back at it—the new addition

after a little break (or a big break, whatever, let's not judge), i've decided that i really need to make time for doing this blog thing. not because anyone out in the world really needs to read my ramblings, but because i need to put them here. 
i've totally realized that i miss having a spot to go back and look at what was going on in our family life, what the kids were up to, what kind of projects i was working on (or more likely, that sam was working on), etc. i missed all that stuff and nonsense. i also realized that a lot of times, i was trying to compose blog posts in my head, but was never making the time to put them somewhere for keeps. they need to be somewhere for keeps. i need this.
so, i might as well get back to it. even in my regularly irregular way. because it's okay to be messy, particularly if all this is supposed to be a reflection of myself and what life is like right now, it's messy and cluttered. but it's also good, and totally worth remembering.
it's all okay. it'll be okay. and let's get on with it, already.

to start off with, last friday we finally signed the platt and paid for the empty lot on the south side of our house. right now it's basically a big patch of weeds with two large trees in it, but we've basically just doubled the size of our property. it seemed like it took forever to get to this point (lots of submitting of papers to the city, lots of waiting, needing to get surveys done, and mike attending several city planning meetings of one kind and another). but now it's basically ours, and we can get on with the actual, physical doing involved.
step one is going to be getting the trees checked out and having two trees removed from the back property line. i've always been a little wary of the big trees on the lot for the simple reason that they seemed to be constantly dropping large branches all over the place, and since i've never in my life been responsible for a large tree (or really anything bigger than a shrub), i assumed this wasn't exactly a good sign. so mike contacted a company that's going to check and trim the trees, and hopefully will determine that they're sound enough to leave in place. the trees at the back of the property seem to be fine, but they're right on the property line, and so are an issue when it comes to the fence we want to build around our new, bigger yard. once we have our tree issues resolved, we'll move on to step two, (hopefully) regrading.