Yard Work Debacle, Part II - The Front Yard

So, not only was it my birthday weekend, but more importantly, it was a "get some more yard work done" weekend! We woke up a little later than planned on Saturday.

Friday night, Brian took me to our favorite Chinese food joint and then out to dessert.

Apparently, the food coma lasted through the morning - we had planned to get an early start on the day, but didn't wake up until the phone rang!

Through the week, we had finished most of the prep work in the front yard. We finished pulling out all the old, ugly, deep-rooted bushes that we wanted out, we cut out new flower bed outlines and made a huge mess!

Brian trying to get one of the old stumps out!

So back to Saturday, we drove out to Hillsboro first thing to pick up Lyle's truck and the rototiller!

We made a pit-stop at the Portland Nursery on the way home,

and picked up a lot of pretty, new plants.

Thank you to some of my attorneys at work who got me a gift card to the nursery for my birthday!

Check out the loaded truck bed!

Poor Brian had the tough job of fighting through the ROCKIEST soil ever with the OLDEST rototiller ever! My friend Cassie and her sweet girls like collecting fun rocks, but we did NOT have fun pulling all these little buggers out of the dirt! We filled three 5-gallon buckets with rocks and still have more piles laying around.

We were working so hard, we needed a Popsicle break!

(And, we decided after looking at these pictures, that we need a tan!!)

My poor dad even sacrificed his arms and legs to cut us a piece of his pampas grass to add to our yard! It was heavy!

Placing all the plants in the perfect place was tricky, you wanted to get the layout just right -

but deciding where to put all the plants was my favorite part!

It's starting to look like . . . the house isn't vacant!! :)

Yay, our yard is looking better and better!

But, the work is never done.

Now, on to the backyard!