Let's Recap the Week Thus Far

It has been a busy week. With E's "fake" birthday party looming up this weekend, we've been hard pressed to try and get our backyard in order.  You see we promised her a pool party when we have no pool, no grass and a dismantled deck.  All that and only two weeks to get ready.  Week #1 we were taken down by Puke Fest 2010.  Which left us week #2. 

Fortunately due to the generosity of my wonderful brother, we did not have to pay the digger guy to level our yard.  So with moolah in hand from our wildly successful garage sale, we purchased sod.  Only now the ground had be even further prepped and with K busy with assembling the pool and arranging the bricks around it.. said manual labour fell on my shoulders.  All I can say is that rocks breed like rabbits.  The more I raked, the more rocks would appear.  After raking almost the entire backyard 5 or more times over three days, you can well imagine my dismay when my husband told me that I needed to now "fine" rake it so as to grab all the twigs and sticks that were on the lawn.  Shazbut.  By the end of it, my back is out of wack and I was only saved from blisters on my hands by the fact that I grabbed a good pair of work gloves on the second day. 

But it was all worth it..  K picked the sod up on Tuesday afternoon and by 7:00 p.m. we had a lush and green backyard.  Pinch me.  It still feels like a dream.  Especially after living in a dustbowl for what seemed like weeks.  Even the kids didn't like playing outside anymore... it was too dirty for my dirty kids.  Can you believe it? 

Last night K got the deck finished and while it will have to wait to be stained I no longer have to worry about the kids stepping onto the wrong part of the deck and flipping themselves off it.  The only thing that could spoil her party now is rain.  We've been having a lot of mixed clouds and sun and today the sun has deserted us completely leaving us with rain.  While rain is good for the lawn, I'm just hoping that by Saturday it will be warm.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  Also only one child has RSVP'd so far.  One mom had told us right away that her two kids wouldn't make it so we were down to six.  I'm really hoping the other five show up or E's party is going to be disappointing for her.  How can you not RSVP? 

Add to that, that I'm still waiting for K to release some funds to me so I can buy party favours and groceries and I'm beginning to wonder just how well this party will even turn out.    Still his store has been extremely busy this week so hopefully he will have some money for me today. 

I will be posting some before and after pictures of my yard.  You just have to see it to really understand what a difference it makes.