First of all, I want to apologize to those of

you that are following my blog. There have

been two factors affecting the amount of time

between this and my last entry: laziness and

AT&T. Here's a cute picture of Lilly sleeping

to make it easier to forgive me :)

Anyway, things are coming along!

Two Saturdays ago we went to pick up the rest of

our blue border stones as well as a tamper to

flatten everything out perfectly.

Laying the last stone...

Trying to flatten everything out. This go around

things were a bit more challenging with this

massive beast.

Almost there! Just applying the Paveset, it's

the material that fills in the cracks and binds

everything together. We are so close, but, of

course, we've run out of Paveset! Well, back

to Lowes.

What's that you say?? It is going to

rain??? Of course it is going to rain

because apparently we are not

supposed to ever finish this patio.

Well, I guess we have to take

it when we can get it and be happy

to have it!! So...the project is on hold

for a few days. Will we ever finish??

The patio is coming along...

Tuesday night we finished what we could.
The stone place apparently messed up our order,
so we are waiting on some more blues for the
border. Sorry the photos are so dark, we didn't
stop until the sun set.

The animals are enjoying it!

Would you care to join us on the patio?

We have finally begun our long awaited patio.
The materials: 2.5 pallets of pavestones, one yard of
topsoil, and 2 yards of sand were delivered last week.
Our friend, Dave, who has been an excellent resource
through the planning of this project, came over and
helped Ryan with the layout and measurements
earlier in the week.

On Saturday we rented a tiller and got to work!

It was a hot, yet muddy day. Working with the

tiller turned out to be quite an adventure! One I

hope not to experience again soon.

On Sunday, we returned the tiller and rented a

tamper to get all of the dirt/cement flat and

packed. We imagined a long day of extreme

vibrations, but the tamper turned out to be

a treat compared to the tiller!

After it was packed down and leveled out, we added

the last layer of cement and then moistened the

mixture.

Tamped it down one more time and came up with

this:

(Lilly enjoyed chewing on the stakes)

Monday night we layed an inch of sand and started

laying the pavers!

Now we're seeing progress!

By the end of Monday night our patio looks a bit

like a patio! And, our backs feel like what a

rubber band ball looks like, but it will all be worth

it in the end :)

More to come...

Happy Fourth of July!!

So, Crowley apparantly does not celebrate the 4th of
July until July 11th?? I know...what is this about??
I don't have the answer yet, but perhaps I will find
out this weekend.


Since there were none to watch, we set off our own...


While setting off fireworks we decided to tackle an
issue we have been wanting to deal with for a while
now: We need a place to put our shoes.

So, we decided to build a bench/trunk.

This is the plan:

Slowly, it began to come together:



Now, it just needs some color:

And... voila!