Yard, painting, and the 4th of July!

To the blog world the fact that we have finally started working on our yard and house exterior may not mean much, but to our neighbors and anyone in Troutdale who has the pleasure of driving by our house each day it is very significant.  Our yard and exterior have been looking pretty shabby, but we are finally doing something about it!

Last month Brian built a walkway from our sidewalk to the walkway that leads to our house.  These pictures are before we poured the cement:

A view from the street.  This is before painting the house gray.  I’m also considering painting the door yellow.

Another picture of the whole front yard.  To the left of the walkway will be grass.  To the right I can’t decide if I want to do grass or fill it with trees/shrubs/flowers.  In front of the those two windows I want hydrangeas

A view from our house.

And the finished product:

Brian also trimmed out our front door.  I love how it turned out!

                                                                           Before                                                                                                                     After

I love this picture of Elna walking—such a funny expression on her face and one I see all the time.

Elna spends a lot of time in her stroller while we work.  She’s generally a great sport!

Before painting the house, Brian pressure washed the house.

He also pressure washed the sidewalk in front of our driveway.  Classy.  A ran into a lady down the street while walking one day and she called me by name.   I didn’t know her.

We painted on the 4th of July—it was the first full dry day Brian had off in a long time, so we took advantage of the sun. 

Brian used the paint sprayer while DeWin & Heather or I back brushed.  Brian’s family is always so happy to help us and we are very grateful.  We painted the house a really pretty gray, but it still kind of looks blue sometimes because the roof is blue-ish (ick!) and we haven’t finished painting all of the trim white.  I really really don’t want people to think our house is blue.  I think they will until we get a new roof.  Who gets a blue roof?

Heather took care of Elna while we painted.  She is so helpful and Elna loves her!  She put shoes on Elna—it was Elna’s first true experience with shoes on.  Pretty cute.  By the way, Elna has been walking since she was about a year old, and mostly full-time the last week or so.  I will put a post together soon on that.

Elna and Grandpa taking a break together.

And just in case you don’t think we know how to celebrate, on the morning of the 4th we went to a Stake pancake breakfast.  DeWin gave a very good talk to start out the program.

Happy 4th of July!