Curb Appeal, New York and Child Neglect

Oh man, the weekend is over? Arrrrg...another week of work. Well, minus a half hour as I will leave a tad early today to go to the dentist. (OK, OK, I'd rather stay at work!!) Let's see, what have I been up to?

Curb Appeal. Saturday, Michele and I finished a weeks-long project in our front yard. The story started some time ago when an aspen tree in our backyard was all ready to come tumbling down. It had fallen overnight a couple years back and Michele's brother, a landscaper, came by and tied it back up thinking it would be OK. But, the roots were dying and it was leaning and it had to come down.

Since he was gonna come over, Michele and I decided to have him "skirt" the pine tree in our front yard. It's something we'd wanted to do but waited for a place for in our budget. Since he was coming, might as well. And so he did.

So he skirts the tree, which is basically cutting the branches off the bottom X feet of a tree. When I came home that day, I was AMAZED. It looked so much cleaner! I was shocked. It was so much better looking I wondered if anyone in the neighborhood would in fact notice.

And they did.

In the last several weeks, since the tree was cut, I've had 3 neighbors I'd never spoken to before comment on our tree and how great it looks. I've also had a dog walker make a comment as well. :-) And in the last few weeks, I've swept out the pine needles, line-trimmed the grass circle that was remaining, raked out the rocks and weeds and waste left after that was all done, and now Michele and I have rock-trimmed the tree. We've bought about $100 in stones and Sierra Red nature chips and the tree is now a highlight of our front yard instead of a blocky mess.

I will post pics of the Before and After tonight. :-)

New York. Ah, New York. We are going! We will soon be going on a quick 4-day trip to New York to introduce Cedric to all our family and friends on the east coast. The plane trip will surely be an adventure, but it will be nice to have everyone get to meet him. The little critter loves hearing his grandma's voice on the phone -- and now he can meet her in person! hehehe...

Child Neglect. Did you hear that story of those Denver parents who left their kids at home so they could go see the Harry Potter movie? Terrible. And then they went and dined at a fancy restaurant whilst they left fast food for them to fight over. In fact, it was only at the last minute they decided to let their kids join them for bowling, too. They have some nerve those people.

OK, well, we sort of joined them. HA! A friend of mine from work, Arthur, and our special ladies went out for bowling and dinner Saturday evening. Actually, we were all going to see Harry Potter but a few days before it was determined that it was going to be too difficult for Cedric to be left with his grandma the whole time. So, we bowled instead and had a grand time. :-)

Incidentally, when I say special ladies, I do mean wives. Who do you think we are? Sopranos? (Arthur might be, but that's another story...I'm not sure. Oh, and his wife is from Jersey. So she could be, too!)

Afterwards, we had dinner at Maggiano's which was Michele and I's first time. (We'd tried before, but the wait times are ludicrous without a reservation...) Cedric fussed a bit while there, so poor Michele had to try to rock the little guy to sleep. In the meantime, we spent about 3 hours eating from the long line of foods they brought to us and chatting about how much we hate Dan Caplis (and some other topics...). Arthur's wife was really nice, but I was disappointed she didn't have the Jersey hair going and would you believe she wasn't cracking her gum? I had expectations! ;-)

Happy Monday.