Spring Cleanup

The groundhog said that spring is on it's way, so we decided to pull out the garden gloves and rakes and do some cleanup. The rain and snow came early last year, so we had plenty of work to do. We had tons of old slimy leaves and hundreds of spiky balls all over the yard.

The boys were not thrilled when we gave them their first job - spiky balls. Last year they were excited to get paid for every bag of spiky balls they collected. This year they immediately started trying to negotiate the value of each bag. It was a noble effort, but we held our ground! This year Kaden has been the most motivated collector. It seems like he is always a bag ahead of everyone.

After picking up spiky balls the boys took a little break. Everyone was excited to be outside in the sunshine. Tahoe was in heaven. He was tired of being cooped up in the house all winter.

Once we were done with the spiky balls, we moved to the front yard. It was in need of a lot of love. The boys and I worked to get all of the old leaves out of the bushes while Chad did some trimming. When we were done, we were amazed. I don't think it has looked that good since we moved here!

One of the things that has been bothering me about the front of our house is our shutters. The paint has been chipping and sagging for a while. Last fall I found out the shutters are black plastic under the green paint. That was perfect since we wanted to paint the shutters black anyway. With all that in mind, I had Chad take our shutters down so I could power wash the paint off. I was hoping it wouldn't take all day long. I was pleasantly surprised. I was actually able to pull the paint off by hand. I did use the power washer, it was much faster. The paint came off so easily and quickly that I was able to finish the entire job (10 shutters) and get the shutters back on the house by early afternoon!