Recouperating from the Holiday Weekend

Hello and welcome to my new blog! I've talked about doing this forever (almost did it a month ago) but never quite seemed to get around to it! What finally pushed me into it was seeing my sister-in-law Anne's Blog http://cyclonelane.blogspot.com/! Since some of us have spread out so far from where we were, it seems like a great way to keep up with each other. I really enjoyed seeing pictures of Josh and Hadley and their new house in Colorado. So, here it goes...

What a weekend! We finally got our fence finished! What we thought might be a weekend project turned into a week long ordeal! :) Ok, it wasn't that bad. But it was tough going with pretty much only one person doing all the work. I helped where I could, and Maria helped as much as she could. Luckily, Mike's nephew and friend helped out a couple of times and it was them that really helped get the rest of it done fairly quickly. They helped get the close to last 8 or 9 posts and panels done on Friday, then Mike was able to finish the last 2 posts, last panel and finally the gate on Saturday morning! Just in time for our Memorial Day picnic on Sunday! One of Mike's brothers thought we were having the picnic on Sat, so he stopped by and Mike put him to work helping put up the gazebo and mowing the yard = the finishing touches :)

Here's Mike working hard!

The first weekend of fence building was cold!! That first day it was over 70 in the morning, but in the afternoon, within half an hour the temp dropped down to around 40!

Maria surveying the job thus far :)

This was the first weekend's progress, got around the first corner!! :)

Can't remember if this was after day 3 or day 4, but it was a day of major progress, Mike's brother Pat helped with these post holes.

Finally finished! :)

The Yard! :)

It's amazing how much a fence and some lawn furniture can really change the face of your landscape!

The day of the picnic actually turned out pretty nice. It was a little cloudy and chilly in the early afternoon, but by around 1 or so the sun started coming in and out and it got maybe close to 65-70? It felt hot when the sun actually came out, but then it would get chilly when the sun went behind a cloud. And of course it couldn't make up it's mind ;) But really, it was a gorgeous day! And we all had lots of fun playing yard games and roasting marshmallows!

I think we ended up spending the whole weekend in the yard! It was so nice to let the kids out to have the run of the yard without having to worry about whether they were headed for the highway, and the dogs were just in heaven, being able to run free! :) The fence was really well worth all the effort!

But of course now, being Tuesday, we are all feeling all the work we did over the weekend. Even though we spent all day Monday just relaxing outside... Duncan ended up running a fever and was up half the night :( He's still a little feverish and feeling crunchy today. And our poor outside dog, Brutal, ended up coming down with Lyme's disease. He must have gotten bit by a tick before we got his collar on - which we put it on as soon as we started seeing ticks (they are everywhere now!!). He was limping on one of his front paws Friday night, by Saturday morning he couldn't even get up - couldn't move his hind end. We thought for sure that it was the rhubarb that he'd been nibbling on - the leaves are poisonous and can cause paralysis, but when we called the vet, he said he would have vomiting and the runs first... and said it sounded like Lyme's disease, which has sudden onset lameness which goes away after a few days and then will recur if you don't get them antibiotics... Well, he was right - yesterday Brutal started sitting up and getting around a little more, then by last night he was back to running around and beating his dish up after being fed. Phew! We really thought he wasn't going to make it for a while. He's actually the best of the 3 dogs, and sadly he's the only one that really can't come inside. :( He's too much of a big oaf!