Nick and Kate arrived a day earlier than originally planned - the weather down in LA just wasn't warm enough for them! - on Thursday evening and gave them a day to get themselves organized before putting them to work on taming our backyard lawn.
To be honest, I had tried to put them to work on Friday only to discover that after 4 or 5 years of not being used I couldn't get our lawnmower to start. And to add insult to injury KMart didn't have any paddling pools, either. Bummer. Undaunted, we drove over to Visalia and Leslie's Pool Supplies where we managed to score a rather a spiffing 8' across inflatable pool and then celebrated with dinner at Applebee's and dessert from Baskin Robbins.
I got up early on Saturday and went to Home Depot and bought a brand new self-propelling lawnmower - it was going to cost nigh-on $100 just to get our old one serviced, and given the size of our new back yard we really need something a little extra grunt - so that we could get going on taming the weeds and cutting it back to a reasonable length. And just like that, what with Nick seemingly needing to do something physical every other half an hour or so, we were suitably tooled up for our 3 hour session of horticultural activities.
One inflatable pool - $70
One self-propelling Toro lawnmower - $400
The satisfaction of taming a wild lawn - Priceless
We'll be at it again just as soon as N&K wake up after their day of labor and eating/drinking at Chuck's last night.
