Givin' 'Em Something to Talk About

While we're not quite ready to landscape the front yard, we keep making small improvements as we go. Usually, this creates quite the stir in the neighborhood. You see, a few months before we moved in, the weeds were as tall as the house, there was an eternally burning pile of trash in the front yard (yes, the previous owners put their trash in a pile, in the front yard - no less -, and lit it on fire), and the starved goats could be found dead in the backyard. The entire neighborhood has been watching our attempt at turning this place around and is eagerly awaiting the finished product. Our next door neighbor says she waiting until we're finished to have her house re-appraised. Even the mail lady makes regular comments about how nice the place is starting to look.

Here are the before pics:

We rented a tractor and ordered 30 tons of rock to be delivered over Thanksgiving weekend.

Allen and his helpers prepped the driveway and side yard.

Bring on the trucks...

 

 

It was at this point, we realized our order of 30 tons was not gonna cut it. So, we asked for 30 more.

And that was barely enough. But, the money tree died before we could place another order. It is what it is.

Lexi didn't want to miss a minute, but was pretty tired by the end of the day. So, she decided to take a little break on the tractor.

While we were at it, we decided to tear out some of the walkway, rip and then grade the front yard.

At this point, Lexi finally threw in the towel (we're on day 3 of this project, by the way) and went inside for a nap. Allen was riding around out front, or so I thought. I was in our room and I hear this screaming whisper, "Traci! Traci! I think I broke the water main." Turns out, the previous owners did another genius repair and replaced part of the main water line (which is always made of copper pipe) with PVC. All Allen did was drive over the dumb pipe and it burst. We ran out to the water main to shut off the valve and it has some special lock that can only be turned with a special tool. We do not have the special tool. Thankfully, within Allen's arsenal we found something that worked and got it turned off (this was after calling the emergency number and then calling them back to let them know we had shut it off so not only do we have a leaking water main, but we feel like idiots). Two things went through our minds: 1) It's 4 o'clock on Friday of Thanksgiving weekend. We have a busted water main. That means no water to the house. This also means our chances of getting all of the parts we need before the stores close are looking pretty slim. 2) Saturday morning at 8 a.m. we have Christmas pictures in Albuquerque! And no water! Which means no baths! And no showers! AAAAAAHHHH!!!!

A broken water main is no small project. I looked at Allen and said, "How long will it take to fix this?" He said, "I think I have all of the parts in the garage!" I jumped on the tractor to keep working while Allen fixed that pipe in under 20 minutes. How grateful was I that 1) Allen can fix a water main without thinking twice and 2) we had all of the parts on hand? Super-duper grateful 'cause those Christmas pictures turned out dang cute.

After all of the drama, here is what we're looking at now: