Homemaking

This past weekend was very busy. It started on Thursday with me doing something everyone else thinks is part of the ploy to get me to go into labor early. Then continued on Friday with me sending out a simple email. See, I decided that since Nathan wasn't willing to take out the nasty bushes in front of our house, that I would do it myself--at 35 weeks pregnant.

Take a trip down memory lane and remind yourself of these nasty bushes. I'd already cleared the ground cover to a certain point before tackling the bushes.

 Did you notice how huge those bushes are? I hated them. Really.

So Thursday I got out a saw and cut them down to a point where they could be dug out and in 3.5 hours, they were stumps. On Friday I took out a shovel and jumped on it, trying to break up the earth around the roots of the bush. It was a no-go. I went back inside and wrote an email asking people from Church if anyone was interested in making some money by digging out my bushes. Our bishop got the email and called one of our newest members, Darren, who is trying to save money to go on a mission. Darren came over and got to work. In a little less than 3.5 hours, the stumps were gone. Leaving us with dirt. A lot of dirt.

Nathan didn't want to leave it plain (ha! part of my plan worked!) so Saturday we went to Home Depot and bought these.

In this second picture you can see how much space the bushes and little ground cover took up. After planting the mums, Nathan spread out grass seed over the dirt. When payday comes again, we'll do some more. Also, all those other plants there in front of the house, those will be coming out ASAP, which might be in the spring.

Also part of our day was a lot of canning. I actually got up really early and went to the Church where a bunch of girls got together to can peaches and tomatoes. I was lucky and got to bring home half of the left over tomatoes (we ran out of jars). So Nathan and I decided to can homemade salsa. We did this in Logan years ago and afterward couldn't stomach store bought salsa for a very long time (we did the same thing with spaghetti sauce in Logan--ours is just the best). So after putting the kids in bed I ran to the store and got the peppers, onions, and garlic. Then it was on to salsa heaven.

Too bad I didn't think to buy tortilla chips while I was at the store!

Last of all . . .
Nathan took Megan out with him while I was canning the peaches and tomatoes (Jeremy and Emma were on play dates) and bought a new pane of glass for the garage door (if you look in the post from yesterday where the kids are playing in the rain, you'll notice how bad the door looked before) and some paint. Here's our "new" door--complete with raccoon prints all over it. Yes, I didn't shut the door as soon as I got home and a raccoon got in. Then when I shut the door, the stupid thing was still in there. While the door was up it must have climbed on to the door from the top of our van, leaving it's muddy prints everywhere. I guess it freaked out because our stuff was everywhere in the morning, there were muddy paw prints all over the car and van, as well as a messy, stinky present on the van windshield. So now we just have to wash it to make it look nice again.