If it's not one thing, it's another

This morning I was at work joking around with my co-workers, doing my job when I got a frantic call from my neighbor telling me that water was spewing out into my front yard.
I made an equally frantic call to John and away I went speeding to my house.

I was thinking the worse while I drove. That our whole completed basement would be flooded and destroyed. Of course it would be because we had finally saved up our money after 2 years of things getting in the way to get the fish tank finished and I had scheduled to get it done just the day before. I also was planning on booking our NYC apartment today.
All of that was going to have to wait if the basement flooded because the thing about being on high risk home owners insurance (because of the break-ins) is that you can't really file a claim. You file, you get dropped and then your mortgage isn't happy and fines you until you can find new insurance. So every single penny would have to go towards fixing the basement. It's just our luck, I was sure that's how it would be.

When I pulled into the driveway John and our neighbor were standing in front of the house, but no water was shooting out so I took that as a good sign. When I walked up to John he was soaking wet and him and the neighbor explained what had happened.
When we bought the house John asked if there was anything we need to do with the sprinklers to winterize them. The home flipper said that he put in the system and that there were drains at the end of every pipe so they winterized themselves so we never worried about it.
Turns out he lied. The stop and waste valve apparently needs to be shut off every winter and because we didn't, it burst. John had to borrow our neighbors "key" (a long metal pronged rod) and stick it 4 feet in the ground to turn it off.

Luckily no damage was done to the house, but I'm sure that when spring time comes a lot of our sprinkler line will have to be replaced because of this. John's ecstatic.

In other news, we have this light switch for our basement family room. It was installed 2 years ago and we've loved it. So nice to be able to dim the lights with the remote control when we want to watch a movie.
Well yesterday morning when I got up to let the dogs out I noticed that the family room lights were on. I worried that John had fallen asleep on the couch so I rushed down to see. No John, so I clicked the switch to turn it off. They didn't turn off. They went through the dimming motion like they really wanted to, but then they just stayed dim. I messed with the switch and the remote for 20 minutes until I gave up and finished getting ready for work.

Later that evening I showed John and he messed with it for at least an hour. He flipped the breaker, rewired the switch, moved around light bulbs and it still didn't want to turn off. I told him to call the manufacturer, Lutron,  to see if they could help fix the problem.
After doing everything they told him to do with no luck they put him on hold. He came back up to tell me that he thought we'd just have to buy a new switch, but I wasn't having that. I told him that if they didn't offer to send us a new one then tell them too.
It didn't come to that though, when they came back on the line they said that the switch must be faulty and that they'd send us a new one.

We seem to be skating by our a slim amount of luck lately and I really hope it'll last. John and I usually seem to get the short end of the stick in life. I'm not being negative, I'm just telling the truth. So if life is going too good, which it has been lately, something bad will happen. I'm crossing my fingers that it won't!

Yard work

The last few weekends John has been a busy boy. He ran sprinklers to the parking strip and repaired SO VERY MANY through out the yard so that we could get sod down.

Last year we removed the rock from the parking strip and moved them to the side of the house.

We had hopes to lay down sod last year, but winter snuck up on us. Because we were planning on laying the sod last year I bought 300 crocuses to plant under the grass but it didn't get done so they sat in a box of saw dust in my parents' garage. I really hope they bloom next spring, but they might not since they're really suppose to be planted in the fall.

If they don't bloom I'm not doing it again since it would mean that I'd have to dig 300 tiny holes through the grass to plant the bulbs. Planting them before the grass is down is so much easier since we just scattered them throughout the area and then laid the sod over them.

The sprinkler heads and the crocus bulbs.



In case anyone is wondering where to get sod for a good deal, go to Aposhian Gardens in Magna. We got over 200 sq. feet for $80 where as other places wanted to charge us over $100. It's a run down little nursery, but you can't beat the prices.

New grass! I think it's a lot more inviting than the rocks and we won't have to spend hours weeding it.

We also contemplated on extending our driveway to make it two cars wide, the guy we were going to go with was going to do it this week so that meant John had to finish the fence. In the end we won't be getting concrete this week...or any time really soon...but the fence still went up. I'm so glad, I was tired of it sitting by the side of the house making homes for spiders.

Before: The small chain link and the dirt pile that will one day be a driveway.

After: The vinyl fence. So pretty, tall and white. The backyard's fence is finally all done!

Other summer projects planned: finish the back flower garden and find a way to keep the dogs out of it, finish the salt water tank and possibly a driveway...maybe...