The Roby Family

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!

We received about 4″ of snow last night and this morning. As a result school was canceled and Josh took the afternoon off to come home and play in the snow with us. Enjoy a video recap:

And a few still pictures for you:

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Day Three of Tulsa Tough continued Sunday.  We went to early service at church then picked up sandwiches for lunch.  With lunch, blankets & chairs in tow we headed out to the festival grounds.  We found a great spot on the lawn of the McBirney Mansion. It was shaded perfectly, right on the race course and had a view of the river.  We had a great time watching the cyclists zoom by while eating lunch.

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After eating lunch we walked down to the “Party On the Hill” to meet friends.  We didn’t quite make it to the party because of the crowds.  It was quite the party and full of interesting people. Our friend Jake shot & edited this:

#2 from Jake Sullivan on Vimeo.

With Josh having a great time Friday night at Tulsa Tough we decided to take the family out Saturday afternoon to see the cyclists in the Brady District downtown.  We have taken the boys to the Saturday portion of Tulsa Tough for several years and they have always enjoyed it.  The only bad thing about the Saturday races is the heat.  Yesterday was no exception, it was blazing!  It was very fun to watch the Tough Kids fun races including John & James Boudiette.  Hopefully the boys will have some sort of biking skill by next year and we can enter the them.

After the cycling was over we drove over to the river parks and enjoyed some time on the playground and chasing geese.

Our camera battery was dead but Josh snapped a few pics with his camera phone.

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Tulsa Tough started last night.  What started several years ago as a dream of a local group of cyclists has turned into a full-fledged cycling festival.  My good friend Jesse Boudiette invited me to view the Friday night races from the VIP area.  Never one to turn down a perk I quickly took him up on the offer and was glad I did.  The VIP area was stocked with great food and plenty of cold beverages.  It also happened to be right on one of the best parts of the course and had a great view of a jumbo-tron showing the other parts of the course.  Watching cyclists go by at 30+ miles an hour at night in an urban environment complete with a raucos crowd is an awesome experience.  I failed to bring my Canon, but did have my BlackBerry camera, so the pics are okay but not great.

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Spring keeps trying to come to Tulsa.  We have experienced 80 degree days followed by 30 degree days.  Jenny’s tulips are beautiful and the phlox is a carpet of multi-colored blooms.  The fescue in the back yard is finally coming into it’s own and the redbud in bloom might be my favorite part of our landscape.  After completing a few routine maintenance tasks Saturday I snapped a few flicks.  Hopefully I was able to capture some of the charm we have worked so hard to create.

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Saturday we hosted a group of friends and family to celebrate Jefferson’s second birthday.  The group included grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts & uncles, cousins and lots of friends, young & old.  Jefferson is very lucky to have so many wonderful people attend his party and bring him so many wonderful gifts.

Here a few of the flicks we snapped throughout the day:

 

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This weekend we spent the weekend without the boys. They spent the weekend with Mimi & Poppy. We spent Friday evening with friends and had dinner with our friend Jake Sullivan at Lola’s at the Bowery. We received a great surprise when we found out that Aranda was playing at Cain’s Ballroom Friday night. After wrapping up a great dinner we walked up to Cain’s and had a great time seeing Aranda. They were awesome and we loved seeing them in such a great venue. If you have never seen Aranda here is a taste:

Saturday we pretty much relaxed. I jumped back on my bike for the first time since breaking my arm in August ’07 and rode a leisurely ten miles with no broken bones. Saturday night we went to the Mardi Gras event at the Oklahoma Aquarium.

Sunday was even more relaxed. We went to breakfast at BBD and stuffed our bellies. Guess who had what…

Following breakfast we went to the late, late service at church. Not sure exactly what to do with ourselves on a Sunday afternoon without kiddos we decided to visit the Gilcrease Museum. We received a membership to the museum last year but had never used it! We were a few weeks late to see the Ansel Adams exhibit but the American Impressionism exhibit was really cool.

I convinced Jenny to take a few snapshots at the Gilcrease. She loves those self-portraits I just can’t resist taking.

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We received a healthy dose of ice the last few days and today received a dusting of snow. The boys were clamoring to get outside, so I bundled them up and we headed outside. I took lots of pictures.

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Once the inside halls and walls were decorated it was time to head outside and light up the house.

Sunday after church we bought new lights and a timer so we wouldn’t run up the PSO bill by leaving the show on all night.  Josh has wanted the “big” lights for several years now and he finally broke down and bought them at Lowe’s…because they were on sale.  We had a hard time keeping the boys contained why Josh was up on the ladder and I fed him the lights.  They really were anxious to see the lights and wanted to come and help hang them.

This was also the first year we had exterior outlets on the house so we didn’t have to rig up the porch light to feed the entire outside lightshow.

We also hung a couple strands on the back of the house for a little extra flair.  Next year we are going to go all out and buy some inflatable snowmen and Josh is going to put a big “OU” on the roof.

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