried to remember where else I had felt like I did, and remembered the glory days of yore when soccer tore me up, and spit me out.  Yep, I was pretty much hammered from the sod experience and am still kindof recovering.  I bet each one of those sod rolls was 40 lbs easy x 36 rolls per pallet x 9 pallets = back pain.

After we had finished laying the sod, we had a pallet and a half of sod left over because our yard is not uniform and very hard to measure.  Out of desperation to just get rid of it all, I put it on craistlist for "free".  The guy called within 2 minutes, said he would be there in 45 minutes and would take the sod.  I was happy to get rid of it, but then he gave me a check for $100 and thanked us profusely.  I was pretty excited, and thought that is how business should be - two people happy and two people getting what they want, and two people feeling they got a good deal out of the situation.

So in addition to putting in a lawn, putting in a staircase (learned alot on that one), finishing the floors, new roof, paining 60% of the interrior (so far) we pretty much have done a ton to this house which I thought was move in ready when we got here.

Next on the list is painting the outside of our house, which we are paying 3k to have someone do (which is killing me), but we also will need time to finish the basement and have that all done before I go back to school in the fall (hopefully).

I did just finish GRE to go back to graduate school.  I scored higher in math than in verbal.  Its funny I didn't think I did well in the math, and I thought I had all the verbal correct.  I actually wanted to cancel my score and take it over with better luck.  But I needed to move on with things and thought if I didn't do well, then this thing isn't for me.  So I'm glad I did, because it pretty much would qualify me for the top name business schools (Harvard or Wharton), or other engineering graduate program.  Needless to say I was pretty smug about it, and probably still am.  Actually, it was a nice change from my college days of struggling through my Chemical Engineering classes, and to feel as though I could take a test correctly.  BYU ChemE really took my confidence down a needed notch.

But now onto more important things.  Tyler is doing phenomenaly.  He is more smiley than Katie was at this age, and he's a retarded boy (who are slower to develope) and we all know how smiley Katie is now - so I'm excited to get to know him as we grow up together.  I expect and hope he will be as great as a charm as Katie is.

Katie is really pushing Lori's patience.  She is wicked independant and Lori likes things orderly and likes to feel as though she is being obeyed.  My trick to getting along with Katie?  Let her get away with most things unless they hurt someone (accident or on purpose) or if they hurt property (on purpose).  Other than that, she can explore as much as she wants.

Oh, I just found a new favorite leisure activity - watching the sun set from my southwest corner bath tub while soaking while trying not to flash the neighbors from the window.  Colorado plains/mountains are a very pretty combination!  Its hard not to remember God in a simple setting like that.  Lori even put the kids to bed alone while I relaxed.  President Hinkley said it straight up.  Life is typically not extraordinary, but with a few momets of breath taking vistas.  I think he had more in mind than a soak in the tub, but maybe that is just a small reward for hard work.