We will never be cool again.

Yes, we bought a minivan. Aiiiigggghhh!! Our uncoolness is now complete.


This is a 2000 Plymouth Grand Caravan SE, with just under 75000 miles on it. It seems like a great car, and the price was right. We are the third owners and it is in really good shape: the interior is clean, the body is straight, the tires have a couple years left in them, and it runs & drives just fine. Gas mileage will be a bit less than we are used to, it should average a decent 22 MPG. We've named it Gunther.

For the record, I wanted a truck. A small 4-door truck would have been perfect, but proved difficult to find in our price range. I have to admit that there was a lot more to choose from in the minivan category, and it does seem like you get more for your dollar with a minivan than the trucks we looked at. And, as has been endlessly pointed out to me, you can take out the rear seats and still haul stuff in a minivan! (Well, certain stuff. Like furniture. Not a couple yards of bark mulch. Oh well.)

It's a very comfortable car to drive, and I'm sure I'll grow to love it, once I get past my irrational bias against minivans. :)

Topsoil, Lovely Clay-free Topsoil

Yesterday we had dry weather, so Dad was able to get a LOT more work done on our lawn-creation project. He brought in 5 loads of topsoil to dress the ground right around the house. This brought the level of the soil up to just a few inches below the top of the porch slab, and then he smootly graded it into a gentle slope back away from the house. It looks amazing.
He also topped the driveway and parking area off with a load and a half of crushed gravel, which is just super. We need to do a fair bit of hand raking still but then we'll be ready to seed the grass, at least in the area right around the house. We also need to get some stepping stones or something to make a path from the driveway to the house.
I can't get over how much better it looks with the lower, rough part of the slab covered up by the soil! This is how it was intended to be, but I just kind of got used to seeing the rough edge, not to mention parts of the gutter drain system. Of course, we still need to clean up the porch to really see how nice the house can look, but we'll get to that... someday.
In the back of the house is where most of the hand raking needs to be done, as dad couldn't work too close to the septic, and the sun-eves made it tough to get too close to the foundation. I'm pretty motivated to get out there with the rake though and then to get the grass seed down asap!
Back away from the house, the larger part of the eventual lawn area still needs to be worked over, so we'll have another work weekend soon. All that area, although it is large, will be much easier to work with, because there's no house or other structure that has to be carefully worked around.

Thanks so much Dad, Dave, Jack & Cary... I'm really pleased with what we acomplished this weekend, despite the heaviest rain we've had in 4 weeks on Sunday. I'm just so ecxited - we're going to have a lawn! There's no burn pile! Yay!

Sharp & Pointy

Things you don't want to have a lot of in your driveway:
Cary and I were out walking around this evening, looking at signs of spring and enjoying the last light of an absolutely beautiful day, when he noticed one of these sharp & pointy metal triangles in our driveway. They look like they were snipped from a downspout or some flashing. We started looking around and collected a good-sized handfull of them. Yikes. They must have just recently come to the surface, maybe because of the recent heavy rains, because neither of us has punctured a tire. We'll have to keep an eye out for any more sharp surprises that might show up.

First step - we're gonna need a road...

June 15 - 18 Dad built the driveway.

First he lays the culvert...


Then brings in the gravel (luckily we've got a gravel pit just 2.5 miles to the north, so he was able to turn around the loads really quickly.)


Spreading gravel over the road liner (logging road tough!).


Graded super smooth with the Kubota...


...and then raked by hand for that zen-garden perfection.


Schramer Construction's sign next to the new driveway makes it official!