Those Schmidt's are Trouble.... Part 2

So again we get the neighbors out worrying :) and for good reason! My truck of dirt came, very late. The worker that was in charge of it overloaded it too because the second, the very second it touched the grass. It sunk DEEP into our yard and the irrigation control box for our property. I immediately had my Mother In Law call my Father In Law to bring the tow truck. As soon as we saw the pool of water under the wheel where the irrigation box used to be... we called again and told him to hury.


Good to have a landscaper in the family... Even better to have a wrecker operator! Grandpa to the rescue screamed the kids!

These pictures arn't quite as good as they could've been... I'm actually standing in a hole here caused by the hitch on the back of the huge dirt filled truck. It tore up quite a bit of lawn. You might be able to see in this picture the broken sidewalk as well. Our neighbors lawn was flooded and some sand washed out from under the turf causing their perfect lawn to sink half a foot.

So Brent will be out tomorrow along with some city guys to fix everything. Looks like I'm not going to make it to the Camp Fire leadership classes :( Exciting week to say the least.

Those Schmidt's are Trouble!

So yesterday we had a visit from our neighborhood firemen. Apparantly when we burned off our tumbleweeds (which is the only yard waste you can burn) the smoke was so bad that the whole development was concerned about what was happening in our backyard. My next door neighbor said that people were lined up and down the street, barefoot even, trying to get close enough to see if it was a controlled fire. I'm sorry we caused such a commotion but with the dirt coming tomorrow we needed to get rid of the car sized nusances in the back yard.

The fireman suggested that we do our burns before dusk so that we attract less attenion next time and that we keep the fire small. And if we do a large burn like last night we should call them so when they get called at the station they can tell the worried callers that we are burning off tumbleweeds. Hopefully we never have to do a fire like that again, but you never know.

I took pictures before we started, but when the blaze got a goin' I was entranced by the dancing flames :) It took me a bit to start helping Kenny toss on more tumbleweeds.

Here's a few before pictures. All of these weeds are gone now.

Nic's Going Goth!

So Nic came downstairs this morning with black sharpie all over his nails. Needless to say I had a hard time getting mad at my newly converted goth son. So I took this incriminating picture of him instead.

(The sharpie has been confiscated)

Momma Gets Her Wheels Back

You know I don't really leave the house. I don't go anywhere... usually it just is too expensive to go someplace. Going out to eat is like 25-40 bucks and grocery or any other type of shopping almost always is over 50 usually more like 100. Not even going to mention the gas!

So most of the time I try to stay home.

Well this past week I've been without a vehicle. The car was damaged in a wreck a few months ago. We just finally took it in to be repaired. So Kenny got the truck, you know so he could go to work/school that sort of thing :) I've wanted to go out a few times, specifically to get the rest of the retaining wall blocks I need. (See there's over a hundred bucks right there) And we're in desperate need of food. (Another 150.00) It's so bad that kenny made a gravyless shepard pie last night. I guess it could've been worse if that box of instant potatoes wasn't still in the pantry.

Anyway I get my truck back today! WOOT! So I don't have to go anywhere. But if I want to, I can!

About the Yard
I've been warned that the truck will leave deep trenches in the lawn... I knew this already, but the way some of my friends were complaining about it I might be a little more scared. I had planned on just filling in the trenches with sand so that next spring the baby grass can grow up through it and fill in the damaged areas. I don't see why that wouldn't work. It really doesn't matter anyway. I have to get the dirt back there. We need 50 yards of dirt! I'm not going to drive the pickup 50 times into the back yard to get it there. Besides that driving the truck over the lawn 50 times is probably as bad as the big trucks doing it 5 times. Someone suggested I put down MDF board, but our property is quite long. It'll take quite a bit of money to purchase as much wood as we'd need. I think I'll stick with my original plan. Turn off the sprinklers today(so the ground won't be wet/soft), figure there's going to be trenches and plan on filling them with sand/soil and probably overseeding.

GuildWars Nightfall

I was pretty busy this weekend... weeding the back yard in preparation for the dirt delivery at the end of the week, birthday parties, dinner parties, Kenny's tremendous amount of homework and the Preview Weekend for GuildWars Nightfall.

The new game is going to be very cool. Great monsters, costumes, weapons and skills await us at the end of October. The bestest thing about the new expansion is the addition of a controllable henchman called a "hero". With each of the Hero's you control you get a small status menu with their skillbar and other information on it. You can pick the hero's next skill used and with the help of a flag system you can move your hero to specific areas of the map to either wait for a pull or to send a hero out to pull or to split perhaps a party of 5 that you control entirely to fight separate groups or to pin monsters in somewhere. It's a great feature, it makes solo gaming more feasable for those that just want to pop on occasionally and play a few quests. I love the new character Paragon, it feels somewhat like a warrior/monk type character with ranged attacks. The skills are all very well designed and fit into the game perfectly. I didn't get the opportunity to play a Dervish but Kenny seemed to like it a lot. I think I'll be very happy with both characters and I need to get a move on getting a prebuy game right quick!

Even though I didn't get too much game time in this weekend I did get enough in to make a small montage of clips taken during gameplay during the preview. I hope you enjoy it even if you're not gw's gamers :)