spring

While my parents received a little surprise ice/snow storm last week, spring has been steadily making its presence known here in Lombard. I have tulips popping up all over the front yard (although knowing how much little care Jose gave the rest of the place, who knows how much attention the tulips received...we'll see if they bloom). The birds sing every morning, and we've been getting our fair share of April showers. Derek came to visit for the weekend, and yesterday (Sunday), we had one of the most beautiful days yet this year. We went for a nice bike ride and explored the arboretum just a few miles from our house. Unfortunately, people here don't like to see bicycles on the road. Nobody ever honked at us in Indy.

Upcoming projects for us are:

• winding down the school year (aka: it's getting nice outside, our goals are now to simply pass our classes)
• remodel the main bathroom (probably after Tim finishes this quarter)
• replace the front & kitchen door (this has always been part of the plan, but it may have moved up the list a bit after Derek came and said, "It all looks so nice...then there's the doors...")
• clean up the landscaping attempt of a 70 or 80-year-old-something man who did nothing up to code and everything as cheaply as possible (I would like to add that we also do everything as cheaply as possible, and Tim's ADHD brain has a special little area devoted to "How little can I spend on this project," but when $ needs to be spent to do a job correctly, we do it)
• plant a garden. Unfortunately, before we can do that, we need to remove the 5+ year accumulation of grass clippings, branches, and trash that we inherited. We also need to tile the backyard since the whole yard slopes down from the road to a small creek at the back of the property and any amount of rain turns the whole thing into a muddy mess. 
• find a way to keep the raccoons, skunks, opossums, and ground hogs out of our yard
• fill nail holes on trim. I need to just suck it up and do this sometime. Maybe today's the day.