Open Houses and Landscaping

For those of you that don't know, we have a young lady living with us who is a senior in high school. Obviously, she is about to graduate. Her mom died when she was 8, her dad lives downstate and she has been raised by her older sister most of her life since her mom passed away. For career reasons, her sister moved to Kalkaska at the beginning of the school year, which is about 45 minutes away, and for financial reasons and ever-soaring gas prices it was just going to be way too hard for her sister to drive her back and forth to school from Kalkaska everyday, but Briana wanted to finish her Senior Year at Concord Academy Boyne. After praying and discussing it, Jeff and I decided to let her come live with us for the school year.

So, here we are, at the end of the school year. With her dad and sister living so far away, it just isn't feasible for them to give her an open house up here, near where all her friends live, so I decided I would give her one.

I have two older kids who both graduated from high school, but their open houses were at a park located between Boyne and Petoskey. The reason I mention this is because we are having Briana's at our house, and our house is no where near ready for lots of house guests!

Our son-in-law, Ben, used to do landscaping, and offered to do spruce up our yard, for a reasonable fee as they could use some extra money right now themselves. I took him up on the offer!

Boy, what a huge job!!! Our yard is not flat, and is not pretty, but it is fairly big! Jeff and I recently invested in a lawn tractor because it is just too time consuming to mow our large lawn with a push mower. And last year we purchased some weed and feed, but never used it.

Ben came over the other night and we discussed some options and ideas. Today, after he got off work, we all met at Lowe's to purchase everything we will need to make my lawn beautiful! Not to mention, he, Jeff and Brandon cut down this big, ugly tree in our yard that just drops its branches all over our yard! That was a huge undertaking in itself. Today, Jeff and Brandon finished cutting up the large tree and will keep the wood for our bon-fire the night of Briana's open house.

We purchased several flowering shrubs for the west side of the house and the front. They will be so pretty! And we got some landscaping timber to make some flower boxes for the front of the deck, in which we got some lily's to fill it with.

Ben will mow and weed and feed the lawn and work on getting rid of the old, ugly shrubbery and planting the new. I can't wait. I will be sure to take lots of pictures when it's all done!