We have been serious landscapers lately. Yard work is so easy and fun and isn’t exhausting at all, said no one ever. If I take anything away from being a new home owner it’s buy a place that has an EXISTING lawn or your prepared to have a crew of people ready and willing to do it all at once. Doing it all yourselves is incredibly hard and tiring and while it’s satisfying to know your own sweat and tears created it, sometimes we imagine we just close our eyes and snap our fingers and all our projects are complete and we can kick back on our gorgeous lawn and simply enjoy the view. Almost there my friends.

But first, we started out all this by buying a new car. A new used car. Really the only complaint we had about the Jeep, was its size. By the time you loaded the kids and the dog, any bags and attempt at groceries it was jam packed. We took this opportunity to upgrade and buy something with more room and buy older and used so we could drive away without a car payment anymore. We did just that.

We bought new wheels for it and put on our tires from the Jeep we had just bought and our family ride is complete. I foresee lots of road trips and adventures in this puppy.

With that out of the way, we started the work. Our goal for this summer is to expand our lawn by taking out trees and the natural brush in both the front and the back and once that’s complete we plan on boxing in the playhouse and filling it with sand and a few more play structures. We have an incredible view of the inlet from our front yard but come summer the trees fill in and we start to lose that.

We cut down trees, so many trees. Ripped out bushes and brush. The roots you guys! There are so many roots, I swear we’ll never pull them all out. Trees were fallen, cut up, hauled off, stumps dug up and debris cleaned.  We still have more prep to do before we can bring in topsoil and seed it but we’ve made pretty good progress considering it’s been primarily Andy and I.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

(There is about 6 weeks difference with these comparisons but I forgot to take real before pictures so this will have to do.)

 The end result is to clear out the tall skinny birch trees and add more grass and evergreen trees to our yard. Which required us to actually get more trees. The beauty of living in Alaska. We loaded up the kids and some lunch and hit the trail down the road in search of those perfect bushy christmas worthy trees to plant.

In no time at all we had all that we could load up and travel with and headed back home to prep our spots and plant our new green additions.

By the end of each day we are all filthy and tired, and I can’t even begin to tell you how much of a disaster Reid always is. This kid lives to be outside and manages to be covered in dirt and mud from head to toe. Every single day. We know we’ve really worn them out when it’s 10 am and these guys are still fast asleep.

Summer is right around the corner and the days to come will be more digging and planting and watching our home become more and more like we envisioned it to be when we bought it. I’ll leave you with that and hopefully in a few months I’ll update you and show you just how far this little yard of ours has come.