The Last Few Days~

Here it is, Monday morning, with a whole new week ahead of me. We had a pretty good weekend (now that I'm on summer vacation, I consider my weekends the time that Pete has off -- Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). Thursday was our anniversary and, although there wasn't much fanfare, we had a pretty good day. I managed to get Pete to come with me to my new classroom. He and I spent over 2 hours doing things in there (I had already spent 2 days earlier in the week getting things ready). Later in the day, we went over to his mother's house to celebrate her birthday. While we were there, some awful weather came through, including some pretty serious tornado warnings. We scrapped our plan to eat out in Manchester and chose to stay close to home "just in case."

Friday was a beautiful day so we spent it tackling a few "around the house projects." We've been needing to fix one of the slate steps in our front walkway so, after taking apart some of the steps and surrounding stonewall and then traversing several towns to find a place that sells slate, we finally picked up a piece (99 lbs!!), came home, and finished up the project with no hitches. Driving time aside, the project took about an hour and a half. After that project, we decided that we wanted to do more around the house. Pete and I decided that we should probably start on our woodpile project (we heat our house with a woodstove). We spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening cutting down some scrappy lilac bushes and digging out the stumps.

Saturday morning, after I baked a homemade banana-date bread, we headed back outside and took some measurements of how big we wanted the woodpile area to be. After much discussion, we decided to make it 20' x 10'. We also talked about the wood racks that Pete wanted to build (enough to hold 4 cords of wood at a time). So, off to Home Depot! We needed 15 2' x 4's and some edging wood. Once home, we began to scrape, dig, and rake away at the earth. We needed a level spot and where we chose to go was anything but! While I leveled, Pete went to go get the crushed stone (for drainage and a base). When he returned, the bed of the truck was full!! 2,700 pounds worth of stone! With shovels, Pete and I unloaded the entire truck and spread it all out in the area we cleared. Ugh. What a lot of work!! We finished up around 5:30. We were beat! We had a nice dinner of steak and fries (Pete's favorite!).

Yesterday was MUCH more relaxing! We went for a walk, visited Wal-Mart, and enjoyed our time out on the screen porch (Pete on the laptop and me with Harry Potter). I made baked spaghetti for supper (new recipe -- yum!) we enjoyed the rest of our evening out on the porch (again!).

Now it's Monday so it's back to work (laundry, cleaning, etc.). I'm not complaining though -- it sure is nice to be home all summer! :)