The Roby Family

Several months ago we were approached about being a part of a campaign to showcase the diversity and exciting things happening in north Tulsa. We quickly agreed and shot photos showcasing our family and home this spring. The first advertisement was released in Tulsa Kids magazine this month. Here’s a link to the ad:

http://www.pageturnpro.com/TulsaKids-Magazine/29996-September-2011/64.html

Please pick up a copy of Tulsa Kids, be on the lookout for future ads and spread the word about the potential of north Tulsa!

Judah has been teasing us for weeks now.  He can walk, but he prefers to crawl everywhere because it is much faster.  He has also avoided being caught on camera walking.  After putting more breakfast on his shirt than his mouth this morning he decided to show off for the camera, just a bit.

YouTube

With Judah approaching sixteen months, the “what a cute girl” comments mounting and Jacob referring to him as “Baby Dirk” we caved and cut his hair.  With Jacob & Jefferson we waited until they were at least two years old to cut their hair.  Tonight Josh got out the clippers and we buzzed his hair tight.  He looks adorable!

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He also gave the big boys their summer cuts.  So, I’ve got three buzz cut boys of summer running (or crawling) around the house.

The front of our house continues its metamorphosis. From day one we’ve been eager to rip out all of the old landscaping and begin anew. Most of the old landscaping has been removed for several months. Since its removal we’ve been debating what type of edging to use for the new landscaping.

We were confident we wanted more than a basic metal or composite edging:

We used this at our first house and we felt something with more heft was the appropriate choice.

We moved on to considering a pre-cast concrete block for the an edge in areas and a near retaining wall in others:

With the slope of our yard this presented some neat opportunities but also a great installation challenge. We were gifted about 20% of the block we would need for the project, but in the end we felt this would be too much work.

After much debate and driving around peaking at people’s yards we decided to use weathered limestone boulders to edge our front landscape beds. The entire project isn’t done so we’ll save pictures of the entire edge for later. However, here are a few pictures of our larger and/or more interesting rocks:

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We roughed out the beds with the gifted (thanks Whites!) blocks to give us an idea of the shape we wanted. That was great except when it came to removing them. That was just the beginning of our heavy lifting. Here are the weight totals of all the work we did this weekend:

2,400 lbs – Concrete block removal

2,400 lbs – Loading and unloading 30 bags of top-soil for shaping

460 lbs – Loading more limestone boulders at stone yard because the 3,830 lbs they delivered wasn’t enough

4,290 lbs – Installing limestone boulders

9,550 lbs – total lifting, hauling, rolling, grunting done this weekend

In case you are math challenged like me Google says that is 4.775 tons of material! Josh moved the mass majority of the weight. One of our neighbors helped him move the largest stone, which clocked in at about 500 lbs. The rest was Josh showing off his new found “old man strength.”

Now that the edging is done we will prep the bed and be ready for planting this fall!

It took us a little longer than expected but we finally have a new roof!  Our old roof was nearly 50 years old but was in great working condition.  However, it wasn’t the prettiest thing in the world and our insurance company was gigging us pretty good due to its age.  You can see pictures of the old roof at Christmas time by clicking here.

We wanted to go with a darker color with some variations.  We chose “Black Walnut” by TAMKO.

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It is hard to capture the different colors that are in the shingles so you’ll have to come visit to see it in person.

Easter weekend was a bit rainy this year.  We had fun at the Jenks Herb Festival, but we didn’t take any fun pictures.  We dyed eggs, but didn’t hunt them.

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We even failed to capture good pictures of the boys in their Easter outfits.

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We may not have great photographic evidence, but it was a great weekend!

What a great weekend!  Bedlam Baseball on Friday for Josh.  Sand Springs Herb Festival for the whole family on Saturday.

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Josh took Jacob to the NCAA basketball tournament practice session Thursday night.  It was a chance to see four of the tournament teams practice up close and personal.  Oh and it was free!  Jacob had a great time.  His new favorite team is the Boston Terriers..

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Painters arrived last week to begin painting the living room and guest room.  The hope was to be finished today but with Sno-kla-poca-lizza-geddon’s arrival on Monday evening we are in a holding pattern.  In addition to painting the walls and trim the job includes patching all the various nail holes and cracks in the plaster and trim.  It is quite a job but the rooms are going to look great when they are finished.

All of the trim will be Sherwin Williams’ “Antique White”:

The guest room walls will be Sherwin Williams’ “Versatile Gray”:

The guest bath walls will be Sherwin Williams’ “Cloak Gray”:

After much debate and multiple samples painted on the wall the living room walls will be Sherwin Williams’ “Nuthatch”:

Unless you live in a cave or possible Australia you know us Oklahomies got whacked with a no good very bad snowstorm last night and today.  Being the survivor man I am I ventured out to snap a few pictures so friends and strangers everywhere could see just how deep the snow is here at Res Hill.

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