Yard Crashers

Have you seen that show on HGTV? It’s pretty awesome and if I saw that guy at our local Lowes or Home Depot I would drag him back home with me. Some of the things are a little too crazy for me though so I think I’ll just stick to what we did this week while N was off work. I’ve done a little work in the back yard but it’s been so hot that I just can’t hang out there for long so there was still a ton to get done. I think I’ve mentioned before how overgrown most of the beds were in the yard and we have almost more flower bed than actual yard! Now everything looks great. I spent over an hour on Mon evening cutting limbs down and piling them by the road for the Tues brush pick up and then when N got home from work Tues morning he helped me for a couple more hours and we had a huge pile of big stuff to be picked up.

On Wed we went out and did some exploring and had some fun so no yard work that day. As we were driving home a huge storm rolled in and we had to pull off the road for a while and wait it out because it was raining so hard. When we did start driving again we got into downtown and had to turn around because one road was flooded. We couldn’t believe how much water was standing and it wasn’t worth it to us to try and drive through that mess.

Thurs Nicholas wanted to go out and do some more yard work but it was too hot for me to hang. Lucky for N he has 3 years of hot weather training and the heat doesn’t bother him at all anymore and he did a lot of work that afternoon. He ended up pulling about 10 of the big lawn and garden bags full of weeds, roots, limbs, and grass out of the front yard. Then we worked on the back together because a storm came by just south of us and cooled it down a lot outside. Here’s a look at all the bags in the basement, we didn’t want to leave them out in the rain since they are already so full and heavy adding rain would be very bad!

We put in flowers that would be easy to maintain and didn’t need to be watered a ton. I’m really happy with how it all turned out. Nicholas worked really hard to get it done and now I want to show it off!

Before

After

Before

After with 3 Lantana in the middle of the bed. On each side of the lantana there’s a bunch of irises planted.

We already had 3 day lilies in the bed so we added 4 more to fill it out. I’m not sure what those tall things are but Carla next door told us that they bloom and are really pretty. I guess we’ll see.

The back yard before

We pulled out the bricks and put in 3 hydrangas and 3 azaleas

We moved all the rosemary from the front bed to the back to fill in that corner.

Before

After

Back left corner before

After. We planted portulaca in the bird bath because most of you know how I feel about birds and as it was that thing was just another breeding ground for the mosquitos that tried their best to suck me dry the whole time we worked in the yard. My arms and legs are ate up and that’s with using bug spray.

The deck now with all the pretty flowers. The bird bath will look like these hanging baskets soon, it will be so pretty!

We don’t plan to do anything in the yard for a while now!!

Beach Pictures

I’ve been telling the boy that I want to take some pictures of us on the beach for a while. I was hoping to do it when we were down there for R&R but photographers down there are so expensive! We stayed so busy while we were there that we didn’t make it to the beach until the last night that we stayed. Jessica and Marklin went to the beach with us so that Jessica could be our photographer. The pictures turned out really good I thought! I even got some good ones of the boys together.

We were laughing at Marklin’s rolled up jeans.

Doesn’t matter how old they get, they will always be BOYS!

Next time we are down there during the off season we’ll try to get some of the girls with us. They love the beach but it’s a no no to take dogs out on the beach so we just wait until  it’s empty.

Another fun thing that happened while we were there is the little airshow we were able to watch from the condo balcony. I’ve seen these guys out in their planes before but I got some good pictures this time. On holidays and sometimes just in the summer they go out flying to have some fun and show off for the crowds. I did get some great video but this internet is so slow it won’t load for me right now. I hate the slow internet at this house.

Fish On!!

Last Thursday we found out that everyone was heading to Destin for the weekend so we jumped on the bandwagon and packed our bags. It takes exactly 5 hours to get from our driveway to the condo driveway, that is MUCH better than the 9 that it took from Clarksville! We went out fishing on Fri, Sat, and Sun and had a fantastic time. I love being out on the boat bottom fishing. We caught our limit everyday of snapper and even caught a few other fish that were in season.

Our first day of fishing.

View from the best seats on the boat. I love those bean bag chairs!

It was a LONG day on the boat for Marklin. He couldn’t hang. LOL Next time he’ll drink more water.

The girls were a little scared of all the weird looking fish. lol

We never did take a picture of our catch from the second day so this is the third day.

Nicholas doing his thing

This past weekend N was called to the scene of a 4 wheeler accident. A teenage kid was hurt pretty bad and he landed in the family’s front yard to pick him up. One of the fire fighters there took some pictures while they were coming in and once they were on the ground. N told me it was a really tight landing area with wires on all sides of him. He also said that pretty much everyone in the area had come out to see them come in to land and I said had that been on Howard Roberts Rd I would have expected the same outcome!

The blades are no flexed here, shutter speed is just so slow on the camera that it makes them look all crazy! (I had to ask)

On Monday I got back to Birmingham right before noon and decided to go up to the Hangar and surprise N but I went a way that I’ve never been before so I got a little turned around and it took me a few more minutes to get there than I had planned. Right as I was coming up the hill to his job I heard the rotors and thought “crap, please be Childrens!!” Nope, it was him! I got to see a few seconds of him taking off and since the dogs were so antsy I just headed back home. I sent him a text saying “I know you are flying I watched you leave” and he called a few mins later saying he was at UAB and would be heading back to the hangar in a few mins if I wanted to come back and watch him land. I jumped in the car and headed back up there and got to see him come in and land. I took some video but my camera battery completely died before he touched down so it’s not that great at all. In the 7 yrs he flew in the Army I got to see him fly maybe 4 times, he’s been at this job less than a month and I’ve already been able to see him. Pretty cool.

He is off this week and yesterday was the perfect first day to be off work. It rained most of the day and we were super lazy. Today we went out and had lunch and ran some errands and explored and tomorrow we are going down south of Birmingham to the Homewood area to check that out. We have a lot more to see! I’m looking forward to it!

Welcome to Crestwood

I’ve mentioned before that we love this neighborhood because it’s just awesome. We love all the different mixes and styles of houses and the neighbors that we’ve met so far are very nice and helpful. Our neighborhood has a facebook page and every morning they put up a picture of a different house and I love that! N and I went for a walk around the other evening and I wish I had taken my camera then but since I forgot it I want to put up a couple of pictures from the facebook page. We live on the side of Crestwood that was for the most part built prior to 1950, some houses have historic markers dating the houses to 1905 and 1912 ect, those are just a few numbers that we noticed at different times.

I don’t know who lives in any of these houses or where exactly they are in the neighborhood, I just like them.

 

 

So there is just a small glimpse into where we live.

Little of everything

It’s been an interesting week around here. Last Sat N headed to LA to do some training and he was there until Tues. He used a simulator for the first time and said it was really cool training. He got home Tues night and on Wed got to fly the actual aircraft for the first time. On Thurs he learned how to do more paperwork and run the GPS system (there was weather issues so they didn’t fly) and then on Fri he took his check ride with the IP and when that was done he flew with his boss and did some Local Area Orientation (LAO) and told N that he was going to let him fly by himself the next day on shift! That’s less that 1 week of training on that aircraft and he was in the air on Sat single pilot taking a guy having a heart attack to the hospital. Let me put how fast that is into perspective…. in the Army if Nicholas wanted to transition to another aircraft, say instead of flying the Kiowa he wanted to go fly the Apache, he would have to go through FOUR months of training. Four months. Now granted there are a few more things to learn in the Apache than the Bell 206 but it doesn’t really take 4 months to learn it when you are already familiar with flying. We call it “big boy rules” the Army does NOT play by them but the civilian side sure does!

Here are a few pictures that I took when we went out to the base last week. This is the Children’s aircraft because they didn’t have the other LifeSaver aircraft there that day. They are set up the same just different paint jobs.

Nicholas with his boss, 2 of the flight nurse/medics, and a nurse from one of the hospitals in town.

His cool new helmet, much nicer than his old Army one.

We are really loving Birmingham so far, we really didn’t know what to expect after moving here and I’m impressed. We are finding new cool stuff all the time and Nicholas loves his job. All the people there are absolutely fantastic and he is excited to go to work in the morning for the first time in years. It’s a nice change for both of us.

I have plenty more to put on here, I need to get better about keeping this thing updated but this is long enough and it’s bed time!