"The best laid plans" OR "How I spent my 4th of July"

Wow what a weekend!!! Clay and I booked WAY too many activities. I guess we figured we could fit it all in. So here's the run down. First of all we missed several activities we meant to hit. Instead of the Canada Day party we hung out with our friends Travis & Shelley who happened to be in town for the weekend. We had a lot of fun and wish they lived closer. And instead of 4th of July party we recovered from our home improvement projects.

The main weekend event was a big home improvement blow out! (I think Home Depot's stock increased due to the profit they made off of us.) There were two projects that had to be finished prior to the end of summer and start of the school year. We had to paint our bedroom and pour a 7'x5' concrete pad for a small shed in our backyard. Since the painting of the bedroom included the ceiling ALL of the furniture had to be moved out. Then we teamed up with our neighbors to paint our bedroom and their master bedroom (the idea of 4 hands being better than 2). When that was finished (on Sunday) Clay and I went to work setting up for the big concrete pour. This is where the plans went awry.

As it would turn out the "easy" part of the concrete was digging the hole and setting the form. We had figured on moving one sprinkler head but when we got down to it we had to cap one and move the other. That was a LOT more digging than we had planned. Once we had dug the form we realized we had grossly underestimated the scope of this project. First the base, Clay had initially bought 2 bags of gravel (5o lbs each) and one bag of sand (70 lbs). After a second trip to HD we laid down a total of 5 bags of gravel (250 lbs) and 3 bags of sand (170 lbs). Next we began to mix the concrete. Initially Clay purchased 4 bags of concrete (80 lbs each) but realized we needed more and went and grabbed 6 more bags. When we got near the end we went and bought another 4 bags!!! (if you're counting that's 14 bags). In the end we mixed (by hand) and poured 1,120 lbs of concrete. Yes folks, you heard that right :)!

In the end... well we finished! The room is painted (and furniture moved back in) and the concrete pad turned looks GREAT! YEAH for weekend projects! I hope everyone else had an equally productive and fun holiday weekend.