We have made some serious progress on the outside of the house today. If you are tardy to the party and not sure what I’m talking about, here are the cliff notes.

Basically, we are working on the outside of the house. Between COVID and my divorce, I just stopped caring about it. It wasn’t vital to our survival, so it wasn’t on my radar. It’s been neglected and we need to get it brought up to snuff.

My dad came over and helped us for a few hours and we were able to get a lot of stuff done. I didn’t take before pictures but I did take after pictures. I know, that’s not super helpful if you’ve not seen the yard prior but I’m going to explain what we did.

We removed the rest of the indoor/outdoor off the front porch. We scrapped the old paint where it needed scraped and we prepped what’s getting painted, for paint.

There used to be one and half foot stone wall about two feet off the base of the porch. It was made of barnstone. I pulled the wall down and merged the two flower beds into one larger one. We also pulled all the plants and got it cleaned out. I’ll replant after we paint.

We filled six, fifty-five gallon contractor bags with all the vegitation that we removed. We have this invasive ivy that grows everywhere and it’s a nightmare to get rid of. Hopefully, once we’re caught up, we can pull it as we find it. The plan was to power wash but Emmett was in rough shape from the COVID shot and working in the heat. Elliott was exhausted and Gavin ended up in his room with a migraine.

I figured we would call it a day and regroup after everyone was feeling better.

I’m so grateful to my Dad for all the help. I’m so lucky to have such amazing parents. I love you guys so much. Thank you for everything you do.

I ended up ordering pizza for dinner tonight to reward the kids for their hard work. They aren’t used to doing this kind of work and it was nearly 90°F outside. Two of the three just had their first COVID shot and Emmett was hit pretty hard by the side effects. Was it perfect, of course not. The reality is that we all worked together to accomplish a goal. Everyone contributed and we made major progress. I’m proud of them. Surprising them with pizza and blizzards from Dairy Queen, was my way of showing them how grateful I was.

Tonight has been really relaxing for me. I spent the evening writing, listening to music, and chatting with a friend of mine. The kids went to bed easily, although Emmett ended up in my room, but he tried in his bed for quite some time before knocking on my door. He’s not feeling well and I’m happy to let him crash here tonight, if it comforts him.

Ruby has been getting closer and closer to Emmett lately. She snuggled up next to him and fell asleep.

So cute..

I would say we had a fantastic day and I’m going to bed, feeling really good. ☺