Sweet Vacation...

My two weeks off work have gone by very quickly so far. My nephew Kev and I managed to get the paver stones in place on the side of the house. We ended up renting a diamond blade stone saw. It did beautiful cutting, but it cost $65 to rent. I called around to see if any place in town could do the cuts for us, but no one did. Our job looked pretty good when done with it. We had to leave some gaps here and there around the perimeter because nothing was square anywhere so we just filled that in with gravel and it looks nice. Definitely nice enough to put trash cans on.

The weekend was pretty good. I got a little more work done on the ivy in the backyard, but didn't trim up the fence at all. We had a BBQ on Sunday for Roo's baseball team and the grown ups played the kids in a game of ball. Of course, we didn't try very hard and we were using a tennis ball for the game ball. It was fun...and the kids won, of course. When I was at bat I hit the ball harder than I had expected and it sailed into the outfield way beyond the kids. I just ran to first and stayed there. We did manage to get one score though from it. LOL. The kids were very excited because they beat the grown ups. Andrew received his trophy and he is very excited about that. Mark received a plaque for his volunteer assistant coaching. It had a picture of all the kids and they signed it and it was very nice. The kids had a great time an it was quite relaxing for the adults. No one made it too complicated which was very nice.

Yesterday Kev was sick with a cold so he didn't come to work with me. It turned out okay. I hacked back all the ivy off the fence. Whew! What dusty work that was. Must have sneezed a thousand times! The gas man also came to check the gas meter because both Kevin and I smelled gas when we were placing the paving stones around the meter. Well, his little sniffer didn't smell the gas, but he wasn't satisfied. He said if two people smelled it then there was gas coming off for some reason. So, he replaced the regulator and meter since they were old. When he turned the gas back on to the meter (I was behind the fence cutting the ivy) and I got a whiff of the gas. I hollered to him, "you must have turned that gas back on!" He hollered back, "yeah I did! You must have an excellent nose and I don't doubt that you smelled gas here last week!" I am hoping this will lower the gas bills because they always seemed high to me. Hubby came home early and he helped me load all the ivy into the truck and trailer and haul it to the dump. Bless him! It went so much faster once he got home and helped. Work was very slow for him yesterday so his coming home and helping me was more beneficial than staying at work. Hooray for me!

We then picked up one of those super wazoo swing sets from Costco for the kids. We have been debating for at least a year if we would get one or not. We finally saw one we really liked and decided to go for it. The kids are overjoyed with their new toy for the summer. This will give them something a little more to do in the back yard. It has a fort at the top, picnic table under, a long slide, swings, rock climbing wall, etc. Kev is sick again today, so we will work on that tomorrow. I can't put it together by myself. Today I am focusing on stuff around the house that I have put off since working outside so much. So, housework, bills, and laundry and the like is on the agenda for today.