Trees=Privacy (or so we hope!)

Call me mean, rude, bad neighbor, insensitive whatever you want, but I'm fed up with our neighbors. We have had issues with these people from almost the moment we moved in. They would cut across our yard to go to their mom's house on the other side of us, have a great dane bark all night long, where I had to get the police involved to get it under control and then last summer, they build a pool. This year, they put a deck around that pool that FACES our house! This may not be a problem most of the time, but since our backyards are at such a slope, its like they can see right into our house. I have no idea why they had their deck built this way. If we are sitting down eating dinner, they can see directly into our dining room, its like we are on display. Fine, if they don't want privacy but we do! This is what we see when we look out our family room window...

Not a pretty sight! First of all, she rarely watches her kids, so I know that someday something will happen to one of them. I mean, look at the picture, she went inside and left her 2 year old standing on the deck, ALONE! They just burn me up!
Anyway, since they put their pool up last year, we wanted to do something to give us privacy but this year, it just made it all more urgent to get something going. I found this guy on Craigslist who has a tree farm and would plant them all for less than what I would pay at a nursery or Lowes for a tree that we would have to plant ourselves. Last night, him and his wife came out to deliver and plant them, I LOVE them!

I had one pear tree planted on the other side of our yard to help give privacy over there.

A White Pine planted in the front, next to the driveway.

And then onto the real problem. This was our view from our dining room table before....

This is after.....

This is a view from our bedroom window before....

This is after....

Does it completely block our problem? No, but its a darn good start. Pear trees grow fast and has dense leaves so hopefully by next year, it will block even better. I love that these trees are so much taller than what we would pay $30 for at Lowes. I'm very pleased with how it all turned out.

The night we planted these trees, was the same night a tornado ripped through Joplin, MO killing so many. That storm was heading our way when they were just getting started! We kept a close eye on the sky and the weather on TV to find out when and where it was going to hit. They dug holes so fast and tried to get them planted. They were only able to get 2 trees planted, but got all the holes dug, so they knocked some money off of what we owed them, left the materials that we would need, so we could finish the job. They were out there in the heart of the storm cleaning up and trying to make sure everything was finished, as much as they could get done.

Once the storm passed the sky looked so weird. We are very high up, therefore we have an awesome view of the horizon. These are some of the pictures I took after the storm. The sky was very weird. Sunny to the north and stormy to the south, such a sight!

The end of the storm, and the sun ready to pop back out.

Double rainbow.


You can see the sun is out in the front of the house

casting a shadow in the backyard of our house, with

the dark sky behind the trees.

This just looks like fire in the sky. The clouds

were so weird, but I thought this was a great

picture.

After the storm passed, the kids were in bed and me and Ryan finished planting the trees in the dark with the lightning lighting up the sky in the distance. It was a very weird night, not at all what we had planned, but a very memorable one.

My Furniture Steal

So this our family room downstairs....

I'm super excited because you see the end tables, to either side of the couch? I got them for a steal! I'm all about bargins and have been wanting end tables downstairs since we moved. We had been using some pretty sad looking TV trays as end tables, but they drove me nuts! We had the nice furniture, given to us by my generous parents, and then TV trays as end tables. It added a certian type of college dorm room flare that I wasn't stoked about having. Well, I have been looking on Craigslist, garage sales, Goodwill, you name it, I have had my eyes open for almost 2 years for these things. Well, about 2 months ago, I took part in this consigners sale. There was someone there selling these tables. Long story short, he had $60 on them, and then they went to half price. I saw them and didn't get them and kicked myself the whole next day for not getting them at $30/piece. Well, after the sale, we had to go back and pick up whatever didn't sell. I saw the guy carrying these out, so I told Ryan that I was going to drive around and ask him if he would want to still sell them. Sure enough he did. He sold them for $20/piece! I couldn't believe it! They are solid wood and match my furniture to a T. I was super excited to finally have the room look complete.

Last Day Of School

I can. not. believe, that school is over for another year. How is that possible? Weren't we just going to open house to meet her teachers this year? My word, how time flies! It makes me sad to think about it too much. She only has one more year of preschool left before she goes off to Kindergarten, which she is very excited about, by the way. I know that next year will FLY by and I'll be sitting here in a year, probably crying my eyes out thinking that she will be in real school soon. BUT, I'm choosing to look on the bright side. Yesterday was her last day of school. She had a great class this year and great teachers. Here is a picture of Adriana and her teachers, Miss Stephanie and Miss Gretchen.

Adriana has learned so much this year, alphabet and the sounds that they make, how to write her name, cut with scissors, count pretty high, count and say words in Spanish and so on. Its crazy how much she learns from school. She also makes friends that, hopefully, some will last a lifetime. This is a picture of her best friend, Kate. They are too cute together and they LOVE each other!

Since yesterday was the last day of school, I thought I would surprise Adriana and took her to this little cupcake place a friend of mine told me about. Its called Alexandria's Cupcake Cottage and oh my, is it ever cute and GOOD!

This is Adriana standing outside the front window. You can't really see that well, but there was a cake, tutus, a gingerbread house and so many other cute things on display.

This is Adriana's cupcake. Of course, she only ate the icing, but I would have to say, hands down, the BEST cupcake I have EVER had. Its a good thing I don't have a job there! I would be quite large!

Those 2 pictures above, were some of the shots of the inside of the place. SUPER cute and FUN! Adriana had a good time with "just us girls".

On another note, speaking of school, I was offered and am taking a job at the school that the kids go to for the fall. We have enrolled Paxton to start in the fall (Adriana was his age when she started) and it completely is a God thing that this job has become available. I will be working on the days that they are going to school, so this is a HUGE blessing! I will be working with the 1-2 year olds, so pray for those poor babies as they put up with me, but I'm looking forward to it!