Yard: Before and After

Our backyard needs a lot of help. It's not our favorite at all, but when we were looking at homes this had the biggest yard and we liked the house a lot. The yards are off to the sides of the house (yes plural yards because one is on one side of the house and one is on the other), weird, I know. We have 2 giant trees off the back of the house that we hate. They make a mess. Pine needles are everywhere. I feel like I'm up camping when I walk around back there. It's gross. I guess you can't have it all! But man oh man, we wish we could have a better yard. We talked to the landowners behind our house because the giant trees are on half our property and half theirs. You have to get permission before taking them down. Kyle talked to them and the owner had just died and the land was in probate. Kyle called the lawyer and he said they can't alter the property while in probate, but to hold on because they will be selling the property soon. Hopefully, the developers take down the trees! That would save us some money. :) But then again that would mean we have neighbors right behind us. It was nice to have no one behind us.

Anyway, we decided to rent a trailer and get to work. We hauled two big loads off and got a load of gravel. We weeded a lot, ripped out several trees, bushes and tree stumps left behind. It was a lot of work, but it looked better afterwards. Not great because we can't really do anything with the lawn due to the big giant trees. Some day maybe...hopefully! 

Side of house Before:

Our little helpers weeding the side of the house.

After: 

We put down gravel because we store the garbage cans here and it keeps the weeds down. Except we have a mole that keeps making mounds in our new gravel!

Before: Backyard looking from side of house

After!

Before: Backyard looking from back deck

After

Much better overall. You can see the giant tree off the back deck. Ugh. The other side yard is on the other side of the deck and we haven't touched that yet. 

I had to include a picture of Kate's eye. Kyle was taking the kids on a ride in the bike trailer just around our neighborhood and Kate wanted a ride. He started swerving from side to side to make it more fun and it tipped over and Kate went tumbling out as they were going downhill. Kate came to show me and she had this HUGE bump on her head. It was ginormous and I forgot to take a picture, but it was 1/2" off her forehead. This is the next morning showing the bruising and swelling. I was worried at first b/c I'm thinking awful things like bleeding on the brain, but she was fine and didn't black out or anything. Kyle felt horrible. Kate cried and said, "I don't want to die. I just met Grace (our neighbor) and I have lots of things I want to do still." That broke my heart when she said that. She was fine and had a good story to tell her friends the next day. She had a black eye for a while.