I’m Yellin’ Timber.

It’s going down.  I’m yelling timber.  You better move.  I wet my pants.

(Side note : Brody thinks the words to that song goes like this .. “Swing your pockets round and round” instead of “Swing your partner” A toddler moment I never want to forget!)

Saturday morning Dan woke up with this fantastic idea to start cutting down some trees in our backyard.  My saturday game plan consisted of a target run for bread + milk (which it is monday and I have yet to still do) and do stuff around the house.

Most wives would roll their eyes, pout and say hell no to the idea of sacrificing their walk through those majestic Target isles, but I was drawn to this challenge.  We have had two quotes this past month on the tree work we needed done.  The first, was for 23 trees in our backyard, in hopes to clear out the random patches of trees and make room for grass.  Price: $3,000.

Second quote was for the exact same trees, two large trees in front of our house that were dying, and then they tossed in the idea of laying topsoil for us to start new grass seed.  Price: $9,000.

Listen – there are a heck of a lot of other things I can dream up to do with that money other than cutting down trees.  Re-do the kitchen? Yes please.  New tile for the bathrooms? Of course.  So the opportunity to attempt a few ourselves to even cut that quote in half seemed like the best idea.

Now – let me start by saying I am the Lorax – I speak for the trees.  Honestly, I am very close to a tree hugger – mary katherine gallagher style.  The last thing I want to do is harm a beautiful tree.  The reality of this all is that we spent $7,000 fixing the front half of our basement when we first moved in because of water damage + our overly shaded backyard was leading to a swamp land with each rain…

We need to protect our house – and our investment.

We have spent the entire summer in darkness.  Seriously – these little flecks of light you see filtering through the trees is as much as you will see on any given day.  You have to walk to the top of our development to realize it is a sunny day.  With that said, we have only had to turn on our air 2x for a day each this summer.  Our house is always cold.  So that we understand is a perk.  However – our moss (our grass) is dying by the day and we need to get sunlight moving in so we can one day have grass for the kids to play on.

Our backyard is large – so we knew exactly which trees we could rope and pull in the right direction.  Once the first tree fell I think our hearts fell to the bottom of our stomachs because the noise alone made us realize the magnitude of these trees.  But once we got over the initial shock we were able to bust through 6 more! 7 down total – and the rest we’re leaving up to the pro’s or Dan and another guy.  My strength was not my best asset to this project.

Don’t worry folks – the kids were carefully positioned in the backyard during this – in the house the majority of the time.  Hard hats were included in this project though just incase!

Our backyard right now looks like a storm blew through, over the next few weeks were trimming the trees and chopping for fire wood for the winter.  Which helps my heart – Owen cried big time when he saw daddy cutting a “baby tree” so that was enough to make us take a break.

I can’t wait to show you guys the before and after shots once we get this disaster cleaned up!

For now, our evenings have been spent lounging on our front porch, preparing for Brody to go to Kindergarten in just a few days and soaking up whatever sunshine we can get!