Not Much New

Gary got home last week from Boise a little earlier than expected. It was really nice. He got home Tuesday evening and had to spend a few hours at Camp Williams Wednesday, then had Thursday off. He's at Camp Williams until Thursday and then doesn't have to be back up there until June 4 when his active duty time starts. I wasn't expecting to see him much this week, but he's been home in time for dinner most nights. It has been nice to have a little time together. Saturday we spent half the day at Camp Williams together for Family Day, where I was supposed to get more information about the deployment. After three hours of listening to different people give briefs, I didn't really learn anything new. Mostly they discussed benefits available to me, wills, power of attorney, and things like that. It sounds like Gary will be reporting to Camp Williams on June 4 for active duty, and will be there a week or so before flying to North Carolina. He may be home a little during that week, but I don't know for sure. It would be nice if someone would let us know for sure what is going on, but that is not the way the military works!

Josh has found his belly button. If you ask him where his belly button is, he will lift up his shirt, grab his rolls, and lift his belly so he can see his belly button.

He likes to get into my tupperware cupboard and a couple of the drawers. I find measuring cups and tupperware all over the house, but it is great entertainment for him while I am doing dishes or cooking.

Eating avocado is a very messy process. Josh usually needs a bath after because he smears it all over his tray, face, hair, and clothes.

He is getting to be pretty smart when it comes to finding a way to get what he wants. He wanted the keys off the table , but couldn't reach them, so he put the box of diapers by the table and climbed on top of it to get the keys.

This might not look very exciting, but I had to post it because it was my great accomplishment Mother's Day weekend. Josh was sick, so I stayed home from work with him Friday. All weekend long he averaged three naps a day, at least an hour a piece. Between the naps and what I got done in the evening after he went to bed, I probably spent 10 hours in the yard those two days. I mowed, watered, fertilized, and put bug killer on the lawn. Then I pulled out all the flowers and weeds in the flower beds on both sides of the porch. There were some big flat rocks that lined this flower bed that I didn't like, so I put those in the back of the truck. Then I dug a trench around the flower bed, put in the edging, and buried it. After that I bought some flowers to plant, and planted all of them. Saturday night I think every muscle in my entire body ached, but it was worth it. The yard looks much better now.

Digging up the Yard

Josh and I are having an interesting time with Gary gone. It hasn't even been a week yet and already I am calling my neighbors at 10:00 at night for help. Tuesday night some ladies came over for a meeting, and as they were leaving they discovered my front lawn was soaking wet and there were no sprinklers on. Not a good sign. So we called my next door neighbor, Rick to come take a look at it. He figured the water main had broken, but knew my other next door neighbor, Bob would know more about it. So we pulled him out of bed to come take a look. I felt really bad because he's been sick with strep among other things. Bob deals with this type of stuff every day at work, so he said he'd take care of it. They shut the water off to the house and gave me some jugs of water to get me by until it was fixed.

Thanks to the good people at Geneva Rock and my amazing neighbors the only thing I have to pay for is a little cement to patch the sidewalk. Bob explained to his boss my situation, and they made arrangements to have one of their back hoes delivered to my house as well as the supplies, without charging me a dime. Bob left work early to come fix my problem and Rick helped. Bob is still sick, so he kept having coughing spells while he was working but kept going. Bob and his wife made all the calls to the city to report it, and to get an emergency blue stakes so we'd know where we could dig. Their kids removed stepping stones and things out of the way so they could dig, and about all I did was sit on the porch with Josh. We most definitely picked the right house to buy. There's no way I could have found better neighbors. Now I've got my yard pretty much together again, other than the missing cement. It is nice to have water again. I had to take the babysitter dirty dishes for Josh and asked her to wash them before using them to feed him. Now I guess we're back in business. Bob even taught me how to use the back hoe and let me put a couple scoops of dirt back in the trench. While Gary is off shooting big guns I get to play with machinery in our front yard. Now I'm wondering why I went into accounting when I could have gotten a contractor's license. I could be playing with power tools and machinery instead of sitting at a desk all day.

Bob in the back hoe, Rick in the background, and Bob's wife Janna on the right. This is the chunk of sidewalk I am now missing.

We had a porch full of neighborhood kids watching Bob dig, and

got some interesting looks from everyone that drove by.

This is what the yard looked like after all the digging was done.

Bob in the trench and Rick on the lawn.

This is the problem area. The pipe was badly rusted. A pipe in the back yard froze because the water wasn't drained out of it during the winter, so the people we bought the house from had to prepay to have that fixed when the weather got better. The pressure of them turning on and off my water main so they could make the repair caused the pipe to break.

This is the new pipe. It looks much better.

This is what my yard now looks like.

I also had to add a picture of the sign Janna, her kids, and scouts made because I thought it was nice of them. They took it around and had all the neighbors sign it. Some of the neighbors I haven't even met yet.