100th post hooplah!!!

In honor of my 100th post I thought I would begin a series of posts it with a bunch of big things going on in our lives. I will be writing these over a couple of weeks to show some progress at our house and events that will be taking place.


**Sunday, June 6th, 2010.
On July 22nd it will be our 2 year anniversary in our house! We have done lots of painting, decorating, re-arranging, making over the laundry room... But nothing major. Our #1 thing to fix around the house is the backyard. It is a HUGE dirt lot that has been time-consuming and is just looming over our heads as a mega-task that we didn't want to deal with. I (and Matt) tackled the spider-housed bushes 2 years ago, roots and all. We planted a lovely garden, last year, with wildflowers that will bloom every year. This year, SOD!!! Tony has been working non-stop the last few days with the dirt and the tilling and the heat. He is so amazing. Here I am just sitting in different cities doing nothing (well, shopping and eating) and he is being wonderfully productive! My turn begins Monday-Wednesday.

**Monday, June 7th - Wednesday, June 9th, 2010.
By the time the sun came up Monday morning I was finally able to see all the hard work that Tony put into the yard... Partially tilled yard, a new garden with mulch and border, cleaned out side yard to discover yet another pathway.

So this week the job was tilling the entire yard, planting trees, planting a couple of other plants, and finishing off the new little gardens. We tilled our butts off. It is such hard work. The damn machine wants to go to the soft tilled earth instead of the hard pressed dirt, so it's constantly falling to the side. We planted our very first tree in the backyard, a smoke tree. They have a different look every season and it "produces pinkish, airy flower clusters in early summer that appear like puffs of smoke." I can't wait to see it in full smokey bloom next year! We also had to rake the yard to get it fairly smooth and level for the upcoming sod.

**Friday, June 11th - Monday, June 14th, 2010.
RAIN! We never get days and days of rain. It is so rare here in Denver. But it is also just a few days early since we hadn't put the sod down yet. Poop. It made the temperature quite nice though.

**Tuesday, June 15th, 2010.
SOD. SOD. SOD! The day has finally come! We drove to Brighton, CO to a sod farm (I don't know what they're really called) to get our sod. We decided on 2 pallets, knowing it wouldn't be quite enough for our enormous yard. Tony's dad brought his truck and 2 other friends with 2 more trucks. We bought 2 pallets, but actually ended up with over 2.5. It's always good to know people to give you a little extra. We also got it for a steal (under $300!!) With the 5 of us working we had all the sod laid in about 3 hours. I still can't believe that we actually have a wonderfully green backyard.

**Wednesday, June 16th, 2010.
So now that the sod is in and the backyard looks swell, we decided to put in a sprinkler system. Apparently backwards backyard is out motto. So right this second a dude is digging, laying, and doing all that is needed for a sprinkler system!! He has to dig all the way to the front yard to hook it up with that system and there were about 5 flower fatalities in the process :( But it will be worth it.


Now for some before and after pics of the yard...

Oh dear god! Just the most disgusting before picture.

And a glorious after!!

before. the back of the house. boring and gross.

after. the back of the house. lovely and not-quite-finished.

Stay tuned for the next big events to come...

when it rains. it pours... and hails!

I never talk about work on here, but last week's adventure is worth repeating. But it's a LONG STORY!!

Friday, June 12th was supposed to be a normal, excruciatingly long but normal, day. A 12 hour day with 4 flights. It also didn't help that Thursday night's overnight was cut 2 hours shorter.

This is how it was SUPPOSED to go down...

*Seattle 8:50am - Denver 12:25pm
*Denver 1:20pm - Kansas City 3:50pm
*Kansas City 4:30pm - Denver 5:20pm (wait for 2 hours)
*Denver 7:10pm - Kansas City 9:45pm (overnight in KC)

Yuck right? Yeah, it didn't even happen that way. Here is the real day...

*Seattle 8:50am - Denver 12:25pm
*Denver 1:20pm - Kansas City 3:50pm
*Kansas City 4:30pm - PUEBLO, COLORADO!! 5:45pm

OK. So we didn't make it to Denver. The weather, hail, rain, thunder, lightning and such closed the whole airport.

-So, after 1 hour in a divert situation you give out water.
-After 2 hours you break out the emergency divert kit, ie. granola bars.
-After 3 hours, due to the new passengers-stranded-on-planes-for-hours law, the airline gets fined per passenger still remaining in the plane. We are talking about over $20,000 per passenger. And in Pueblo there were 4 Frontier planes so it would cost us about $3.7 million per plane!

Our amazing pilots got us off the ground with 15 minutes to spare. I felt like we were racing against the clock in some action movie. More tiring than exciting though.

*Pueblo 8:28pm - Denver 9:07pm

At this point we had no idea if we were still going to Kansas City for our overnight or not. Where is our plane? How late are we going to be? Won't this be too long of a day if we go?

We found our gate, plane, passengers to head right back to Kansas City. We boarded and headed out into the outrageous line of planes. We drove around for an hour, still waiting in line, and finally the captain told us we were 4th in line and to be seated for take-off. About 5 minutes later his next announcement went something like this...

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are number 2 for departure, but we just got a call from operations and they said your crew timed out for the day."

You should have heard the passengers grumbling. I just sat on the jumpseat and cried. If we had taken off it would have made it a 16 hour day and that is illegal for us. I was so tired I could barely walk or talk and I felt so aweful for the passengers since they had been waiting for us and now who knows when they were going.

So our last "flight" of the day was just driving around the tarmacs and runways of Denver International Airport.

*Denver 10:15pm - DENVER 11:22pm!!

It was too brutal of a day. But the best part was that once we got to Kansas City we were supposed to do a Cancun turn back to Kansas City the next day, well we got the rest of the weekend off since our day had been too long we couldn't go back to KC.

Tony and I had an entire Saturday off together and even got to go to a party down the street that some neighbors had!

We had to come back on Sunday for a Jackson Hole turn. And if you know me at all I would go and see the Grand Tetons any day of the week. I brought my camera and we all walked around the plane to take in the spectacular sight.

So all in all one rough day turned into a great weekend and I guess it's kinda cool that I got to experience my first divert. I just don't want to do it again EVER!