Front Yard Renovation

Well, I has been almost exactly a year since we went into contract for our house.  We have been busily working on fixing things up--we did buy a project!

Most recently we have been working on the front yard.  Now, people wonder why the front yard, if we still don't have furniture for  the dining/living room...but we actually had to do the front yard because we had a drainage problem and water was pooling under our house.  Of course to fix the drainage meant we had to tear up the driveway (which, honestly was in terrible shape anyhow), and then, if we were going to do that, why not re-landscape  fix the retaining wall, and remove some (really) over grown trees and bushes, right?  And yes, we had to tear up all the new grass that we had worked to hard to plant when we first moved in.


3 months later we are finally almost done!  The project was not without drama for sure, as they bulldozed through the water line twice, and also cut the cable line.  Also, before we got the driveway sealed, Jason's car leaked oil and left a stain, so we have to get that part of the driveway replaced.  Lovely.  But overall, we are happy with the end result.  We also got a new garage door and front door.  And now for the pics:

Before:

During:

After:

And it has been raining a lot recently with no sign of pooling water, so *hopefully* we solved the problem!

Next project: decorating the nursery!

Last weekend

We were busy!  We were lucky to have our friends Sue and Ben, and their kids Cruz and Whitney come up from the south bay and stay the night.  They already blogged about the visit, I wont repeat it all here, but check it out at http://cruzcortez.blogspot.com/  Suffice to say, Ethan and Cruz had a grand old time hanging out together, and us adults enjoyed catching up!

Sunday night we headed to Uncle Jeremy's house to celebrate Great-Grandma Cooper's 87th birthday!  Here's a picture of her a few days before the big celebration that Jason snapped--I guess that once you are 87, a hat like this is fitting:

Ethan's favorite part of the party was (surprise) the cake.  Jason's mom made a scrumptious chocolate mousse cake (great-grandma's favorite).  He helped blow out the candles.

Anyhow, we enjoyed celebrating with the family.   Great-grandpa will be 88 in February, so they make quite a couple!

Halloween fun!

We had a fun Halloween this year, I cant believe it is already November--in 2.5 months we should have another little one around here...wow!

Anyhow, Ethan this year requested to be superman.  His Aunt Marcy got him the costume, and i have to say, it looked pretty cute--fake muscles and all!

At school , they had the usual halloween parade.  This year was a sports theme, and Ethan's class was 49ers.  They each painted their own jerseys.  Ethan was, apparently, Jerry Rice. The sports theme was fitting as it was also the big parade/celebration downtown for the SF Giants who won the world series last Sunday!

For trick or treating, Jason dressed up as superman's dad (I seriously had no idea that superman had a dad!)

Unfortunately, we had BAD weather, and Ethan got quite wet.  His friend from school, Shelby, came up to join us for trick or treating, which was so much fun for them.   Guess what Shelby was.....yep, superman.  Seems to be a theme this year, as we saw several others while we were out!