Service at Granny's

We survived our day of working at my Granny's house. I really love my Grandma, she's the only one I've ever grown up with and she has some good intentions. She's the unique kind of grandma that hurts your feelings by telling you that you'd look so much cuter 15 lbs thinner or if you did *insert anything* her way, it would be done so much better because she does everything right. So you see, a day of service at her house isn't exactly the way you'd want to spend a Sat. But with the family there it was much, much more enjoyable. I love my cousins, aunts and uncles!

Her house and yard are so far over grown and dead it's sad. The landscape and gardens were always so pretty when my grandpa was around and my grandma was still able to work and do it all. That's the problem really, she still wants all of it done but can't do it herself. Oh the drama.

~co-conspirators~

A month or so ago Kyle called and said he wanted to organize a 'cleaning up the yard party and maybe paint the house party' for the family that lives around here. It escalated to a much larger service project (to say the least). My Uncle Kent (looking amazing 100+ pounds thinner!) doesn't like to do anything on a small scale (ha) and once they found out the siding she has isn't sold anymore it turned into a 'let's reside her house and paint party'. A huge job but people, it needed to be done. I wish I could remember the joke about Kyle starting with a rock and it turning into an avalanche with Uncle Kent. I was laughing too hard to remember it.

I couldn't take one of the whole house because most of it had been demoed by Friday night but this is the lovely color. Light Blue Smurf house with Dark Blue Smurf trim. Seriously, no one in the family that I know of liked the color of her house. Well, except her. She was still standing by that choice as it was getting painted over. It was awful. Kyle had the job of helping her choose a new color, no one else wanted it. She wanted Mint Green. Or Aruba Aqua. Yikes. His job wasn't easy but he laid it out on the line and told her no crazy colors.

She does oil paintings and when they were going back and forth with colors, she told Kyle she was a painter and knew what colors went together. He lovingly (?) reminded her that we were painting a house not flowers and her choices were limited! I have no idea of the names of the new colors above but who cares about that. It looks SO much better. About 400% or so, ha!

Nathan loves to work outside. He wanted to prune every bit of her rose bushes. And rake it all up. And generally get in the way to help. We had 13 kids 'helping' us out and there were no injuries. Success.

These girls worked on her rock garden for 2+ hours. It was so bad. I got annoyed with a half dead rose bush and had my cousin rip it out. But unfortunately with it came a bunch of daffodil bulbs. Oops! Aunt Louise was so funny and kept getting more and more bulbs in her hands and not be too happy about it. They may or may not grow back and I'm pretty sure we don't care either way, ha!


I have no pictures of Dane's face or of Kathryn. They ran around all day long. A good day for them for sure. I sent Becky a bunch of Carter though. That kid cracks me up.

Preston in this fabulous vintage bouncy seat and not loving it at all.

I really do have the best cousins and aunts and uncles. I love my family and love that they are willing to help get things done even when the job isn't high profile. A big thank you to Milo and all the other spouses that helped our Granny out. Seriously I know there were at least 20 other places they would rather have been but they helped with minimal complaining and tantrums. And no fighting either. Only jokes and good times.