Extreme Front Yard Makeover.

Matt and I are moving back to Florida next year, and we own a house that MUST sell.  We do not want to be landlords and have no desire to have a mortgage along with a rent payment in the event we don't sell our house.  While we were in DC, I decided it would probably be a good idea to fancy up our front yard for a little curb appeal.  I come up with ideas and plans, and Matt is always reeled in to help me execute them.  He has the much needed muscle that I so desparately lack.  So Saturday we spent most of the afternoon raking up old mulch from our flower beds in the front yard, and ripping out the black sheet weed "stopper" stuff.  After that Matt dug up two bushes that were so ugly and I'm so happy now that they're outta' there!  We bagged everything up and put it in Matt's truck to take to the dump the next day.  Sunday we woke up early because we had much to accomplish before going back to work on Monday.  We went to the dump and arrived to find the "yard work trash" section closed.  It would have been a huge bummer, if I wasn't married to a CRIMINAL!  We dumped our bags of mulch into a regular trash dumpster, and then sneakily drove to the closed section to drop off the branches and stumps of the two bushes he dug up.  I got seriously scared when a worker drove down the hill towards us, but was able to breathe a sigh of relief when he kept on driving.  We high tailed it out of there and made our way to Home Depot.  We purchased 60 concrete retaining wall stones.  I ambitiously decided while coming up with my lawn beautifying scheme that we needed a decorative wall around each of our flower beds.  The nice people of Home Depot loaded them up for us.  Before we could begin building our wall, we had to build a small trench for the foundation blocks.  We made the trench Saturday after removing all the mulch, so Sunday we had to measure, level and tamper the trench so it was even.  Thanks to Matt's muscle, we completed this part and then began to build our wall.  One the ends, the blocks were too long to fit, so Matt had to use a masonry chisel to break them.  Who knew I married such a talented sculptor?!  He did such a good job, and our wall looks so awesome!  We didn't want to tackle too much at once, so this coming weekend, we're going to complete the other side.  As hard as it was, we enjoyed completing this project together, and our really proud of the end result.  Here are some of the pictures of our progress:

Washington DC!

The following is the story of our vacation to DC....  Enjoy.

Our adventure began Saturday morning, March 12th, around 10:30.  Before hitting the interstate, we had to stop at Walgreens for some much needed tissues.  Thanks to Matt, I started out our trip with a severe head cold.  After buying a 6 pack of puffs plus, we were on our way.  I was armed to the teeth with advil, tissues, cough drops and sprite.  Due to my evil cold, I hadn't been sleeping well and by Saturday had been sucked dry of all my energy, so Matt did all the driving.  3 packets of tissues later, we arrived at our stop for the night, Harrisonburg VA.  Matt got some dinner and tried my best to eat some soup, but more than anything, I was just ready for bed.  Unfortunately, sleep wasn't on the schedule for me.  Sunday morning, we drove the rest of the way to our final destination, which was a Days Inn hotel, in Arlington VA.  We checked in early, dropped off our stuff, and headed out to Arlington Cemetery where we spent our first day.  I was still feeling awful and was completely exhausted, so we thought it best to not do too much the first day.  The weather was beautiful and the cemetery was so peaceful.  We saw the graves and burning lamps of JFK and Jackie O, and also were able to witness the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  The self control those men have is immense, and I admire them for what they do.... Because I know I never could.  We walked through a lot of the cemetery, and after about 2 hours, headed back to the hotel.  Once settling into our room, we notice upon further inspection, that I had booked our 5 night stay, in a complete... DUMP.  It was so disgusting.  The box spring on our bed had, what appeared to be, a blood or brown vomit stain.  The mattress sunk down so low, we could practically feel the springs.  The cable went out the first night.  The window was made of plexi glass and had a mean draft.  I took meds to help me sleep that night and was FINALLY starting to feel a little better.  I was resigned to the fact that this was our crappy hotel, however, Matt was not.  He lied and said he had to go back to work, and Orbits thankfully refunded 4 of our 5 nights at this hotel.  We found a much nicer, fancier, sort of pretentious hotel called Hotel Helix.  Matt and I felt a little out of place because the majority of people staying there were in business suits.  The staff was very friendly, but even still, it was weird.  Regardless of that, the room was so nice and CLEAN, the bed was so comfy, and the location was only a few blocks from the Dupont Circle Metro Station.  We thoroughly enjoyed navigating the metro.  Anyway, after checking into our new, fancy hotel, we headed back out to view some of the monuments.  Monday we viewed the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the WWII memorial and the Vietnam Memorial.  Here are a few of the pictures:

On Tuesday, we visited the Smithsonian Mansion and went to the Air and Space Museum and the Museum of Natural History.  These museums are HUGE with soooo much to see, so they took up the majority of our day.  We also strolled down to see the White House.  Couldn't get very close.... I even commented how I wished President Obama had been out on the lawn playing football or something....  He wasn't and we didn't see him at all during our whole trip...  He must be pretty important or something?  We ate lunch at the Pavilion and ordered room service that night.  Here are some of the photos from Tuesday:



Wednesday, we went to the National Zoo!  It was so much fun.  The coolest part was that the lion exhibit had 7 lion cubs.  They were all almost a year old, so they weren't really little, but still small and cute.  I wanted to cuddle with them and they'd want to eat me for dinner.  After leaving the zoo, Matt wanted to buy some new books, so after leaving Barnes and Noble downtown, we were able to see the FBI building, Ford's theater and Madame Tussad's wax museum.  Here are some pictures from the zoo and our adventures around town:

Thursday, we woke up early so we could get tickets inside Ford's Theater....  We got there around 10:00 and they had already sold out of tickets...  I was bummed cause I really wanted to see where Lincoln was shot, but happy because we had the whole day ahead of us.  It was St Patty's day, so we both made sure to wear our green in a city full of people wearing grey and black.  We got to see St Patricks church, saw the Capitol Building, the National Botanical Garden, visited the Holocaust museum and the museum of American History.  We also ate lunch at an Irish Restaurant called Old Ebbitt's Grill.  Matt drank Guiness and we enjoyed the sound stylings of an irish (or scottish?) bag piper.  Here are some photos from our day:

All in all, it was a great vacation.  We laughed so much and really enjoyed each other's company.  I think it's so important to get away from the hussle and bussle of "real" life to reconnect on a different level.  I'm so thankful to have been able to spend this time with my husband and am so excited for our big 2012 move-cation when we move back to Florida!  Woo hoo!