Rooted with Grace in a Yoga Shed: My Brandon is AMAZING

As we head into Summer we are preparing for one of our major house projects. I realized over the past 5 years Brandon has done so much for the backyard that I have not shared. Mostly out of his humility. But forget that today, this is his "My Hubs is AMAZING" post .

So I have before and after pictures of the different projects we conquered. Yes I used that word specifically because it has a 'q' in it. We were playing the ABC game on the way home and were stuck on 'q' for 20 min. Until I cheated and let us move on.

1st up, pool and rocks.

I was pregnant with Michael, and I hated that pool. It was broken, I saw my dogs jumping in it, destroying what was left of it, or what we fixed and drowning because they couldn't get out. This is a pain of a project.

First we had to get rid of the rocks. There are layers upon layers of rocks here. My mom, sister and her whole family came over for maybe the entire summer to pick up rocks? If it wasn't the entire summer it felt like it. We picked up stones and moved them, then happily all the rocks were transported to my Grandma's house who needed some landscaping. Her yard looks amazing.

Next, get rid of the pool. This is no ordinary above ground pool. They dug into the ground a good 5 feet, I never got a picture of the original hole, but all that dirt, plus more filled that hole. This took us months to do. Literally we decided to be smart and started in the fall. There are benefits of having a civil engineer for a husband. He calculated how much dirt we needed and how it would be compacted. This is what he does at work. So we ordered it, they delivered and we were set to go. Now as you can see that whole is HUGE, it also was like 4 feet deep. It was massive.

Now this is where my Husband is Amazing statement comes in. He wants to do all the work himself. Yes I help, yes we bought a great wheelbarrow. Now my sister and her family was all at school and work, so after work and on weekends he slowly filled up this hole, then to compact it he sprayed water on it. Layer by layer it went down. I admit I was not the most patient wife at this point, but his persistence is astonishing, and what he can accomplish is mind blowing, as you'll see in the next two phases.

OK so now, we have a flat ground.

Now what to do with it. OK I used my super focus and decided we needed a play structure. Not only any play structure but a large one, because this is a large area. So I chose a good priced, used, way out of town play set that we needed to take apart. Now Brandon did have help planned for this adventure, but that help got hurt that morning and we couldn't find extra. Luckily the owners of the play set were oh so nice and helped Brandon take it apart, but I could tell he could use some extra help. Happily there are people always ready to help at any time. I called up the Bishop of the area, we went to lunch, and got hold of the missionaries for the area. They agreed to come out and help take the set to the car. Mind you I couldn't help as not only our help got injured, but also my babysitter had something come up that day too! So I was trying to entertain the kids for hours in a stranger's home, who happened to home school and shared so many tips with me as I was getting ready to start Daniel the next year in KT.

The play set sat for 6 months - 1 year on the side of our house. Probably because Brandon hated the sight of the thing, and knew what a pain it would be to put it up. But as it was easier for him to put it up by himself using physics and engineering than waiting for friends to come over, he used my assistance and put this beast back together. Over a few weeks.

So the play set is done right? No. While you see happy grass and dirt what is hiding are burrs. Tiny little pokey balls that stab your feet where ever you walk. We had to hoe all the ground- Mom did that for us, then literally BURN every pile of weed that existed. Because if we did not burn it the burrs would open back up and spread again. Once we did that we put down a weed barrier and finished it off with putting about 2500 lbs of rubber wood chips down under the play set. Brandon carried each bag of 40 lbs to the back yard, and I got to lay them all around. If you notice in the picture there are two things missing... the palm trees. Ya.

The palm trees. These were annoying, had prickly palms and dropped a ton of fruit. Brandon pulled the first one out without too much trouble. It only took him a few weeks to get it out. But one closest to the house? We got that our just recently. Not only did it cost a shovel, broken pipes, but we couldn't do the 'clever' thing and hook a car up to it because of our back yard. So what did Brandon do? If you guesses Physics and engineering. You are correct. He got ready by digging and hacking (which was no small feat- and where I helped a lot), then he took tow straps and strapped up to the tree. I wish I got a video of this. It was amazing to watch. He literally tore a palm tree out of the ground, Root ball and all. I dont know many men who have tried and succeeded with that.

So here is one section, a very large section of our backyard, something we started 5 years ago and just finished this past month. It has been a great labor of love and a pain in the behind. But my Husband is Amazing. And I am sure that when you look back over the last 5 years you will see that your husband is amazing too.

Asking Brandon he said getting the play set was by far the hardest project, because of how hot it was (I think it was over 100F the day we picked it up and it took hours).