LAWN!

Pictures are where its at, so happy, so excited, its all coming together! Enjoy. (as usual its "well documented")

Had some extra for the back yard, already had a little patch from a co work extra BUUUT it still got doubled!

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY! =)

ugh its finally over!

I know, I know it has been forever! Expecting to see our beautiful yards, concrete patio, vegetable garden ect ect? Sorry, not much has changed and here’s why…

Recently after all this was done we were super motivated to just slam through it all get the yard done and just do it! Well the next day we get a lovely letter in the mail saying that “someone” had complained about our fence and that it wasn’t set back as far as it’s suppose to be. We frantically look back through our paper work and realize that yes, we indeed did read it wrong. We read the fence had to be 15 feet back from the street  side property line which we read as from the street since we have to maintain the sidewalk and the area between the side walk and the street, when in reality the fence has to be 15 feet back from our side of the side walk, our beautiful  new fence is about 7 ½ feet from our side of the side walk. (Funny side note, the old fence was only 12 feet from our side of the side walk.) Oh geeze really?! So we called an advice line and I’m sitting there nearly in tears of the thought of ripping out our gorgeous fence talking to her explaining that yes we read the legal jargon wrong but the “someone” was just a person who didn’t like us and just wanted to cause trouble for us. I’d like to really get in to how I feel about them but trying not to and trust me through this process it has been hard. As a human I wanted to cuss them out and beat the snot out of them but I knew that wasn’t going to help and they live in so cal now so not very likely. But if this Rusty house has taught me ANYTHING its to keep calm and do what you can when others try to mess things up and if you can keep a calm head and not have hatred in your heart and mind things will work out. Just another trail I assume. Character building perhaps? Anyways back to the story… the lady on the phone was very sympathetic but basically told me I just had to get a field officer out there to check things out. So I did. The officer was awesome, way down to earth, great guy! Can’t sing his praises enough! However he didn’t have the power to just right it off because 7 ½ feet is a big difference from 15. He told me I had to apply for a minor use permit to try to get pardoned. He also confirmed that yes it was our lovely neighbors on Valley West and their claim was the fence was a visual hazard for them backing out… please check out the picture and tell me if our fence is the reason they "can't see".

 

 Well when I talked to another lady on the phone about it she said it was going to cost about $2400! Oh man it was a good thing I was sitting down at the time. Shoot me! Then in talking to my dad he was saying a fence permit is more like $1800. Ok still not something we can afford and we had to pay it with the possibility of not getting the permit with no refund! So I go in to apply and the lady says it will be $365. Ok so blessing right there. If I had just gone in and heard that number I would have died but after expecting to have to pay over a thousand it was a relief! She said we should get something in the mail in about 2-3 weeks. Come week 2 I was hounding the mail truck every day, aaaaand week 3 oh and we were entering week 4! I was going crazy butterflies in the stomach waiting for the mail, terrified to check the mail and livid when it STILL wasn’t here! Finally one day a wonderful lady from the city called Keith. She said that our application was still being looked at. She came out and saw the fence, it was beautiful and was saying that if we make plans to modify it to “show were trying to fix our mistake” it looks good to those in charge. Some of her suggestions though, oh man, cut the fence down and then put up lattice to make up the difference, cut like windows in the fence… I mean really?! And then she said that perhaps just turning the corner next to our neighbors from a 90 degree angle to a 45 would work. Also they were going to send out a letter for our neighbors within a 400 foot radius to see if they have anything to say about it and then there will be a meeting at city hall regarding our fence. Seriously? So a few days later the notice went out. Thursday August 15^th at 10:30am was the meeting. And then we had to wait 10 days after that in case anyone disagreed with the verdict but if they did they would have to pay over $400 to get it looked at again. A couple days before the meeting her and I were emailing and she said that the neighbors had come in and were “relatively pleased” with the purposed plans. Ok did they REALLY drive all the way up from so cal like LA area just for this? Or are they close with their renters and just sent them in? We will probably never know but it does make you think. So skip a head I drop Naomi off at a friends house and head over to city hall with Paige. There were a few people in there and there were 8 cases being looked at. We were number 6. I sat next to a lady trying to get approval for a deck. In the end ours came up (and the approval officer and our planning manager –both females- were excited because since they came in they had been waiting to talk to and about miss adorable Paige) our planning manager summed up the case, I had nothing to add, no one was there to contest our fence even though I was half wishing our neighbors would have shown up. And the approval officer was more than happy to approve our fence as long as we 45ed that corner to them. She kept commenting that the fence was just beautiful and that we were making the neighborhood better by it. It did, however, take all my self control not to mention that their accusation of not being able to see because of our fence was bogus because of their bush, which I had the picture in my purse just in case. I was hesitant posting this because we aren’t totally in the clear but we pretty much are, our neighbors are pacified and no one is going to pay over $400 to dispute it. The fence is wonderful and I can’t tell you how many people compliment and praise us on it and everything else we are doing. Not to pat ourselves on the back but I just don’t think we are going to get disputed. So NOW we can finally start back on the back yard. It just time to get motivated again.

 

 

On another note Naomi is being wonderful, she amazes me every day on what a good girl she is. She adores Paige and is getting more and more in to her as she gets bigger. The other morning she say Paige a night time song that I sing to Naomi perfectly and she even substituted her name for Paige’s it just about brought me to tears. Every day she comes to me and goes “what are we doing today?” still says the craziest things and still amazes me at the things she can do, climbs a rock wall at our park like a rock star. She pretty much picks out both hers and Paige’s outfits every day. She is learning to ride a bike and today, when Paige wakes up, we are going to look at helmets so she can ride out side and not in our front room haha. Another thing she insists on doing every night when it gets dark is load up and walk around the neighborhood as a family, we didn’t start it she asked one night and now it’s an almost every night thing. Very sweet, I personally love it.

 

Miss Paige has been stealing our hearts lately! Her personality has been coming out so much now that she isn’t teething for the past few weeks. She had 4 come in all at once, not a happy week, and on top of it the weather was really hot. There is another one that should break through in a few weeks maybe but as of now she has 7, 4 on top, 3 on bottom. She has started crawling as of the 3^rd of August and everyone is excited over that! She is detailed oriented and sensitive as in if you tell her no firmly or growl at her too intensely she starts crying. She babbles like crazy says “daw” for dog but then likes to call everything daw but you can tell she knows what a dog is. She says “dat” a lot and “du alt” a lot too. She loves to growl and play with Naomi as much as she can. She’s stoic and serious around people for the most part but she has a great laugh and smile with her one little dimple.