ARE YOU KIDDING!!!!

So Ben and I are tired of looking at our bare front and back yards and decided to call someone to give us an estimate. We have spent so much time at Home Depot these last few months that we thought, what the heck lets give them a try. Now keep in mind that everything we are doing is a first for us. I know we have a big back yard and our front yard is not what I would call big but needs work none the less. I knew it would be expensive so we thought we would do it a little at a time. Our back yard is split into 3 sections because of a walkway so we picked the biggest section to do first. The guy comes out takes some measurements and says he will call us. He comes back to the house and has what I think is a pretty nice layout. Trees, bushes, some rocks, and a 400sq.ft. piece of grass. Ben didn't like it at all because of the rocks. He said that we already had rocks and why do I want to pay for more which is true. Anyway so we got to the money part 9000.00!!! We about hit the roof we had no idea and 4500 of that was rock! So we said ok lets just do grass the whole area which is about 2500sq.ft. well its a little more than that but we didn't want it right up next to the fence. So anyway he calls me back and said that just for grass it would be 6000.00. I still was in shock so I called around to some stores to see how much sod would be and it seemed that the going rate was about .40 cents a sq.ft. So if my math isn't wrong which it very well could be because I suck at it, for the 2500sq.ft. it would be 1025.00. So a few lessons learned one, that things in Las Vegas are expensive two, we will be doing our yard ourselves and three, it wont be done for a while.

Little by little

Well we are slowly and I mean slowly getting settled. There is so much we want to do to this house and there just never seems to be enough time in the day. Ben is working so much that the last thing he wants to do when he gets home is more work. The weather is great now and with the kids in soccer and the holidays coming up I will be lucky to get the Christmas tree up. Don't get me wrong we have done a lot but I guess I just want it all done right now. Well its getting late so I'm just going to put up some more pics and call it night.

So Ben and I finally bought our first house. Yes after 14 years of marriage we took the plunge. We never thought we were going to be able to afford a house here in Las Vegas. We also didn't know if we wanted to stay here. We really wanted to move back to Utah where Ben went to school and lived for 6 years. We love it there we even got a realtor and when on a house hunting trip last year. But when Ben started making good money and moving up we decided that maybe we needed to stay for awhile. When we moved here in September of 2004 houses were outrageous this house would have sold for 350,000 easy and maybe more because it has such a big back yard by Vegas standards. Anyway it is a good first house for us not to big (because utilities here are outrageous) and not to small. We have done a lot of work to it so I will be adding new pictures of everything we have done but for now here are the before pictures. We still have tons of unpacking to do you can hardly get in the front door. I'm just glad that I don't ever have to move again unless I want to.

Everyone else is doing it

OK here it goes, my first blog. I'm not sure what I am doing yet but I guess I will learn as I go. My 2 sister in-laws are the ones who got me to try this even if they don't know it. I'm not good at sending e-mails or calling or writing letters so maybe this will be a good thing for me. I just want to see if I can get this to post so I will talk and do more later.