July Madness

Last July, I posted 3 times. Life just gets busy in the summer but let me say, this month has been some kind of record haha. It started when we went to Long Island for July 4th, and my car broke down on the way home. We had to get towed, I had to get an Uber for myself and the boys due to the tow truck not being able to take car seats and we landed at a Honda service place in West Warwick. The car was in RI for three days (we ultimately had to get a rental car to get home later that day), I managed to find time to drive back down to get it, it broke again on the way home, went into the shop up here and was out of commission another solid 5 days and then I finally just got it back last Friday, only to have my blinker light go out, which Jason had to go get fixed today, because my car needs to be inspected by 7/31 but we leave Sunday for Block Island and I do NOT want to get stuck with a ticket for that on top of everything else. <--- (That was supposed to be one big run-on sentence. See how out of breath I am?) Of course, now we want our money back from the place in West Warwick and it is just this whole thing. 

On top of that, after our driveway and walkway projects were finished, Jason and I decided (perhaps haphazardly) to put our house up as a Make Me Move listing/FSBO on Zillow. THAT has turned into another whole thing in that we now have an accepted offer with an October 9 close date. Can you believe it? Our house is, like, pending sale. So in addition to our week on BI coming up and my mile long pack and to-do list for that, we also been prepping for our home inspection (which is Wednesday) and the small task of figuring out where on earth we are going to move. Not stressful at all! When we get back from BI, I have approximately five minutes to get some sort of 4th birthday party together for Ashton (yikes), and oh, Alex qualified for Early Intervention last week in speech and language, so I've been scheduling the starting sessions on that front. Phew! I'm so sorry, anewnill.blogspot.com. You've been neglected! But all of that is why.

Because no post is complete without an umpteenth picture of the boys, last Friday we went blueberry picking at Smolak Farms in North Andover with Jackson and Adrian. We packed a lunch, headed into the fields, had an ice cream...it was a great day in which Ashton learned he could carry his weight in blueberries and Alex found out the green ones don't taste good. Here are a few of my favorite pictures, not in reader-friendly collage form like usual because that takes more time than I have right now ;) 

Sticky faces and naps in the car on the way home. Big win all around :)

Before and After: Walkway and Driveway

In the 2.5 years that we've lived in our house, I am so proud of all the big things we have done. Jason deserves about 95% of the credit, having been the builder of our living room bench and bookshelves, fireplace, master closet, and back deck, not to mention our kitchen updates, half bath and dining room (whoops, still no post on that) and all the other little projects here and there. I typed "before and after" in the search bar on the right and there are a LOT of posts!

Anyway, those linked above are biggies, as is when we had our entire house painted last year. But the exterior project, along with our recent new driveway and walkway, are in a slightly different category because we had to hire someone to do it. We had a bumpy ride with our painter, let me tell you. And as it turned out, a bumpy ride with our paver too. But finally last week, our walkway and driveway were finished. We lost a little bit of grass but Jason was out there with some seed in no time. What is it with guys and their lawns.

Anyway.

Side by side before and afters on the walkway:

And then other direction, from the top of the porch.

Panorama attempt.

And now, the driveway. Ahhhh, the driveway. I swear with every season the grass crept further into the old asphalt, the frost heaves got worse, and by this spring the whole thing was basically crumbling. Ashton just looooooved to grab his shovel and get in there. So did his friends.

I joked that we should get some money credited to us for having our own demo crew. Alas. 

There is a slight pitch downhill and the water drainage was awful, which meant we had a perpetual mud puddle at the bottom. 

The boys loved that too. 

So time for the big reveal (oooo!). What I am going to post first is the TRUE before, when we had just bought the house and had not even moved in yet. Those pictures compared to the ones today are pretty crazy!

Looking down:

Looking up:

And then with another newer "before" picture.

I can't believe how much fresher the new driveway makes our house look. This:

vs. THIS.

Sooo happy! The only remaining real money project is a new fence and we are still on the fence (ha!) about whether we will invest in that at all.

I called the town not long ago to ask the rules about putting a curb in to frame the strip of grass out front. They told us we could, but the entire street is scheduled for new asphalt, sidewalks and granite curbs by the end of 2016 (thank god, because our little avenue is a mess of patchwork and holes). That will be the last piece in getting our exterior all cleaned up! 

It's pretty weird, the fact that we have checked off so many boxes on our "to-do" list from when we moved in. Jason was pacing around the other day going, "NOW what am I going to do? I need projects!" I am sure I can think of something...