W.O.W. transformation!

W.O.W. stands for WEEK OF WORK! and it was seriously a week of work! Chris took off the first week of October. Originally it was so we could go on a fun vacation - but - it changed into a week of projects! The city built a new fence for the canal that is right behind our property. We already had a chain link fence up - and the city already had a barb wire fence up behind our chain link - so we already had two fences to catch all the weeds! Now - with the new fence, there were three fences and about three feet of area that we couldn't reach - so the weeds were getting out of control. We decided it was time to do something! We took down our chain link fence... about 100 feet of it! Do you know how heavy chain link is??? Holy cow - it's heavy! Eric helped every step of the way - digging and helping and just being outside. Chris and I took turns with keeping Andrew happy since Abby was in school and couldn't help with that and Eric didn't want to miss out on the action! :)
Here is a picture of the fence before taking down the extra fences...
Our old fence... we are still 'discussing' what we should do with this old fence :)
After we took down the old chain link, we had to dig out all the poles and take down the barbwire fence. The barbwire wasn't too bad - but the fence underneath the barbwire was buried about 2-3 feet - so we had to dig that up the whole way too - that was a LOT of work!
You can kind of see how deep we had to dig to get this one out!


But after taking out the fences, seriously it looks SO NICE!!! The fence is beautiful - and it gave us an extra couple of feet to enjoy. It made our yard feel even bigger!! Yes, much nicer looking....

Andrew was a good sport most of the time - watching and trying to eat the grass....

After we finished the back yard, my goal was to clean up the front flower bed. I've let it go to waste this summer... I could only handle the garden this summer with weeding! So - the roses went WILD!!! I had to get them out of there - I was so sick of them not blooming and just going crazy.
So I dug them all out and this is what I ended up with... a whole lot of dirt! So - Chris and I went to J&L Garden center - and asked for help. A nice worker looked at our pathetic picture and helped us come up with....
THIS....


I love our new flower bed. It looks so fresh and inviting. Some of my favorite plants that he had us put in are the boxwood bushes, the coral bells, the Japanese maple, and the hosta plant (my most favorite). We were seriously only looking at putting in a few bushes or something - but I think this is much nicer looking and I can't wait for it to all fill in!!! :) It was more work than I was anticipating - but so WORTH the EFFORT! It was a great week of work - not a whole lot of play, but Chris did get a day of golf in. He took Eric with him on the first 9 holes, then I met him at the 10th hole to trade kids and Abby got to go with Chris. They both loved watching him play and keep begging him to take them again! What a fun memory!!

I'm glad that week is over... now, onto all the other projects on my to do list LOL....