Randomness

Here are some random photos we've taken. It seems like just about every day we have to grab the camera and take more pictures. We are just in love with our new house and having so much fun exploring our house, yard and new pets.

Look what the cat tried to drag in, we thought she had an creature for us but upon further inspection she was just full of a big old cobweb. Jason was nice enough to clean her off before bringing her in.
We've enjoyed our new fire pit while disposing of all our moving boxes.

Reagan has had a blast discovering all her dress up things, this little crown thing is her favorite.

We had a woodpecker get stuck on our screen one evening, it was so in shock that it just sat there so Jason took the opportunity to pet it.

These are out of order but Jason push mowed the yard for the first time, it took about 3 1/2 hours. For Father's Day I picked Jason up a newer model. He now mows in about 1 - 1/2 hours. Bill and Dad also loaded me up with Bill's little trailer to pull behind the mower so we can load up the garbage can to bring out to the street. It's only a 1 mile round trip. :)

Goody and his buck teeth, he's definitely the shyer one of the boys.

Saki (or Socky), I'm not sure how we are going to spell his name yet. Jason bought a harness for the boys and got him in the barn and we had the opportunity to get a hold of him and put the harness on. He is so fluffy, Jason describes it as touching a pillow. I discovered that he likes to be scratched behind his ears but he's not used to being touched and was a bit nervous. He didn't even flinch though.

With all the crazy weather we've had the for the past week we've been enjoying watching the clouds. Luckily we haven't gotten any of the nasty stuff.

Gardens

These are for Grandma, Grandpa and Steph, here are some shots of the yard and my out of control gardens. They are beautiful gardens but they are in desperate need of weeding.

The vegetable garden - we've located rhubarb (easy to spot), dill, carrots and chives along with a composting pile - yummy! Since it's so late in the year I probably won't get to this until later this summer so I won't be growing any of our own vegies this year but next year will be a different story.
Looking westward from our front porch there are some random bushes, I know some are lilacs but I'm not sure of the others.

I'm not a fan of evergreens of any type but these are pretty neat little ones by the pool.

Porch in the front of the house - the peonies have since been trimmed off along with part of the bush in the corner, a lot less messy.

Other side of the porch

Out in the middle of the yard we have two apple and two pear trees.

The little window in the corner is my kitchen sink window. This area of the garden is really pretty, as each flower dies off another new flower blooms. Unfortunately I haven't gotten in to weed it very much yet and Layla loves to hunt chipmunks in the gardens so she keep trampling a lot of the bigger bushes.

This is the other side of the driveway, we have three choke cherry trees and a bunch of other things in there, one of my earlier posts highlighted the before and after of the bushes I trimmed along the back side. We even have a bird bath that I am intending to uncover and bring to the front of the garden.

Another porch shot, can you tell I really love my porch?

Girls' housewarming present

This is a little late in posting but here is a look at the girls' housewarming present from Grandma and Papa Kocina. Just look at their smiles, Piper gasped and said "I wasn't expecting that" when they opened the back of the truck and showed her their surprise. It was pretty cute. After a quick safety and operating lesson from Grandma the girls were off and running.

At first Reagan would let Piper do most of the driving and she'd take the opportunity to jump in and drive when Piper wasn't around. Now, after over a week they feel the need to fight over the driver's position. Piper has to remind Reagan that there is no side seat driving as Reagan likes to go ahead and put her foot on the peddle from the passenger seat. After the first few days I took the safety pin out of the drive gear and let them feel it out in fast mode (5 mph) and they did great. I wanted to walk down the 1/2 mile to pick up our garbage can from the street and knew they wouldn't make the entire walk so I followed them down in their jeep and picked dragged the can back up the hill and their little jeep made it right up the steepest part of the driveway with very little slowing down. Now I just wish they made Mom size jeeps, it looks like so much fun!

Jungle

Today I am trying to make sense out of the garden as much as the kids will let me. You know, they beg to go outside then get outside and it's too hot or they get a mosquito bite and fall to pieces. It's hard being 5 and 3 I guess.

The photos are reversed but here is the after shot, I am trying to achieve individual bushes whereas before it was mostly just a mesh of twigs, looking more like a hedge.
Here is the before - can you tell where one begins and the other ends? For some reason I also am cutting the overhang so the wall is visible although it looks kind of pretty hanging over.

The front corner where I've removed the weeds and hacked at the bush that was trying to hide the corner of the porch.

Before - the bush was all over and the grasses were taller than the second tier plants.

And we are finally home!!!!

Yeah!!! We are finally home! We got to finalize the process on Tuesday and wasted no time moving in and trying to get ourselves settled. We have things about 1/2 way unpacked, well maybe 3/4 way unpacked. We are all exhausted so this will be heavy on pictures and short on words. We are also recovering from a nasty cold/flu thing that spun through the house, making it really hard to stay motivated.

Note left from the previous owners, they left us a lot of hanging shelves, hooks and little cupboard shelves in the kitchens and bathrooms. Score!
Reagan was so excited to see her Daddy when Grandma brought her out, after a very quick hug she was off and running to the slide.
We can not say enough wonderful things about our Realtor, Keith Hittner Jr. (blue shirt) and our Loan Officer, Pat Barney (black shirt).

Piper showing Papa and Jill the yard

Before we went in the house we had to stop for a quick photo.

Our Realtor surprised us with a cake after we closed, he remembered how Jason mentioned reading Little House on the Prairie to Piper and the theme fit in with our new house.

And here we go...time to start the process

We have several bird house and feeders around, Piper and Jason like to check on the eggs in one of them (picture below somewhere)

I swear, Dad gets in front of a camera and always seems to make a funny face

The girls enjoying their new slide

Rob, Brant and Nate taking a beer break

There is a large garden that is quite a mess but I do spy rhubarb, carrots, chives and dill in there amongst the weeds

Reagan just can't quite get the front door open, her hands are just too little still

Socky (white) and Goody (black) as the kids have named them. We've fallen in love with these guys even though they won't let us touch them (yet).

Checking the bird house

Piper wants to catch these guys so bad

Robin and Lonny surprised us with rocking chairs for the front porch, I was so bummed when the previous owners took both their chairs and the porch swing.

View from the top of the pasture of the barn and the pool (which is to the left of the barn)

The views from the top of the pasture are just incredible!

So far Jason can get the closest, well actually Layla can, they are so curious about Layla, I can't wait to see how they react to the cats.

I just thought this was cute

The horse belongs to the neighbor at the bottom of our driveway, it was very curious about Layla too. I was yelling at Piper at this point, she is fearless and was running straight for the horse.

Ok girls, Mommy thinks this is poison ivy, I'm not sure so just avoid anything that looks like this.

I can't help but take pictures of these two, I just think they are so darn cute!

More to come in a few days, the girls got a very exciting present from Grandma and Papa Kocina this morning and I have some very cute photos of them enjoying their new toy along with some close ups of the gardens. I am going to need some help learning how to take care of my gardens as I have no idea what the names of most of the flowers are and how to prune them etc.