We had planned to have my mom come up to Payson the last week of April to celebrate her birthday. Originally, all of us were going to go up on the weekend and then Laurie and Mom would stay and come back later in the week. Well, due to a scheduled work event that weekend, I was unable to go. However, Laurie and Mom had a good time visiting, enjoying the cooler weather, working on some sewing ideas, and going to the thrift stores. For Mom's birthday, they went out to breakfast, did some more shopping and had Mexican food for dinner. Mom really enjoyed her birthday and the time Laurie spent with her.
One of their thrift store runs netted us some new window coverings to replace the sheet we recently placed in the front family room window. Now we look very upscale with actual curtains.
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| Much nicer than the paper shades and easier to work with |
On our last trip, we replaced some old totes on our back deck with some new deck boxes. We then found, on sale, an outdoor trash container that looks similar to the main deck box and replaced our 32 gallon black yard trash bin. We are moving on up!
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| Definitely too upscale for this old wood deck |
On our first trip to Walmart this weekend, we found some plants for sale for Mother's Day. One was a mini-rose bush, with red flowers. There was a rose bush in the front yard when we bought the house, but it died a few years ago and we have wanted a new one ever since. I got the rose bush for Laurie for Mother's Day and we planted it over the weekend. Let us hope this one survives the summer.
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| Very nice plant, hope it lasts awhile |
The rest of the weekend was quiet, but to celebrate Mother's Day (apart from the rose bush), Laurie wanted to take the quads out for a spin. So we found some back streets we could take to get to one of our favorite restaurants, 260 Cafe, and then a way to get from there to the national forest trails behind our house. We made a few wrong turns, but got to the restaurant for a wonderful breakfast (as always!) and then back on the road to find the trail. We had left our hiking GPS back in the Valley, but both our phones had map apps which we used to find the trails we wanted and make sure we stayed on track. There were a couple of steep, narrow, rocky places on the trail, but nothing we couldn't get past and we made the loop back to our neighborhood. It was a very fun ride and we hope to do more in the future and eventually find a trail down to the Verde River.
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| After our ride, all decked out in our off-road gear |
Stats: 0 Home Depot trips; 4 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 4/15/14-5/12/14: $0
Remodeling expense to date: $40,025
