I am an internet sloth no more. Maybe.

So, here's what's happening around here. In a burst of productiveness fueled by the spoils of government cheese, Jon and I bought a house. And we're kind of in love with it. I'm so grateful that Jon talked me out of the one we looked at that was gutted to the studs and which almost fell off the planet in a landslide a month after we made an offer on it (for reals). I moped for at least a day after Jon vetoed that one (with several episodes of tears and maybe a door slam or two for effect) and said, direct quote, "We'll never find a house this cool again!"

Fortunately, Jon was willing to keep looking at houses even after my super sweet sixteen tantrum and we did in fact find a house about ten million times cooler. In our favorite neighborhood we never thought we'd be able to live in.

Now, this house does have its quirks. As in, this.

That's what some people call a yard. And that's what Jon calls a summer with less golf. I think that's why his first solution consisted of lighting everything on fire and then pouring concrete over it.

As tempting as that was, our actual approach looked a little more like this.

It turns out that all we needed was a friend with a Subaru, a chainsaw and way more experience than us. We did all kinds of crazy stuff. I swung a hatchet for the first and last time ever (At 15, I cut my hand open and ended up in the ER within the first ten minutes of my first job ever at a bagel shop. Turn the bagel knife into a hatchet and you can see why we almost ran into serious problems.)

After a few 10-12 hour days of that, things were looking a bit better but we still had a really long way to go. Cue my amazing family, who, fueled by our desperate thanks and a few 64-ounce Diet Cokes, managed to turn our 24th of July into a real festivus miracle.

We actually came up with a pretty genius business plan around polygamist yard care. Call me if you want in. Because this is what the nine of us were able to pull off.

Now, we're obviously not done. But what we've been able to accomplish has almost made me able to forget that I showed up several times to Home Depot looking like this.

Anyway, I'm a very sore but very happy girl. Next on the list this summer is the new fence, taking down the 80 ft. dead pine tree, and starting to make the courtyard (my absolute favorite part of the house) as amazing as I hope it will be. I'll be posting our progress to make sure we keep making it. Other things I'll be posting about very shortly include pics from my work trip to Europe, reasons why we love our dog and why the DMV thinks Jon is gay (spoiler alert: he's not).