I love crazy, round 1

This happened the day before Father's Day. For some time now, we have been talking about replacing the mulch in front of our house with some rock. The challenge has been finding a time when both John and I are home AND the landscaping place is open (not to worry, I did go and look at the home improvement store. I tried to like the rock available there without success.)


On Saturday, we didn't have plans and the rock place was open. We poked around and found a few options that would work. It was a gorgeous day- it was only 80 degrees with a great breeze.

We went inside to price out a few options and were surprised by the estimates. It was going to cost less than we expected! That never happens! As we were finishing up, the sales clerk asked if we wanted rock delivered today. She told us they were having a slow day and had room for another delivery in the early afternoon.

I looked at John, fully anticipating an emphatic "no!" From him.

Instead, John said, "weeeeeelllll, it is a nice day to work outside..."

To which I promptly told them where to deliver a giant pile of rock before he could change his mind.

Luckily (or not, depending on your point of view), John likes to be very accurate, even when he is estimating. Suddenly, he was no longer satisfied with my rough estimate of how big our area to fill was. I had estimated the area to be about 12 feet by 12 feet (these were biggish numbers I picked out on the spot because they sounded good. Not because I measured or anything). According to the landscaping experts, I would need 2.5-3 tons of stone.

John preferred to go home, measure and recalculate on his own how much stone was needed.

This was a good thing, because I was WAY off in my estimation. WAY OFF. This isn't surprising because I am not a great estimator. According to John's calculations, we would need 4-4.5 tons of stones to get the job done.

I called it in and we were set for a delivery time of 2pm. It was now 11:30 and we had done nothing to prepare.

We hadn't moved the mulch.
We hadn't trimmed the landscaping or checked the condition of the landscaping fabric. We didn't have lunch made for the 3 kids who would surely be hungry any minute now.

Which is when John looked at me and said, "I love crazy."

I replied as I always do, "you knew that going in and you married me anyway!"

And then we got down to work.

Everyone helped scoop and move mulch from all the landscaping in the front yard. Halfway through, we enjoyed a lovely picnic in the front yard. At 2pm, our rocks were delivered and we worked until 6pm.

And we weren't done. Not even close!