First week of summer vacation.

We have officially started summer vacation and it was an exciting week.  Started with a trip to the DeYoung Family Zoo in the UP of Michigan.  Hard to describe the place... all sorts of exotic animals in the middle of nowhere.  A very low budget operation and hard to believe its legal, but fun to have a chance to get hands on with animals like monkeys! Emily held baby possum, a baby pygmy goat, and played with a baby baboon and chimp.  

Then we had a couple big trees taken down from our back yard.  Had a huge crane that lifted them over the house and into the front yard.  Was crazy! 
That, along with 2 soccer games, a birthday party in Delavan and Father's Day in Fort Atkinson made it busy. 
heading to Minneapolis next weekend....the fun continues.

Home Improvements

As always, there's a project going on at our house.  What would Mark do in his free time if I wasn't here to say "Maybe we should...."   Mark loves my use of the word "we."  Now in my defense, I put in a fair amount of blood, sweat and tears into these last few projects.  But, as always, Mark is the work horse and the skilled guy behind the job and I'm lucky to have him.
Anyway, during the cold WI winter months, we decided to tackle a project that we've always known we wanted to do- to give our family room (the room coming in from the garage) a makeover.  It started out with my idea of taking out an existing closet and turning it into cubbies and it went all the way to tile, carpet, paint and even new furniture!  Here is a pictorial timeline.

Fully functional and messy....but at least the mess is organized and in it's own spot.

Can you find the exhausted handyman in this photo?

There's more....

And now, since the weather has improved, we must move our focus outdoors!  We have been gradually working on making improvements to our deck and this years project is underway and big.

Our plan is to take out the large oak tree that is growing through the decking right outside the back patio door, remove the multi-layers of decking and rebuild as one level and a little less decking, but more functional.

We are currently in the demolition stage.  Tree removal will be later this week so I will be sure to post pics of that.  They'll be using a crane so it will be exciting and a bit nerve racking as they are so close to the house.

Notice that we took off the small walkway that ran in front of the window that overlooked the back yard.  Nice not to have that obstruction as you look out.  We don't intend to replace that and will just landscape back there.

 The tree that will be cut down is the one you see on the right side of this photo.  It's really really tall.  The concrete steps  and terraced landscaping were all covered up by the old deck...will be covered up again.

The view from the back door....really hard to not to have this access.  Sadie is the only one who "springs" in and out easily.  

Still not quite sure of the design for the new deck.  Have a few decisions to make.  Will be getting a couple bids and hope to have someone do it for us soon.  Our neighbor Robb is an architect and was kind enough to give us his thoughts on the project.  We aren't following this exactly and are looking at doing it in phases, but it's been great to have this plan to work with.




 The pool is open...not quite ready for swimming but hopefully we will be enjoying a beautiful deck before long.  Stay tuned for more updates!