teaching

working through the requirements for teaching this year.
slow panic is building...EEK!

updates

school starts in 2 weeks.
teacher training starts next week.
office (home) is still messy.
office (work) does not yet exist.

summer is ending

summer is wrapping up and i'm sad to see it go. it's been a busy time, with all our travels, relatives and other visitors but i've loved it.

now when we get up in the morning it's not quite as light as it was the day before.

 such is life.

i'm still working on this camera situation, but in the meantime, here's a nice update of our weekends so far.

me, the ratdog, some knitting and (though you can't see it) doc hollywood on tv. we live the good life :)

almost ready for the inlaws

the inlaws are coming!


i've repainted the bath and am hurridly cleaning scrubbing and washing!

VOTE!

i'm pretty excited to be voting today...it's our primary and i've never really been that involved in politics before. i've actually met some of the candidates and have a pretty good idea of who i'll be voting for!

woot!

also--photos forthcoming. i need a new camera (hint, hint)

date ;)

had a great date night tonight--walked to a restaurant downtown. the weather was great!

ahh, summer...

YARD-phase I

As you can tell, things have been a bit busy around here! Our one-year homeownership anniversary is fast approaching (july 10) and i've been trying to get everything caught up and pretty-fied  before then. i want to host sunday night dinner in our kickass awesome yard!! Here are some photos of the in-progress renovations:

Below, the hedges and driveway just after weeding and trimming but before i edged the driveway








next is a pic of mary helping trim the bushes. mary's a lady i do the dog rescue with and she has been AWESOME! thanks to mary, i got about 90% of the plants for FREE. our yard would not be the same without her!!

mary is great because she helped THIS happen:

while it (right) doesn't look like anything exciting, this hole USED to be a big, fat bush (photo lacking, sorry). a big fat bush that didn't want to go anywhere. i bet we spent close to 10 hours trying to get it out of there!!! we finally succeeded and it's really opened up the back yard!!! i'm so pumped. thanks mary!!

then, we moved on to other yard areas. below is the flower bed hubs and i installed/created, it's still a bit rag-tag looking, but this area just had random plants sticking in the ground with crazy weeds all over. this is a MARKED improvement!! you can't really tell, but those first couple plants (lower left corner) are baby HOSTAS! i found them choked by weeds in the back and rescued them. so far they seem to be thriving in the front, which is good. you'll soon see that my love of hostas borders on unhealthy...

 

this is tweedle dee and tweedle dum, helping out. they also love yardwork! juno, unfortunately, is less than enthused  

finally, this is what the place looked like all spruced up:

make careful note of the amazing dr. seuss shrubs. their lifespan is limited

more updates coming! turns out i LOVE yardwork :)