Some May Think We are Crazy...

September will mark 3 years of marriage for me & Chad (Is that correct grammar? I really hate grammar. I mean I am by no means an English major. I get the easy stuff, but sometimes I think the "right way" doesn't always sound right to me or better yet the way I actually talk.) we are now living in our second home in a nice/older neighborhood with a playground and walking track. We live on a quite street and love our neighbors! Hey Kendra!! :D

Both homes that we have owned were Foreclosures. We got a really good deal on the first one. It was built in 2003, 3BR/2Bth just the right size for newlyweds and first time home owners. Get this....our mortgage payment was $365 and that included insurance and property tax!!!! BUT. It. Was. In. The. Boonies!!!! Chad and the woman who told us about the house convinced me it wasn't that far from our hometown and basically there wasn't a whole lot I could do about the situation. I didn't contribute a whole lot to the finances, so that was the house we could afford and besides it wouldn't be forever. And forever it wasn't. We lived there for ONE year! Actually not even a whole year. I put so many miles on my car it was ridiculous. Every time I looked at the miles it was another thousand more. Before I knew it I had 10 thousand miles on my car. FYI-to date I have over 68k miles on my almost 3 year old car. Which had 0 miles on it when I bought it in February of 2007!

We bought our current home Summer 2007. Sometimes I think we rushed it, but you live and learn and it's not always forever. Our current home is 3BR/2Bth 2 car garage with an in ground swimming pool. No pictures of the front. I took this picture before it was officially ours. Sorry for the horribleness...

Charlie was checking it out. He is so skiddish. So...there it is. Not too big. Just right for us. If you don't have a pool, then you have no clue about the up keep that is involved. I have grown up with a pool and dreaded the every other day vacumming and general maintenance. It wasn't near as bad living at home, because it wasn't all my responsibility. Having one of my own was a whole other story. There is a lot of time and not to mention money that is involved with having a pool. We weren't looking for a house with a pool. It's just the house we bought "happened" to have a pool. We swam a couple of times the summer we bought the house and a few times last summer. This summer....not one single time. We were just maintaining it for nothing. I was done with the pool. Tired of my pool guy dad coming over cleaning it or fixing some thing and basically throwing away our money. So I made the decision to just get rid of it. And that is what we did. We buried it! And we did it ourselves with some help of our friends.

I think it has been one of quickest projects to date. And we are not one for home projects. We aren't so concerned with the outward appearance of our house or yard. We are never home and a lot of times on the weekends yard work is the last thing we want to do.

Here are the pictures I took of the progress. I was a little bummed when Chad started the inittial work without me being there to take pictures! He of course, thought I was crazy. : ) One day he will be so glad that he has a wife that loves to take pictures of everything.

Friday when I came home from the Zoo. Took this one with my phone.

Brandon & Zac working. Sorry for the fuzziness.

Friday night. The whole was just about completly filled. We needed more dirt.

The hole is completly filled and the fence and all the shrubs that were once in that corner are gone. I actually feel like our yard looks smaller.

We have a long way to go with making it look like a back yard and not a mud pit, but I already feel like a huge burden has been lifted. It was really crazy for us to have a pool. My parents have a pool and live less than 5 miles from us. So I will leave the headaches up to them. : ) They enjoy it a lot more than we do anyway.