Tyler lost his FIRST tooth!!

My "Baby" lost his first tooth on Wednesday, May 19th. I was helping him brush his teeth, and the tooth came out in the toothbrush. His right tooth was really loose, hanging on by threads, but the left tooth was the one that came out first! The Tooth fairy came this morning and gave him $5.00.... WOW!!!!!

Mothers Day

On Mothers Day, we worked very hard on our Patio as you've seen, but Mom came out to help. She watched the kids and helped with the brick. She has always been there for me and never said no...well, maybe once...but she's a wonderful Mom, Nana and despite our differences, I love her more! LOL

FURNITURE

We decided we wanted wood furniture for the patio because we thought that metal would scratch it the pavers up. We found a set we liked at Menard and put it on our
"Big Card" for 0% interest for a year. It ended up costing us $820.00 for a love seat, 2 chairs, a coffee table, a rocking chair and an end table, with cushions for all pieces.

It's FINISHED!!!!

After 3 weekends of VERY HARD WORK, we finally finished it. ALL OF IT!!!

Planting flowers

We went and picked out our flowers and spent $187.00 for them. We got hosta, sparia's,creeping phlox, dwarf lilac, and another bush I can't remember the name of.. :) We came home and planted them!

Edging

We decided to do edging on the whole thing. It was a pain in the butt, but when it was finished, looked great!

Putting the Poly sand in...to hold it together....

when we were done with the pavers, we had to put Poly sand in. It keeps it all together after you get it wet....like cementing it. This was a time consuming task. We had to sweep it in the cracks, and it would fall down, so you would have to sweep in more, until it didn't sink into it again...let me remind you that its 12 feet wide by 26 long....

Finishing Pavers

Bob and Cal worked ALL day, and finished them. Mom got in on the work, watching the kids as I helped and helping with the blocks. We worked hard too. Even on Mothers day!!

PAVERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and more PAVERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pavers. UGH! I hope I never have to touch them again...and I only helped hand them to our neighbor Bob who helped and Cal. Oh, I guess I also got to load them from the pallet to the trailer and from the trailer to them. so I had them twice!! LOL. BUT I LOVE THE LOOK!!!!! :)

sand is next! this is a very important part....

the sand has to be level. If it's not done right, it could screw EVERYTHING up....so level it must be!!!!

next step....preparing the space!

We had to dig about 6 inches of dirt in some areas. It was MORE HARD WORK!!! We had to put gravel in about 2 inches, then compact it, 2 more inches, compact, 2 inches, compact....we had to do this for 6 inches. It was back breaking, we used our cart with a trailer and shovels...no machines, just hard labor!!

Paver's get delivered

We ordered our pavers for the patio on Friday and they were delivered by Menards on Sunday am. It was delivered by a semi....Tyler thought that was pretty cool! He even got to pull the string for the horn!

Gravel is delivered

We ordered our Gravel and sand. This was the next step in our process. We ordered our Gravel from Kranig. It cost us $116.00 for 12 yards. We ordered our sand from C&R Stone (Evansville) and that cost us $108.00 for 5 yrds of sand. I was gone when the sand was delivered so I don't have a picture of that one.

We start the retaining wall

Cal again works very hard on the retaining wall.Digging,and Leveling each brick to percise inch. He fills the bottom level with pea gravel and stacks....and stacks them...We all try to help, but seem to get in the way... :)

The work begins!!!!!!!!!!!

We started digging for our Patio on Friday May 1st. We rented a sod cutter from Ace in Evansville, it took Cal 1 hour to cut it all out. It is 12 feet out by 26 feet long. The sod rolls were 2 inches thick, and they were very heavy!

BUSY weekend

May started with a bang!!! we were very busy this weekend!! Megan and I had a Girl Scout event...however Megan didn't know. It was a surprise! We went to Studio U. It's a pottery painting place, where we painted a piece of pottery for someone we loved. We then went to our FAVORITE local restruant, Gabriellas, to make our own pizzas...the girls all enjoyed themselves, and LOVED the Pizza. While we were away Cal and Tyler were busy laying sod on a hill that Cal took a tree stump out of. He layed 42 rows of sod at about 200/300lbs a piece!!!! OUCH!!! On Sunday May 2nd, We all together built the retaining wall that will help our patio we are building for the downstairs patio door...it's a lot of work, but will look beautiful in the end....