School's out, and We Have Dirt!

Last night we attended the "end of school" festival from our old school.  Stupid me took no pictures.  Thing 2 was just totally excited for the festival, but Thing 1 was a little worried that she'd be sad to see her old friends.  When we got there, the kids ran off and played and talked to all their old friends.  I saw all my old friends, and surprised myself by launching into my own melancholy.  The girls had a great time, and I enjoyed seeing everyone, but it was sad to see how much of a life we gave up to move here.  Having spent ten years down there, very heavily involved in the school, and church, there were lots of people I left behind too.  You don't realize what you're losing until it's lost.  Sigh.

Today I showed up to pick up the girls from their last day of school to find every parking space full, and cars all along the road in all directions.  I've never seen it so crowded!  What am I missing?  What is it all the other parents know is going on that I don't?
They have a tradition at the school to "clap out" the fifth graders, who are going on to the 6-7 grade school next year.  All the other kids and teachers line up and the outgoing fifth graders, dressed in wild wigs and apparently the most colorful, outrageous clothing they could find, run between the clappers.  It was kind of cute, I wish I had taken my phone so I'd have a picture.


The girls wanted to do something special after school.  I agreed to take them out for pizza for dinner, which has recently been redecided to just go get a pizza and come back and eat in front of a movie on the TV.  That's our idea of a celebration.  One woman I was standing with said she's going to take her kids to the amusement park, about an hour away.  Oooh, good idea!  Wish I'd thought of that!  Hmmm, not too excited about going, though, and the girls wouldn't want to go without Hubby.


SO glad school's out, this has been a really hard year for Thing 1.  Thing 2 is planning on having twice as much fun as normal, to make up for having a broken arm/no fun last year.

Instead of starting a new post, I'm just going to throw in some pictures of the garage deconstruction.
In order to take some of the slope off the horribly sloped driveway, we're digging down to lower the garage floor, then will slope it out to the road.  The cement was horribly pocked and pitted and needed to go anyway.  As soon as they took off the cement in the garage, they hit very hard rock that had to be jackhammered out.  A one day scoop job turned into a week of jackhammering and dragging rocks out.  You can see the lowered garage floor under the garage door.

The funny thing is that Hubby and I simultaneously and independently both came to the conclusion that we can use the rocks pulled out of the garage to build a rock wall in front of the house, to the right, to make a place to put some trees.  The excavator, a very nice little retired guy who's been finding every way he can to save us money, said he's built a couple of rock walls and will be happy to put the rocks aside, then move them over where we want to, and put the dirt on top of it.  The rock wall will be off to the right.

We just finish the basement and moved to the garage, before the basement even stopped smelling like new paint.  We must be gluttons for punishment.  My bank account is totally crippled.  I'm so looking forward to this being all over with.  The kitchen, which we knew when we moved in needed to be remodeled, is probably pushed back five years.  Sigh.