2nd stage of yard work

Mark has successfully removed the bushes from the side of the house. Now he will remove the stumps and then we are going to transplant a couple of other items to this area, so that we are not losing all of the vegetation around our home. A lot of work by Mark and NOPE I did not help with cutting, but I did move some smaller branches of these bushes.

With Land comes WORK!!

We have had our home now for a year. With this almost one acre comes work. Mark wanted to have some land so that he could do what he wanted to accomplish. WELL, with this land comes work. Mark loves being outside and working. The work will be on going all the time, but as we go, we try to see what it might look like in the future. Mark is cutting down the bushes on the Stoker side of our home. We will pull out the bushes and their roots and then we are thinking we will French Drain around the house and then we will replant plants in this area that will not grow as quickly as they have. The first set of pictures is when we first moved in. We trimmed the bushes back straight across and with the second set of pictures you can see that the bushes have grown quite a bit. Should be fun and it will look nicer when we have fully accomplished what we want to do.

Round 2 for Mark's POND

As you can see, Mark is putting together another option for his pond idea. He really does DO A GREAT JOB on the projects that he does. You can see in the previous postings what he was thinking about, BUT, this one has more thought and a bit more easier to keep up. This is Mark's reward for still having to cut the grass with a push lawn mower. The pond will about 3 feet deep and Mark is going to place some heavy duty black plastic in the bottom of the pond and then make a ledge around the entire pond, so if I want plants in the pond, then we can do that. The paving stones going across is going to be able to support a riding lawn mower that Mark will get eventually. The project will be completed by sometime in the spring of 09.

Joe's Wedding

On September 20, 2008, Joesph Kent Jackson got married. It was a BEAUTIFUL Wedding and Kelly made a most Beautiful bride, but all of the family looked wonderful and happy. They had beautiful weather and everyone appeared to be having a good time. It was fun talking with people that I had not seen in years and then to see all of the Jackson young adults and catch up on their lives and what they have been doing. Over all, it was a wonderful time to be had by all.

Hott family update

Mark and I went to HI with two other couples that we knew and took a cruise. If you want to see HI and several different islands of HI, that is the way to go. It was beautiful. On our last day on the islands, 2 of the couples decided to rent scooters and go and scoot around and out to a couple of water falls. We did not make it out of the parking lot. I told mark that I did not get a good feeling about doing this activity, but Mark wanted me to at least try. I have never been on a scooter, motor cycle, moped or anything of that sort. I crashed their scooter, tore myself up really good and told myself that I will never again try something like that. I will walk, or rent a car before I do that again. I had a big GOOSE EGG on my chin and bruised myself up something awful. I cannot remember how i got back to the ship, or to my cabin. I can remember telling mark to make sure that I took 3 aspirin when we got back to the cabin and 2 every 4 hours until we landed back in Alabama. Hence forth, I did not have any blot clots any where, but I did break my right hand and had surgery on it last week and I am off for a while until it heals like the dr wants. You can see the BIG GOOSE EGG on the face. I have to say it is not that cute, and I still have a rather nice size lump under the skin. Oh well, what do you do when you are out having fun!! The other pictures are just a few of all the pictures that we took between all three couples. Yes the water is that blue. It was a GREAT trip.

More construction for Family Room

Here are some additional pictures of our family room. Mark has begun to lay the floor in the family room and it looks nice. Mark is not happy with the way it turned out, but it is concrete under the wood flooring, so it does not want to lay like what Mark wants it to, but it really does look a lot better than the blue carpet that was there and my nose is liking it WHOLE lot better. We are undecided about what we are going to do with our bedroom about the flooring, but most likely it will have the wood flooring as well.

Family Room Refurbishing

Mark has decided that we are going to complete the one end of the house, the one that we mainly live in. SOOOOOO Mark has begun the family room. A total refurbish job is going on. From ceiling to floor. We have several pictures of the wild animals that we saw in South Africa and that is what we are basing our family room on. Walls are two toned. Yes you are seeing orange!! NOT a bright orange, but a Burnt Sienna color of orange. The other color is like a earthy tone of Taupe. The floors are going to be wood with a rug on the floor, when we get that far. The brick wall that you see in the pictures is no longer there. That is where Mark is putting the stucco on them. It looks so nice, in my opinion only. We will keep you updated as we proceed with our projects. Mark does good work and he enjoys seeing the vision come together.