When did hard work become wrong?

So my hubby and I have been having issues with the town. We are different and have less money then most around here. Instead of giving up we struggle and fight. One issue has been the height of our lawn.. yes this is an issue.. why? because our neighbor mows as low as he can every 3 days. We can't afford this and hate the way it make our lawn feel. I'm an old fashioned girl and love running through the yard in bare feet during the summer.. it's no fun when the grass gives you splinters!!

We have been given a riding lawn mower that was about 7 years old and had "quirks" and a push mower that a friend found for free that he tinkered with. So basically both were well used.. well this year they have had one issue after another.

I'm tired of the issues, the money spent to fix them, the time wasted trying to get the right part only to get the wrong one 5 times in a row...  So why not use a mower that basically has so few parts it won't break?? and how would we go about finding one like that...

Well after a looooong talk with my hubby we decided to see if his parents still had his grandfather's old reel mower. The first words out of his dad's mouth was.. "you can't use that to mow your lawn, you live on 3 lots!"  Needless to say we now have it.

Yesterday, hubby and I mowed our lawn with the old fashion reel mower. I will never go back to gas! Yes, we have a huge yard and since we live on  a corner there is a lot of parking to mow... but I loved it! The exercise was wonderful and the muscles in my arm felt well used..

Everyone driving around town wasting gas slowed down to stare.. even the mayor took the time for a drive by... we just kept going enjoying our time with the kids working as a family. After a while one guy stopped and asked if we had actually mowed the whole yard "with that!?"  Hubby's answer was yes. They had a nice conversation and I think my hubby may have made another friend. But the man said he couldn't let us mow with it, he would look around for a push mower...

Even my 5 year old can do it! And loves it!!

Mows great look at hubby go!

Bitty got stuck :) It get's stuck on sticks :)

Why? Why is it an issue? Back in the day EVERYONE mowed with a gas-less mower... why is it such an issue now? I don't want to waste money by using gas to mow the lawn.. I can use my energy instead. We also have 3 kids who wanted to help mow and they all can with this one..   I don't get it.. I like hard work.. it's rewarding.. I feel accomplishment that I never felt while pushing a button on the computer.    We had a wonderful rewarding experience with our kids and hope to have many more.. teaching them the value and rewards of handwork!  Check out our pics!

Spring has sprung around the house!

I am running a bit behind on my Spring things to do list. We really didn't get to start on much of my list until this month so I'm a bit behind.

I have finally reached Blog Spring cleaning, mainly because it's so wet outside and continues to rain that I'm skipping ahead on my list.

One of my big Blog cleaning things to do was to fix the name/title on the top...  So now you can see my "Spring Title" I hope to have pic's with my title in them for every season we go through :)  Remember I said "I Hope" :)

My other 2 goals, organize the Tags and put up more pictures. It's all well and good that I describe everything but  I need to get pictures up so you can see what I"m describing.  Last year we didn't have a usable camera for much of the year, but we do now.  So please bear with me if something seems out of whack over this next week. I hope to have everything Spring Cleaned... but if there's a break in the weather... you know where I'll be :)

Animal Update

This is the first time that I can really say our Christmas presants are still going strong 2 months after Christmas. The tank and the animals in it have brought us and our guests great joy. The kids have learned a lot about Tree Frogs, Fire Bellied Toads, Salamanders and Anoles. We have had 2 fatalities. 2 Tree frogs literally bloated up and died. They belive this was just caused by age of the animal,( they don’t always know the age of the frogs they get in.) 

We about lost 1 Anole. Snowman was our first anole and it seems that he was a solitary animal. He decided if the crickets didn’t come to him that he was not going to go and find them. We found him shrinking and barely moving at the bottom of the tank on our weekly check.  This was very scary for all of us. Corey and I took him in the next day, the store was really great and gave us a refund… not that we cared.. there was an animal we loved fading fast. 

One of the guys  (we’ll call him C) who we talk to every time we go in and has helped us get our big tank set up took Snowman home, kept him safe and eventually he plumped back up.  C put him back in a tank and sold him to a family with a little boy who knew they were only going to have one Anole. He told the family that he was named Snowman and the little boy loved the name. So Snowman is in a good place and is still Snowman :)

It’s wonderful that they allowed us to follow up on Snowman, not just left him to die or wouldn’t tell us what happend they kept us in the loop the whole time. It’s wonderful working with a local non chain store pet shop!

So here is updated picture of our critters.

The Photographer www.timbrya.com

Photography is important to any wedding.. and yes those beautiful pic's of those special moments will stay with us forever..... but.... think before you get a photographer... do you like those staged photos where everyone looks like they have a stick behind them??

I sure didn't, Corey and I wanted fun and carefree, someone who would understand and get into our theme who would make it about us and not everyone else...

The other issue we wanted to tackle was the cost... Do you know that photographers will charge you loads and then not even give you the negatives??? We looked at a friends picture's.. they were all staged... they were on a dvd but password protected so they couldn't copy them... they spent over $2,000 just on the photography not to mention the photos.... Um nope we couldn't afford that...

What we could afford was a guy who took the pictures (free engagement photos) and gave us the disk.. yep all the negatives... and you guessed it under $1,000

If you live in Central IL. Please check Tim out, he is an awesome fun loving guy and his pictures speak volumes... just check these pic's out...

Tim found a close by place that was so much fun between the wedding and the reception.

His ideas were endless and all fun and all with us in mind...

The funny thing is this would be something we'd do on our own at home LOL

Corey and I

The ham of the night Colty

My favorite on from after the wedding!

Tim took the time to get to know us, I hope your photographer does the same! Check out the small guys, honestly they do some of the best work out there!

http://www.timbrya.com/

or Tim Brya Photography on facebook!