Going to the backyard and we're, gonna' get married!

Well, we are in our final week before the wedding! 9 months in the making and we have arrived at the final few days. Wow!!! It has been an exciting, suspenseful, demanding, hilarious, interesting, fun, sometimes painful with many bumps and bruises but memorable road to get to this point.

We look forward to seeing each and everyone of you. Travis and I are better people because you are in our lives. You are significant and special and we are honored to have your presence with us on our special day.

See you on 8.28!

SOD-sational!

There she is! 1,000 sq ft of SOD and 25 yards of soil in place. Ahhh, it feels good to say that! We also placed four Arborvitae trees up on the 2nd terrace and spread top soil throughout each level.

A different view.

Top soil down. Then we leveled, and rolled, leveled and rolled.....

Action shot! Lola resting and Nolan still trying to push that wheelbarrow!

A tree is given ground to grow

Our mighty Rhobinia is placed. Grow baby, grow!

The LAST rock is placed!

We did it!!! After many, many, many rock collecting excursions, bags of concrete and lots of sweat we placed our last rock on the infamous rock wall!!! I see it, it's right there in the bottom right corner!

Trevor a.k.a Undelation Inspector

Here is Trevor, our handy helper, checking the level of the ground. He has been such a life-saver for us and especially over the past two weekends as we made the push to get the SOD layed. He and Travis were laying the SOD at midnight one of the evenings! Thank you so much Trevor for helping us to kick our yards bootie into shape!

Side yard over-haul

Almost complete! Just need to lay the 24x24" pavers to create the pathway, edging stones for the flower beds and the 12x12" pavers for the tote storage. That will be this upcoming weekends project!

The start of the 25 yards of soil we had to spread before SOD was layed. Do you realize how many wheelbarrow loads after wheelbarrow loads that was? One too many!

Burying 75' of electrical wire. This will power our fountain and outdoor lights.

The side yard before landscaping and Nolan digging in the rocks. We had to shovel out all the drain gravel that was placed as part of our landscaping when we moved in to prepare for the soil to be hauled in.

Much needed moments of rest

Travis soaking it all in and enjoying some of the 90' weather we were having!

My Son loves the outdoors.

Making a staircase

First step complete with baby tear ground cover.

Nolan placing a.k.a throwing rocks into the wheelbarrow. I'm sure he thinks he is just helping!

Getting down and dirty in the yard. Go Nolan!

Ground breaking.

First project complete!

Front landscaping is done! Thanks to Travis and the celebration of mother's day, we have a BIG to-do crossed off the list!

And after!

Second stage of the renovation and you can see that Lola likes to rest on the job.

The front landscape before the renovation.

All in a weekends work

The rock puzzle project continues.

Trevor, Travis's brother, lending a hand with building the fence.

Having 3 yards of drain rocked delivered. This is in addition to the one ton of drain rock that we picked up last weekend!

Base rocks are in place. All 40 of them!

Our trusty assistants!

Push Nolan, push! We have lots to do!

Having fun in the rock pile.

Still trying to figure out what the heck a wheelbarrow is.

Surveying the scene.

Lola Lou

The rockwall takes form

We keep telling ourselves, "this is going to be something incredible, this will look amazing!" I guess this is our attempt at motivational speaking and so far it is working.

Well on our way to having completed the row of base rocks.

The first rock is in place! This sucker weighs at least 600lbs! We spent about two hours getting this one into place. After much kicking, screaming and a few choice words, our biggest and neatest rock has it's new home.

Our rock piles

Here are some of the many rocks that we have collected by hand over the past few months. Our neighbors most likely think we are crazy but have joined us in the scavenger hunt for the 'good' rocks. Whenever we are out collecting and they happen to drive by they say, "look over there...I saw a HUGE rock the other day!" There have been many moments of rock collecting anguish between the two of us but most of the time we get so excited by the money we are saving by putting in the grunt work ourselves that we have learned to really love the rocks (insert sarcasm)!

The pictures truly do not give the piles any justice!

And so it begins!

The bottom terrace is complete!

Travis takes a crack at the tractor.

The terracing begins to take form.

Our backyard before terracing begins. Thanks to Lara's dad, Steve, his wife Candace and the use of their tractor we were able to successfully terrace about five feet inward, but not without many sore bums and backs from being thrown around by the rocky terrain. Our goal is to create two terraces and gain as much square footage as possible in our modest backyard. We will be constructing rock walls from the many thousands of pounds of rocks that we have collected by hand, and a few with the tractor, compliments of the rock quarry that we live in!