Under & Over Construction

It's been a tough weekend.  I had the day off on Friday, so after I helped a friend trim some kiddo's bangs, I stopped at a couple garage sales.  I did find this lovely rocking chair for a bargain along with my required books, and had to immediately try it out on our rapidly changing porch.  The dogs were in complete agreement with my choice of afternoon amusement.

Pat, on the other hand, has been laboriously improving our deck.  This is the back deck and rails.  It is so pretty!  He's been doing a fantastic job and it looks so fancy, though he's remained his frugal self!

The above photo shows the tree stump that remains of a large birch tree that we had to cut down before we built the garage.  A friend of Pat's has this loader thing that clawed the partially frozen earth away from the stump and proceeded to lift it out of it's clutch.  It left a large hole that was quickly filled in with pit-run.  This dirt/sand/gravel/rock/boulder mix is a bit difficult to haul with shovel and wheelbarrow.  The entire back side of my body is telling me so.  I kept up pretty well with Pat as we built up the dirt lines around the house and under the deck.  I'm excited to see the finished look and that is a good thing, since that is what gives me motivation to help!!

The fun part was when in the middle of this, we had a stop-by showing!  A lovely couple stopped and took a look.  It was a bit crazy, but it seemed they understood our lack of show-prep!  Today we had another showing and I had to scramble before church to clean up.  I think we need to be better prepared!