Bye Bye Oleanders! and the Christmas Stocking Saga

Sorry its been so long since my last post. I've been running around getting ready for the holidays and settling in to my new job at work.The house has significantly less boxes these days. I'm trying to find a home for all of our things. A few pictures have made it on to the walls and its looking more like home everyday!

Our latest project was getting rid of the oleander stumps. If you remember, Nick took a chainsaw to all of the oleanders in our backyard, but in order to put in a new fence, we needed the stumps out, too. Sooooo, we rented a backhoe!! Nick happens to own a backhoe and he is really great with that thing! Check out how large those darn stumps were:

Look how much fun he's having!

Dan (Sr.) came over to give us a hand, and he lent us his dump trailer. Thanks Dan!!! I went to the dump with Rob, and all you have to do is push a button and the stumps slid right off!

This is the dump. Looks like a dump, huh? Some guy looked at me a little funny when I was taking pictures. Doesn't everyone take pictures at the dump?

So now our backyard has a lovely temporary fence and it looks so much bigger without those oleanders!!

side yard

Now, the Christmas Stocking Saga: I really love to decorate the house for Christmas. This year, I was especially excited to hang our Christmas stockings on our fireplace! I was able to put out a few decorations and as I went through my tubs of Christmas decorations I kept an eye out for those stockings. After going through ALL of the Christmas bins, NO stockings. I found the stocking holders, the ornaments, the lights, etc. I tore through all the bins again and NO stockings. Finally, this morning I was cleaning and wrapping presents. I went back to the storage area and I noticed that one of Rob's bins on the top shelf had red tissue paper in it. Hmmm. Sure enough, that wasn't one of Rob's bins- it was a Christmas bin!! Stockings have been located and hung!! We are ready for Santa!!!

I think I need to add some greenery or something, but I'm just so happy to have located our stockings!! Merry Christmas!