Progression of the pool

The pool demo is officially finished! Sean started taking the deck and pool apart in October of 2007, so a year and a half later it is done. The grass is growing like crazy with all this rain and it is so strange looking out the back row of windows and seeing grass instead of a pool or a muddy hole in the ground. It's simply wonderful. Definitely one of the best improvements to this house that we've made. Sean worked so hard doing this project and I can't thank him enough. I'm lucky to be married to such a determined worker. I've chronicled through pictures below the demo and the end result.

October 2007

March 2008  

 
March 2008  

 
April 2008  

 
June 2008  

 
July 2008 (isn't the goat a nice addition?)  

 
September 2008  

 
March 2009  

 
May 2009, taken today during the rain. It's done!  

 
Off to the next project! Now we plan to add a nice smaller deck along the back of the house, this won't be started until next summer at the earliest (since I want to help).

Progress!

Once again it has been a busy busy weekend. Friday my Mother came over for lunch and to see her grandson. She ended up staying for awhile and watching some college basketball. My mother is a college basketball nut fan. I have memories as a small child of her screaming and hollering at the television when a particular game got very close at the end. It's good to know not much changes with time. She was over here hollering when the game was nearly over and her team was barely winning. Wesley thought this was great! He decided he had permission to scream and holler at the top of his lungs, and did for nearly 10 minutes. He got so into it that he found his basketball and brought it in the living room to join in the fun. Maybe grandma will have a little fan to help her cheer on future basketball games.



Then yesterday we all went out and finished up the very last of the fencing project. We had corners to clean up and a few last U-nails to pound in to complete it. It is so satisfying to have that large of a project crossed off the list. While we were out there our neighbor came over to see how things were going. He's a single guy that owns a whole ton of "man toys". He's always out riding his 4 wheeler or moving dirt or tree limbs with his big tractors. While we were talking to him I decided to muster up the courage to ask him if he would mind bringing his big tractor with a blade on the back over and help us level out the hole were the pool was. He agreed (he's such a nice guy) and within 45 minutes the pool hole was leveled out and ready for planting grass. Sean and I were just amazed at how easy it was to do all that work if you have the right equipment. I'm so happy I asked him!



Since everything was fenced in we decided to release the miniature horses and goats into the new back yard and see their reaction. They have been in their small enclosure all winter and were dying to get out and run and munch on sweet sweet grasses. They pretty much went nuts and ran around the two acres for 20 minutes before settling in to munch away.



Who knew pine trees were tasty to goats?



I'll leave you with a fun video clip I titled "Freedom". Those little buggers can really run!

Soaking up the rays

This weekend has been a fun one. The weather has been quite good, in the mid 50's and Wesley and I have been outside exploring today. Jessica was kind enough to let us borrow some of her lawn vomit (Little Tykes Slide) and so Wesley was out today climbing all over the slide and even learned to slide down it all by himself.




We then wandered over and saw the horses. He likes to pick up any form of vegetation and thrust it at the horses. I'm sure he'll have fun with them more and more as he gets older.




Then we decided to go see what Daddy was doing in the shop. Sean got his circuit board etched with the vat of acid in the basement and preceded to drilling holes in it next. His homemade circuit board project is a success.



Last on the agenda was playing in the dirt pit that was our pool. It is almost finished, we'll need to have a load of dirt brought in this spring and leveled. Wesley thought the loose dirt was too much fun and managed to get himself covered. He also enjoyed poking the cat with a stick. Ahh the joys of cat poking. Hope everyone is having a nice weekend!

Kitties, pool and milk

We have one cat. Her name is Lady and as of today she is officially an outdoor cat. I think I wrote about the fun times I had last month ripping out the carpet in my workroom upstairs thanks to her unwillingness to always use the litter box. Well, after that she went to live in the upstairs bathroom that is unused. It's got linoleum so she won't use it as a toilet (she prefers absorbent carpet), but it's pretty small. SO during the day she would go outside and then in the evenings it was back up to the bathroom to sleep. Then Thursday night at 2am hubby and I awoke to the lovely noise of her throwing herself at the bathroom door. Over and over again. How it didn't wake Wesley up I haven't a clue. That was the last straw. So last night I moved her litter box, food and water dish out to the shop. In the evenings she will get locked in the shop and during the day she is free to roam the great outdoors. Good luck outside this winter kitty!



The pool demolition is coming along. Hubby gets out there on weekends when he has a chance and when it isn't too wet. It's actually flat on one side now. We have to remove the wrought iron fence on the other side before he can get to work on that side. At least we can now order some fill dirt and the dump truck will be able to just back right up to the hole and dump it. It was a year ago that I said "Hey maybe we should just fill in the pool" and ever since Sean has been working his tail off to get it done. He's such a hard worker...Wesley and I are lucky to have him.



Last week was a success at weaning Wesley off the bottle. He has gone this whole week (minus last night) without a bottle. He had a little remission last night when he just wouldn't go to sleep, so a little bottle of warm milk and off to sleep he went. He's got one straw cup that he just loves...it's a wonderful cup, it won't spill anything and he can't yank the straw out like most straw cups. Here he is with his favorite cup.

Pool progress

As I stated a few days ago the pool demolition has been stalled due to the birthday party, family visiting and now tractor issues. I was just telling my sister in law that this project is not as easy of a project as Sean and I both thought it would be. I mean when you look at an in ground pool it doesn't look like that daunting of a project. But wow has this taken awhile. It doesn't help that it's just Sean doing it. Before Wesley came along we were a team, kicking butt on house projects together. Now it's one at a time while the other babysits. Anyways, Sean is currently tackling the dirt mounded up around the back of the hole. It's strange but in my mind you just put the bucket of the tractor in the dirt and scoop it into the hole....nope, it's not that easy. Our dirt is packed down and solid clay. So with every bucket scoop Sean is only able to scrape off an inch or so of dirt. It's slow going. And it's July. It sucks (and that's my view point while sitting inside in the air conditioning). Here are pictures of the hole. Sean has been pushing dirt in from the back.

Food, Fun and Farm Boy

For several days now we've been letting Wesley feed himself with a spoon. I say "feed" in the loosest form of the word. He gladly holds the spoon and bangs his tray with it. I then have to hold his little hand (that is holding the spoon) and scoop up food and deliver it to his mouth. He then pulls the spoon out and gives me a giant grin like "see what I just did." It's quite endearing....and messy. I think he's getting the hang of it.

In the terms of what he's eating these days, it's pretty much everything. He has a strange fascination with cottage cheese. Likes to play with it in his mouth, must be the texture. I went all Suzie Homemaker like last weekend and made him some zucchini muffins. I took a normal recipe and added shredded carrot, zucchini (obviously) and cranberries. For the oil I used one part applesauce, one part olive oil and one part regular oil. I substituted the eggs with water, vinegar and baking powder and only used a third of the sugar. And last of all I used whole wheat flour and wheat germ to replace the white flour. Surprisingly enough they were quite tasty and not like bricks which I expected. Wesley likes them too. One other trick I found online is when you feed chunks of banana to your little one just roll it in wheat germ first and it gives a protein and fiber kick to regular naners. It's amazing what you can find online.

This is completely off subject (like most of my posts) but Sean is outside right now in the back yard playing in the dirt on his man toy. He got the Green Machine working and is now trying to fill in the in ground pool. I shall call him Farm Boy. Hmmmm my husband is Farm Boy and my son is Wesley....any guesses what movie I fancy?

Wild weekend

We've had a fun weekend. The pool demo project has been stalled for a few weeks now due to the weather being crappy and other projects getting higher priority. So we've decided to get working on it again (and when I say "we" I mean Sean). With family coming in for Wesley's birthday we'd like our place to not look like a tornado went through it. Here is what the pool is looking like these days:




The next step is to get dirt delivered and start filling in the giant hole. Now we planned on renting a skid loader, and at $200 a day we were not looking forward to it. Not knowing how many days it would take to move dirt was also an issue. So yesterday Sean was cruising Craigslist and came across an old 1951 Massy Harris Tractor with a front end loader on it at a very reasonable price. We immediately drove out to see it and bought it. They delivered it this morning and Sean is very excited to have a new project. We figure if all we do with it is move dirt into the pool and then sell it we'd still probably walk away with money. A win win situation. Although I think when the pool project is finished there will always be some other use for it around either scooping horse manure or spreading gravel. Here is Sean with the green machine.



On a side note, I went into the bank yesterday to get some cash out for the tractor and the bank teller asked for some ID. I gave her my drivers license. She looked at it and gave it back and said she'll need to see some "current" ID. Looks like my drivers license has been expired since my birthday which was the beginning of May. Oops. So now Sean gets to be my chauffeur until Tuesday when the tag office is open. Now I'm afraid I'm going to have to actually take a drivers test since it's been over a month expired. Crap. Oh well.

Wesley's rash is looking slightly better. He's a much happier kid so it must not be bothering him too badly. He really likes the 2 or 3 baths he's getting a day. The kid was a fish in his former life. And on the subject of fish, here is a picture of his new favorite past time. He stands in the corner of the couch and watches the fishies. The 30 gallon tank from downstairs was brought upstairs and now is a community tank in the living room. Boy does he love it.

So much to do

What a beautiful weekend it is! Right now it is 84 degrees outside. I've been so jealous of Sean getting to go outside and work while I watch from the window with Wesley on my hip. So today I got to go do yard work while Sean watched the baby. I'm one of those strange people that likes to mow the yard. I find it oddly relaxing. It takes about two hours. I finished up that and came in to find Sean with a sleeping baby on his lap. So I took that opportunity to escape back outside and rake the leaves from the koi pond that we emptied yesterday. That is one of those chores I don't look forward to every year. Cleaning that stinking pond out is a smelly pain in my butt but after it's done and filled up with water, the water fall going and water lilies are blooming it's really quite pretty. I'm looking forward to taking Wesley out there every day to look at the fishies (the fish that are currently in the downstairs aquarium). The big snake that lives in the little pond came out to say hello. I wish he (or more likely she) would find a new home, it freaks me out every time. I wouldn't imagine it wants to find a new home, it has water, rocks to take shelter in, ample supply of fish to eat. Every year there are a few new baby snakes swimming around....them I don't mind.

Sean is making progress on the pool demo. He has over half of the steel walls cut down and is digging up the steel supports. As soon as that is done it's just dirt work...yea! It almost looks like an end in sight. The nice redneck fellow that lives behind us has offered to bring his front end loader over and move the dirt for us. Country folks are so nice, they'll give you the shirt off their back if you asked.

I let the horses out to graze after mowing. They are enjoying the spring weather just as much as I am.

Our kid unfriendly backyard

There are such things as kid friendly backyards. You know the nicely fenced in yards with swing sets and big shade trees, sand boxes and fun things to climb all over? Yeah, well our back yard is nothing like this. You will remember back in October when I wrote about our plans to get rid of our in ground pool, if you don't remember here is the post. I hope to one day have that nice kid friendly back yard, but for now I have this.



This is a big hole in the ground that was once our pool. Sean has been working on it almost every evening when he gets home from work and every weekend. He's such a hard worker. He started by removing the giant wrap around deck, then removing the pool liner. Then he jack hammered all the concrete decking around the pool and threw those concrete chunks into the deep end of the pool. Here he is standing in the deep end that is full of broken up concrete.



It literally looks like a tornado went through our back yard. It makes me want to cry looking out there, but there is the hope of it being done one day. It has to be the most kid unfriendly yard ever. There is rusty sharp metal chunks lying around, with rebar chunks coming out of the ground. Don't forget the rusty screws and glass (who knows where it came from). If all goes well Wesley won't even know there was once a pool in our backyard. Here it was last fall as Sean was emptying it for the final time and had started taking the deck apart. Farewell pool, you will be missed....maybe.

A Work Day

We've finally figured out that if we want to finish all these house renovations we have going we have to start working on them again. They don't magically complete themselves (too bad). We haven't done much of anything since Wesley was born. So, on that note, Sean went to the local Rental store and rented a 60lb jackhammer and went to town on the concrete decking that surrounded our pool. He started at 10 this morning and came in every few hours to take a break. He finished up around 6 with most of the big stuff done. His hands and arms are killing him. Poor guy. I'll be surprised if he can get out of bed tomorrow.















I spent the day outside with Wesley enjoying the beautiful weather. I let the dogs run around the back acreage, Cisco did a good job keeping up with the other two. He's feeling no pain on the Prednizone. He then tried depositing tennis balls onto Wesley in the stroller, the dog has a one track mind. It was a good day.

Recuperating

Who knew A four day trip and 600 miles could wear us all out so much! All we did today was sleep. Wesley who never takes a nap during the day took a four hour nap, and I had to wake him up from that...so who knows how long he would have slept. I passed out in the chair with him for a couple hours. Sean was the only one that got anything done today, he was outside tearing up the deck around the pool. He's such a good worker. I'm such a slacker.

Say goodbye to the pool!

When we bought this house three years ago it wasn't because of the in ground pool. That just happened to be an added bonus at the time. I mean if you haven't had a pool before, the thought of owning one is pretty exciting. This would be until the realization of how much work they really are sets in. A couple times a week you have to clean them, add oodles of chemicals like Chlorine and algecide, clean stuff out of the skimmer like dead frogs and lizards and keep the filter clean. This all for something we didn't swim in once this summer. The only thing that was exciting about the pool was the thought of Wesley out there splashing around every summer. Well the straw that broke the camels back is that last week it started leaking. Monday it was down an inch and by Friday it was down 7 inches. It might not sound like much, but in an 18,000 gallon pool, that's a lot of water. We can't pinpoint the leak as it could be anywhere including the underground pipes. So we've decided to fill in the pool. Jackhammer it up and fill it in with dirt. We are so excited to start the process. There are so many "positives" to filling it in: I won't have that nagging feeling once Wesley starts walking that he's going to somehow drown in it, also our homeowners insurance should come down from outer space, water and electric bill will go down and I will have more spare time because I won't be cleaning it. This is an all around good thing. As for Wesley, well a really cool water park with huge slides and waterfalls went in 20 minutes away. We'll go every week in the summer if it means I don't have to have a pool at the house.