Backyard Makeover Miller Edition

The girls playing in the dirt in their undies

Having too much fun

All of their mud pies

The before picture, for 7 years

The first few rows of sod

Mattie helping

Chesnie helping

The after picture, beautiful and park like

It was a long week with a lot of disasters but I can say our backyard is beautiful. I haven't ever been able to say that. I love, love our pool but other than that our yard had much to be desired. I have been wanting grass for 7 years now as the girls only have concrete to play on. Thanks to both of our parents who gave us the gift of sod for our anniversary the girls have grass! (Thanks Mom and Dad and Ron and Carol!) They have already planned their next picnic, they want to have their birthdays out there and Matthew wants to camp overnight with the girls. I can't stop looking out my windows, I even turn the outside lights on at night so I can just get one more look.

Matthew has been hard at work for the last couple of weeks. I lent a hand here and there but he did most of the work. All of our spare time has been spent getting things ready. We live up on a hill which is great for the views and we have some awesome views, but bad when you have to bring things in the backyard which is below our house. We have about 10 very steep steps that we have to get down. We had to haul dirt and the sod down these steps. Both of us almost went tumbling over numerous times. The dirt was so heavy I could only get three shovels full into the wheelbarrow. I then decided to try using our trash can with wheels and a lid. I could get 10 shovels full and at least it wouldn't spill if it tipped. I have very sore muscles, blisters and callouses. There was lots of shoveling and raking and pounding out dirt clods. It is a long story but we were given the wrong dirt for topsoil. We had done all this work and the sod was coming the next day. It was only Matthew and I and we didn't know what we were going to do. We were able to get some mulch and haul it down the stairs and after packing down the wrong dirt, rototiller it all up again to add the mulch. On Friday night Matthew was out till 9:30 trying to fix the nightmare we had on our hands.

Saturday God showed us favor! Matthew's boss came and helped us. We weren't sure Matthew's truck could handle the weight of the sod. We had carried all the dirt in it and it really weighed it down and we had just spent over $400 on new tires two weeks prior. His boss has a bigger truck so he said that he would go pick it up for us. Matthew and his boss did most of the work while I entertained the girls who were tired of being ignored the whole week. The sod was laid by 1pm and it looks beautiful! Matthew and I patched up the ends, added some mulch around the back and some rocks and we have ourselves a new backyard. It looks amazing!