Backyard Paradise

I have my own little paradise in my backyard. One of the first things I do every morning is open the blinds in my bedroom window which overlooks my backyard so I can see what new flowers are blooming or what birds are visiting.
I keep adding new plants and bushes...not nearly as many as I'd like though. I have to wait until Greg buys a weedeater before I can really plant anything else because he doesn't want too many obstacles to push the lawnmower around. LOL
Funny story about these shrimp plants in my hummingbird garden...this was the first little garden we put in because we saw hummingbirds all around when we moved in last year. My dad gave me 4 shrimp plants from cuttings out of his yard. So all year and through the winter they were very small and didn't have the red tops on them like this.....
Once it got warm and we finally started getting rain they just took off and now they are beautiful. Dakota and I were walking around the yard one day watering, pulling weeds, etc and he saw the shrimp plants with the red tops and he said "Oh no! Mom, your plants are dying!" He didn't realize that was the flowery part.

We just planted this bed (don't have mulch around it yet because I'm having a hard time finding mulch!) from plants my dad gave me. I don't remember the name of the tall plants. The smaller ones are iris lilies but they haven't begun blooming yet. The tall ones are so cool because we wake up every morning with flowers blooming all over these plants, but they fall off every evening and the next day there is a fresh new flower in its place.
I took this picture of the purple flower in the morning as it was still opening up and there was still dew on everything... I took this picture of the pink one late in the afternoon...you can see how much the flower opened up and there is a flowerbud behind the two flowers that will open the next morning.
Our backyard has a fence around the back part because there is a large drainage area/holding pond type thing back there that is maintained by the county and then beyond that is a very busy main road in town. We live two blocks from a hospital and a fire station. We hear fire trucks, ambulances, life flight and police cars on a regular basis. I've started planting bushes and climbing vines back along the fence line to help block out the road. It's almost to where you can not see our backyard from the road anymore due to the trees and bushes...which is what I wanted.

This is one of the latest bushes I planted - a wisteria. I LOVE these deep purple flowers that are all over it!

Perfect match

This is our shower curtain in my bathroom. We spent a little more for this a few months ago because it is a fabric curtain as opposed to a plastic curtain. I can just throw it in the washer though to clean it and it will last awhile so the extra cost was worth it to me. I love the colors - teal, orange, tan, mocha, chocolate and a cream color. Lots to choose from!
Look what I found at The Dollar Tree the other night - these adorable little baskets! The small ones were 2/$1.00 and there were larger ones that were $1.00/each.
I bought 2 small and 2 large....they match perfectly!!
Oh yeah (Ashleigh - this is for you) on my last post about remodeling - my friend that went with me shopping that day helped me considerably! I was amazed at the ideas she has for decorating. I would never have thought about putting the CD's/DVD's in boxes like that or some of the other ideas she has given me that I will implement with more time (and money...LOL.)

Update on our House

We have been in our house for one month today!!

Yay!!

Whoohooo....I can't believe it has been a month already!

God has been so good and gracious to us this past month. When we moved in to our new house we had beds to sleep in, clothes to wear and a few other odds and ends. We needed furniture, everything for the kitchen (pots/pans, dishes, etc), and all the "little" things you take for granted in your everyday use around the house. I can't tell you how many quick trips we had to take to the store the first week we moved in because we NEEDED something. Good thing we live in town now and Target is just around the corner one way and Walmart is down the road the other way.

Greg is an assistant manager at his job. He receives monthly and quarterly bonuses based on the performance of his team of 100+ employees. We are always amazed at the timing of some of his "huge" bonuses - they always come right when we could really use the extra money...like when we moved into this house and needed to buy everything. Because we had the extra money we were able to afford to pay more for good quality cookware, flatware and things of that nature - I am so thankful for this!

I already shared with you how Greg's parents blessed us with a dining room table so this area went from looking like this......
to looking like this every night now and it is a wonderful feeling to be able to prepare a meal and sit down and eat together as a family at a table!This past week we received another amazing blessing we were not expecting! My ex-husband never paid child support when our three children were young. Greg supported my children from the time we were married when they were 10 & 8 years old (my twins were 8.) It hasn't been until the last few years since the Dept. of Revenue started cracking down on my ex that he has been any kind of consistent with his weekly support but he is thousands and thousands of dollars in arrears so he'll probably be paying me until he dies. Anyway...I guess he must have filed his taxes last year (something he also doesn't do regularly) because I received a HUGE deposit last week courtesy of a tax intercept of my ex's!! Thank you Jesus! Because of that we didn't have to keep saving for our couch...I was able to go purchase our new couch and pay all our bills for the month.

So now our living room doesn't look like this anymore......
We finally have a couch (thanks to my ex! LOL)-----Dakota was on the laptop last night and left everything out...can't ya tell? haha Here is what Dakota's room looked like before.....

He is still sleeping - lol - he doesn't know I snuck in there and took this picture. You can see his head poking out from the covers on his pillow.
He normally keeps his room really clean but we just got home from GA yesterday and his backpacks are still laying around on the floor where he hasn't unpacked them and put things away. Can ya tell he follows his daddy's liking of FL Gators?

Right now he has a HUGE tv in his room which will eventually go in the living room. We are going to buy him one of the small flat panels and put it up on his wall - which will free up some space in his room. He also doesn't want his futon/bunk bed anymore so we have to find him another bed eventually.Dakota's bathroom-he wanted the black/white theme. He has taken ownership of his bathroom and keeps it clean! I am shocked!! The back yard before we moved in.....
My back yard now....I love my back yard! We have a hummingbird garden started and when I was out of town last week my husband bought me a bird feeder and put it up out there for me!! We have so many birds, butterflies, dragonflies and hummingbirds that fly around out here all day long. I absolutely love to sit out here every morning and just watch and listen and thank God for the many blessings.......

Final Closing

In the midst of Hurricane Gustave...(and our tropical storm warnings) we got moved in! Praise the Lord! We are still looking at THIS MESS in our living room but at least the pile is reserved to our "living room only" now....Let me just tell you NOTHING went as planned on Friday but we still got moved in AND we received some tremendous blessings in the midst of the storms. I just have to share what happened!

This was our agenda for the day...see how easily it flows and how nicely it should have worked??

• Breakfast at Cracker Barrel 6:00 am
• Pickup U-haul at 7:00 am at scheduled reservation time
• Load U-haul until 12:00, drop it off at new house fully loaded.
• Drop dog off at groomer's so he is clean when he enters new house
• Grab a bite to eat on the way to closing
• Closing at 1:15 - 2:15
• Go back to new house and unload U-haul (allow couple of hours to unload)
  
• Return to old house for remainder of large items (allow couple of hours to finish loading)
• Grab dinner on the way back to house and finish unloading, set up beds and turn in for the evening.

That all sounded pretty good didn't it? Well, let me just tell you that is NOT the way it happened in the real world! I think the ONLY thing on that list that happened was we ate breakfast at 6:00 am and I dropped the dog off at the groomer's at 12:00...other than that, God just took our plans and threw them from a cup like a pair of dice and said "Here let me roll them out and see what I have in store for you this hour."

When we got to the U-haul place at 7:00 our truck wasn't there and didn't get there for an hour and a half. I can only assume the manager of the place thought we were going to be angry and feared for his life because he immediately had a horrible attitude and cut us off as soon as we announced who we were and that we were there to pick up our truck.

He quickly told us the customer who had our truck just called and said she was filling up with gas and was on her way. Greg started to ask him a question and the man cut him off again...literally stopped him curtly in mid-sentence and said "I don't KNOW when she is going to be here! Your truck is NOT here!" Greg was going to ask if there was a larger or smaller truck available so we didn't have to wait. But after this outburst from the manager, Greg lost his temper and threw our reservation paper down and said "Well aren't you just a jerk this morning!" and he walked out the door. I stood there in shock at what had just happened. Greg doesn't lose his cool like that with people so I wasn't quite sure what happened. He refused to deal with the man anymore.

We stood out by our vehicle and I called around to other rental places trying to find another truck to rent. I had FINALLY located one at Budget (an hour later) when the manager came outside and told Greg the woman customer had just called again and was 10 mins away - she was having a hard time finding somewhere to get gas. This was probably true because of hurricane Gustav, people had been filling up gas tanks and gas cans and stations were running out of gas. The manager told Greg he would only charge us $9.00 for the rental instead of $29.99 and 1/2 price on the mileage - for our inconvenience. Great!!

Okay, so on to the house to start loading. We get the truck loaded, dog dropped off, truck dropped off at the house and grab a bite to eat on the way to the realty company where we are going to have our closing. We get there at 1:15 and we sit and wait until 2:00. Then we are told to come back at 3:00 because the Title Company is not ready yet - tying up lose ends.

We leave and run to Walmart and buy some hurricane supplies (ice chest, grill, etc) because we aren't sure at this point where the hurricane is going to go yet. We get back to the realty company at 3:15 and we sit and wait until 4:50! Finally the lady from the Title company shows up and in about 15 mins we have all our paperwork signed but then we had to wait for the sellers to sign their paperwork because.....we got a refund!! Whooohoooooo!!! We got a refund of almost $600.00 on what we had paid out. We had to wait for them to finish signing their paperwork before we could get our check. That was wonderful!

When we left there we went back to the house and Greg and Dakota started unloading the truck and I went to go pick up our dog. We ended up not finishing up until after midnight and we just threw our mattresses on the floor with some sheets on them and crashed that night - from complete exhaustion.