Life Transplanet

This Thanksgiving was pretty low-key. We went to my grandma’s  new house here in Greeley.

Thanksgiving 2011 at Grandma’s house

Then we went over to Britton’s family’s house for another meal. So we were highly stuffed.

While we are happy to have a four-day weekend, in some ways we are ready to get back to the normal work week for a few reasons. 1) My car broke down when I was out doing inspections on Wednesday. We had to get it towed from Fort Lupton back to Greeley. Because of the holiday they won’t even look at it until Monday. That makes me a little anxious. And 2) Britton is on-call this whole weekend, so on Monday he’ll get to turn the pager over to someone else.

Other than that, we’ve been enjoying the time off and the opportunity to think about our lives and be thankful for all we have. We’ve accomplished so much this year! It’s amazing. We are so thankful. Since the holidays are about bringing family together, it also made me remember how much I miss my dad. Holidays are hard like that. Sometimes in a weird way, I am happy I still have such strong feelings about my dad inside me though. It makes me feel like he is still here, somehow.

We’ve taken a couple of walks and even walked down inside the Greeley ditch (since it is empty this time of year) to stay out of the crazy wind. It’s like finding a new world to explore down there. Old ditched (literally) rusted bicycles, tree branches and crawdads line the bottom. We avoided Black Friday like the Black Plague and stayed inside and made turkey sandwiches, tea and brownies. We played Wii Frisbee golf, bowling, and the airplane game on Wii Sports Resort.

This week we also got our medical student who moved into the basement bedroom, but she is with her family this holiday weekend, so we have the house to ourselves. We also got our vacation time approved and are planning on going back to Rincon toward the end of January! We are already making a list of all the things we want to do when we are there!

Anyhow, that’s what we’ve been up to lately -the highs and the lows. Happy Thanksgiving!

The thing Britton and I do for fun and exercise is take walks. We usually go to our closest park, Ramseier Farm Park in Greeley. But in a given month we go to almost every park in Greeley. So this weekend we found ourselves in Loveland and took a wrong turn. I saw what looked like a park and thought it would be fun to walk around it while the weather is still nice. We were in for more than the regular park walking experience!

Me and a huge dog- The sculpture behind is cool too -the body progressively gets larger and larger until the feet are the most distinct things

Benson Sculpture Garden in Loveland is half park and half art exhibit. There has to be about 100 different bronze and other forms of sculpture. There are a couple of bridges and wetland areas as well. The sculptures are mostly of nature and historical figures. There are lots of horses, cowboys, and settlers, but also things like African lions, sea otters and some abstract sculptures as well. Around every corner there was a new one that I liked better than the last. It was a cool find to say the least!

Britton with the bench guy

Our cat Kitty, is so pretty. And so were the changing colors in the field behind our house in Greeley this weekend. I caught a couple of pictures of Kitty hanging out on the fence and thought it was a nice reflection of what we see looking out our back door lately.

Kitty on the fence

At one of our rentals, the backyard was just pure dirt. We had been wanting to put in a yard but thought we would wait until about a year after since we had done so much work to it. Well, this was the one that was abandoned prior to the end of the lease term, so when we got new tenants in, we let them know we would like to put in a grass yard in the back, but only if they would be willing to water it (since they pay water).  After they settled into the routine of living in the house, they got back to us that they would like the lawn and would be willing to water extra for the first month or so.

So we got to work. We ordered the compost to amend the soil and tried to line up a rototiller from my brother who does landscaping. Then we ordered the sod. Sod is much more expensive than grass seed, but it creates an insta-lawn. One moment it is dirt, and the next it’s a yard. Kind of like putting down carpet or something. So Britton worked from home on Friday and once his work day was over he was over shoveling compost into the yard.

A big pile of composted cow poo

Once the compost was transfered to the yard, it was time to till it in. That’s where the roto-tiller came in. We hauled it over but once we figured out how to start it, the tires locked up and it wouldn’t move at all. That meant: hand shoveling to till it. So the three of us -Britton, me and Martin our tenant were all out there until dark tilling the backyard.

When the roto-tiller broke

Then Saturday morning Britton worked by himself installing the sod. When he came home he was worn out! But I came over to see the outcome and it looks great!

Here are some before and after pictures:

Dirt Yard Before

After: Backyard with grass

Before: Britton is raking the tilled compost to flatten it before laying the sod

AFTER

AFTER!

We just hope that our tenants keep it well watered for the first week/month. At least we put it down in September when the weather is not quite as intense. The tenants seemed very happy with the results as did we, which is great for everyone!

The weather has had a pretty big change here.  As I say that Puerto Rico just experienced Irene!  So I suppose change is all relative.

Once a year Cassie and I like to camp out in our backyard in a tent that was given to us as a wedding gift.  I spent quite a bit of time camping up in the mountains when I was growing up.  While it was fun, it’s one of those things that I have done quite a bit so it isn’t something that I feel I need to do.  Sleeping outside under the stars with Cassie is a lot of fun and we don’t have to drive, pack food, pack clothes and figure out all the details involved with a ‘camping trip’.

Our Tent

I used to also camp out in my backyard as a kid and across the street at my friend Matt’s house.  It was a lot of fun and I am sure parents enjoy it because your sleepover (loud kids) is outdoors!

We figured we had better get our once a year backyard camp out done because we have entered into the Fall season (maybe not officially, but you can feel it).  The weather is cooler, the veggies are ripe and the growing season is slowly coming to an end.  We’ve been getting more food from our garden lately too.

Fruit, Vegetables and Eggs

With the change in season we are starting to think about Puerto Rico too!  I hope there isn’t too much damage to the property, but if there is we can just fix and mend like we usually do!  We really enjoy our summer here in Colorado, but the winter is so long it will be nice to have a place to go where we can plant, pick garden and camp out!

I hope all our friends are doing well in PR after Irene.  The few Facebook posts we’ve seen indicate it wasn’t too bad and I hope that is the case.  I’d actually like to be down there for a tropical storm / hurricane at some point.  Just for the experience of it.  Not a major one of course!