Today armed with Nick’s shear determination, we tackled the yard.  I haven’t really been feeling all that great the last few days but I thought it might be good for me to get out of the house and get my blood moving a bit.  The day started around noon when I finally finished getting dressed.  We got some lunch and then headed to my parents’ house to pick up a few more yard tools.  I say “more” because Nick had spent the previous evening at his mom’s house getting the bulk of the yard tool we needed.  So after finishing up my parents’ house we went to Costco to get enough water to get us through the day in the yard.  Finally at about 4PM we made it home.  As we were pulling into the drive way Nick starts taking about waving to a clown.  I gave him the furrowed eye brow look and asked “What?”  And as I asked I turned my head down the street to see a fully grown man in a clown suit walking out of the garage a few doors down.  Thus initiating our first official meet the neighbor encounter.  Clown guy is in the army and does charity work as a clown and his wife makes jewelry.  They just moved into the neighborhood too.  He seems really nice, but I’m not sure I would recognize him if he wasn’t in the clown get-up.

After we said good-bye to clown guy I start trimming the bushes with Nick’s mom’s electric hedge trimmer (LOVE IT!).  Nick seemed a little worried that I might be cutting them back too far.  I guess I learned my yard skills from my father; who’s philosophy is cut it down to the roots and you don’t have to trim again for another 4 months.  To appease Nick, I left a few leaves on the bushes.  A few yards away, Nick worked on the mesquite tree.  Though the tree does a great job of shading our front room window from the sun in the afternoon, it sure a mess of tangled branches.  Nick started to saw the branches of the tree back.  Our neighbor, two doors down on the opposite side of clown guy’s house, came over with an electric chain saw and told Nick he couldn’t watch Nick use a regular saw on that tree any more.  Chain saw guy also let us use his trailer to put our lawn clipping in because we have yet to get our green trash bin from the city.  After it got too dark to ensure we were not going to clip our fingers off or saw our arms off, we cleaned up the clippings and came inside.

After coming in side I kind of got in a cleaning mood.  I finished the dishes from dinner and swept the floor and then decided to try out one of the gifts from my bridal shower.  The Shark.  It is a steam cleaner for tile floors.  Nick helped me measure out the right amount of water to use and off I went.  It is so fun to use!  It’s like magic, you just move over the floor with it and then the spot is clean and even better….its dry within seconds!  YAY!!!  All in all, a good day.  I am exhausted, but it has been a good day!