AWESOME weekend.

you know i don't use capital letters much. so you know when i do, it's serious. and believe me when i say it was an AWESOME weekend.

all day friday i waited impatiently anxiously for the arrival of my momma, my timmy and tucker. and then, they got here. and i was soooo happy to see them! i hadn't seen them since christmas! not. ok. and they had yet to see our new house, of course.

friday night, we all headed downtown to watch the lookouts play. the game was rather uneventful and it was getting cold, so we actually left the game early. the lookouts didn't win, anyway. we grabbed some dinner at chili's {despite the disaster that that was} and then we all crashed at home, preparing for the busy day on saturday.

saturday morning was a bright and early one. i've been waiting and waiting for mom and tim to come give us some advice on how/what to plant in our flower beds, they are pretty much master gardeners. basically, after working from around 9 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon, we took the front of the house from looking like this:

to this:

it might be a bit hard to tell what's changed. so let me break it down for ya.

before:

after:

we started the morning by extending the flower beds out from the house by a foot or two. also adding about 30 cubic feet of soil to the beds. we think when they were preparing to put the house on the market they dug up some unruly plants out of the beds, taking the soil with it and leaving the ground sunken and sloping towards the house a bit.

then we moved the two rose bushes from the right side of the house over to the left, where the giant tree won't block their sun and hopefully they'll grow big, like the two that are already over there.

then we added two new azaleas to the right side, to replace the roses. now we have a red, white, and a pink azalea. we also moved two firepower nandinas from the retaining wall planters to the right side of the house. hopefully they'll have more room over there to grow.

and although that existing pink azalea looks a bit rough currently, that's just because she's almost done blooming. but when she is in full bloom like she was the other week, she's a real beaut.

we also mulched the slope down toward the wall, eventually we'll plant some ground cover type plants. the closest little planter space in this picture is where we moved the nandinas from.

remember when austin and i moved into the rental house and mom sent me some daffodil bulbs from her garden in virginia? no? well, trust me, it happened. and i didn't want to donate those to the rental house {i'm stingy like that}, so we went and dug those up and moved them over to our new house. we put them in big groups between the azaleas and the nandinas on the right side of the house. we put some pretty little hyacinths there, as well.

the left side isn't quite as full. yet. other than moving the roses and adding soil, we didn't really mess with what's there.

there are a few randomly placed daffodils, some grape hyacinths {mom taught me that's what they are!} and maybe some tulips in there. it's not prime time for moving daffodils, so for now we'll let sleeping dogs lie {does that saying apply here?}. once it's a better time for moving the daffodils, i'll get them out from right under the rose bush and put them between roses instead. we also think we found where the sellers dumped all the stuff they dug up from here, as we found a giant mound of dirt with tons of daffodils growing in the woods out back. i plan to put them back in the flower bed where they belong!

we also worked hard to get some of the honeysuckle vines out from the holly trees on the side of the property, where we worked the other week to get it off the fence. that stuff is a mess. and we got to the root of the poison ivy problem over there {i'm so pun-ny}.

gloria donated these little planters to our front porch steps and mom and i added some succulents to them.

oh, and mr. tucker was there to supervise everything.

we didn't let him supervise too closely, though. considering how helpful he has been with mom's tulips back home.

after we were all completely worn out from digging, planting and getting all muddy, we had austin's parents down for a little cookout.

clearly, we cleaned up a little bit. although i think i still have dirt under my nails. don't judge.

on an only somewhat related note, you can see in the picture above our easter door hanger i made. pinterest inspired, of course.

unfortunately, as with all good things, my awesome weekend had to come to an end. mom and tim had to head back to virginia. i considered lying down in front of the car in protest. instead i just cried as they drove away. true story.

hopefully it won't be another four or five months before i see my family again, because i sure do miss them already. and i know everyone seems to think their parents are the best, but everyone else is wrong. because my mommy and my timmy are the best for real. i can't thank them enough for everything they've done for me. i love you guys. and i miss you. come back. now.

please?