Abby’s Saturday // One Hundred Thirty-Six

Highlight of the Week

The huge tree in our backyard is GONE!
We’ve had a love/hate relationship with that tree ever since we moved in.
We loved it because it was huge & beautiful. It provided a ton of shade & also provided a natural barrier between our backyard & the neighbor’s. It was really huge, so it had obviously been here a long long time – maybe even longer than our house?
But we hated it because in the spring it dropped these sappy/sticky pods everywhere and they’d get stuck to your shoes & in Abby’s feet, and into the house they’d come. In the summer, it dropped buckeyes (which if you don’t know are super spikey/sharp balls that encase a nut) which also got stuck in Abby’s paws and I was always so scared Brealynn was going to fall face-first into one! And of course, leaves in the fall simply come along with having a tree.

The tree was really close to our house (like touching our house) and we could tell that it was starting to get sick. There was a vine that had grown up into the tree & a section of the branches got leaves last year, but they quickly turned brown because the tree was dying. Also, because of how huge the tree was, we couldn’t seem to grow grass under it, which meant it was a huge mud puddle every time it rained.

So, down it came! The guy we hired to cut the tree down was excellent! He cut it down without even blinking (at least, that’s what it looked like from my perspective). He & his crew worked hard & did an amazing job at cleaning everything up – they raked our yard & the neighbor’s yard & even the back alley (where they were tossing everything into the chipper). I was super impressed! And sure enough: the middle of the tree was bad and some sections were beginning to get rotten – so I’m really glad that we cut it down now. If we had let it go for another few years, a heavy snow storm or strong wind storm probably would have brought it down for us and who knows where it would have landed!

Yes, This Happened

• Brealynn had her 2 year check-up this week! We switched her PCP to an office that is much closer to home & I really like her new doctor. We were driving about 30 minutes to get to her old PCP, which wasn’t terrible, but her new doctor is 5 minutes away! I really loved her new doctor’s personality, how he kept talking to her & distracting her the entire time since she was obviously nervous – he just had a great way with her & I am so thankful to have found a doctor I like!
• Are y’all curious how she’s been sleeping? I was giving regular sleeping updates for a few weeks and then just kind of stopped because we still hadn’t seen much improvement. And, we still haven’t seen much improvement. We’ve been trying to get her to sleep the entire night, without waking up, in her own bed for weeks now (months?) and it’s still a battle. Someday it will just click & she’ll sleep, right? RIGHT?
• We have friends coming to visit this weekend & we’re so excited to see them! However, I have a question: are we the only ones who have people coming, so suddenly a TON of little house projects get done that have been sitting on our to-do list forever? Please tell me we’re not alone! Suddenly, this week pictures got hung, rooms got rearranged, winter decor got taken down, cupboards and drawers got reorganized, and the bathroom got deep-cleaned. I think we need to have friends come to visit more often – I like the current status of my house!

Feeling Blessed

Our headboard & frame came! (if you missed the headboard/picture-hanging story last week, you might want to hop back HERE & check it out) It came SO fast, we weren’t expecting it until next week!

Here’s where the story continues to be crazy though: on Wednesday night, my Dad & brother came over to take a load of wood (from our tree) home. The headboard had arrived that day, so Stephen helped Derrick carry it upstairs & put it together. There was just one problem: one of the brackets that needed screwed together did not have any threads in it – meaning they couldn’t put the frame together!

And this is where the “feeling blessed” part comes in: my Dad was able to take the bracket & tap threads into it so we could finish putting the bed together. My Dad is just the best. I couldn’t help but think of other people who this might have happened to: what would they have done? Without those threads in that bracket, we could not put the bed together and having all the pieces but having that one tiny problem would have been so discouraging! I’m so thankful for a handy Dad who can help his (crazy) daughter out.

The bed is now put together & up! We’ve slept on it twice now – it feels so much more solid than just having a simple metal frame. I also went ahead and moved all of my artwork about 6 inches up the wall, so that there is room for everything to hang without hitting the headboard (again, if you missed last week’s post, you’ll want to go back and get caught up so you know why that’s significant). I was almost successful at pulling all of the Command Hooks off the wall, except for 3 of them – WHAT?! Command Hooks aren’t supposed to damage the wall – ever! Well, 3 of them pulled paint/drywall off with them – UGH – so I pulled out some paint & covered up the spots.

Seriously: what a project. I think I’m DONE hanging artwork/buying furniture for a LONG LONG time.