Visit Prep

Well...today is the last day of my parents' visit. I'm getting up before the sun tomorrow to take them to the airport to catch their 6:45am plane back to Cleveland.

We've had a good visit! Despite the "incident" on the river and subsequent tube issues at Schlitterbahn, I think we've all enjoyed ourselves. I'm pretty sure my folks are going to enjoy the relative peace and quiet of the airplane after 6 straight days with the "boisterous" Brown kids.

So, since the visit is almost at an end, I thought I'd share some pics of the "pre-visit prep" that we were working on.

This is a douglas fir picnic set that belonged to my Grandpa and Grandma Clements (Mom's parents). Dad and I decided that it's probably about 40-50 years old. It had quite a bit of weather damage, etc. I took it over to my friend's wood shop, where he helped me plane all the boards down, then I added a couple coats of combination stain / poly. I'm hoping it lasts another 40-50 years because I really don't want to do it again.

This is the flowerbed in front of the house. It had a few out of control bushes and some grass-type mess at the front. We ripped all that garb out and added some Japanese Sky Pencil (along the wall), Silverado Sage (along the railing) and Lantana (in front). This was a major project because we couldn't decide what to do and because we had a water drainage issue to deal with (see picture below).

This is a picture of our new gutters. When we ripped everything out of the bed, we also took out the rocks that were dispersing the water. So we had to find a new way to deal with that water, or our fancy new plants would be washed out everytime it rained. So we got new gutters.

All in all - good visit! My mom even played "catch" in the pool - definitely out of her comfort zone.

Until next time - RevPhil