It's More Than Fun--It's Superfun

I'm in love with my new banner. Cows! And rolling hills! It gives me goosebumps every time I visit my blog.

Yesterday was deliciously productive. We tend to find ourselves every weekend saying things like "It's great to be us" and "We've got it so good." It's so true! And I'm so glad that this summer we're finally able to appreciate being homeowners. We are making great improvements on both the front AND the back of the house, and yesterday we finally started tackling the jungle along the west side. (the east side jungle will probably have to wait until next year.) We finally got back to 7:30 mass and Anja took a good solid nap in the early afternoon. Martin spent the whole day mowing , cutting down tree-sized weeds (not kidding,) and clearing out our huge brush/trash pile from the backyard. I spent the day inside the jungle, liberating a zillion hostas, ferns, and rambling rose bushes from the vines that have completely taken over in only a week. They've taken over so much and so fast that I actually didn't get all I wanted. I know there are a lot of ferns in there, but I could only find one. I know there are more hostas too, and it took me a really long time to locate the rose bush. This viney stuff we have is amazing. Seriously, you can't stand still too long or it will eat you. Not even kidding.

We also went to the hardware store and got some more flowers. Martin's mom gave me a nice old wooden box the other day and I decided to make it into a planter. I transplanted some petunias from a pot (where they weren't doing very well) to the box, and added a cute little pink plant I bought, a Thyme plant (hooray for fresh herbs!) and the rest of the little yellow flowers I have all over the place, which were in the same pot as the petunias. We bought two hanging baskets of flowers for the porch, and Martin put hooks in so they hang nicely now. The biggest accomplishment of the day, however, came from our awesome brother-in-law, Andrew, who brought over two loads of mulch for our front areas. It looks GREAT! And if that wasn't enough, later that night he and Sarah brought us over some pavers to use as stepping stones through the porch planter area since we walk right through that to get to the car. The front of our house is looking really good. Amazingly less trashy. I'm pretty sure our neighbors appreciate all our effort too. We have the Cooks beside us who are fixing up their house for when they sell it, (as if it didn't always look adorable) and through the yards we have Dave & Dawn who are obsessed with their yard and it is amazing. They live in that cute yellow house on 6th street. SOOOOOO cute!! They didn't used to talk to us but now they are very friendly! I think it's because we've started working on our yards. I kind of can't put into words how trashy it was last summer compared to this summer.

So anyway, that's what we did all day yesterday. We've put Anja on one of Martin's "hard routines." When she starts to act sleepy in the evening around 7:30, it's bath, jammies, stories, bed. We're hoping this will teach her to go to sleep. So far no luck. I know it must seem from my posts like she sleeps all the time, but it's not true... in fact, she hardly sleeps at all. It's weird.

Next week is Martin's vacation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited. We're going to tear up the carpet in the front room and we're going to take a ton of long walks and we're going to make delicious meals to eat outside on our pretty patio. Then at the end of the week he'll leave for 9 days to be a chaperone at Hoosier Boys State, which is completely barferific, but oh well. At least we'll have a week of fun before he goes!