In yo face, highway!

So...we are getting a fence. Don't know how much I have elaborated on the blog about how dangerously close our house is to a busy 2 lane highway, but I could throw a baseball from my front door to the ditch on the other side of the road--which might not be that shocking to someone who throws far but for me to be able to do it...ehhh, it's pretty close. The road has always been one of our major concerns. In fact, we almost didn't buy the house because of the road. It gets really loud sometimes(like between the hours of 5am and 10pm) and going to get the mail is very annoying but those aren't really cause for concern. Our main concern and biggest fear has always been the thought of one of the kids getting into the road. It's such a great fear that the kids are actually forbidden from going into the front yard. Ever. We are terrified of the road. A fence has always been part of the plan and after pricing it all out we just didn't know how we could afford to do it and make it look nice anytime soon. So we kept waiting and waiting and somehow came to the decision to plant tree's between the house and the road. So we found some tree's. Big 6ft green giants. The boss spent a week planting them and they were looking really nice. The tree idea was more cost efficient, would provide privacy, a barrier, and we were also hoping it would buffer the sound a little. We got tree's that were already 6ft tall so it wouldn't take them so long to grow and fill out. Plus, they were just pretty. So Yea!
 



I know what you are thinking. You are thinking "Umm, April. Honey. Don't know how badly your corneal scratch was last week but you are obviously now completely blind, because those tree's are 6ft apart and that's kind of not close enough to keep a little one from running past them." Yes, yes. I do know this and no I am not blind. These tree's will grow fast and spread out. It will be fine, right?

Or not, I guess. On Friday, the day we got the last tree in the front yard in the ground, we were rushing out the door to go hang out with my brother and the rest of the family at his house. We had instructed the kids to go get in the van and into their seats like we do every time we leave the house. The boss grabbed the keys and went outside to buckle the rugrats in and didn't see Liam. Liam regularly bolts out the door and heads straight for the shed in the back yard, so that was the first place he looked but Liam wasn't there. It's just sort of an instant reaction for us to rush to the front yard when we loose track of a kid, so he then ran there and found Liam....in the highway....with a car headed right for him. Of course, Papa got him in time and by the time I had even grabbed my purse and walked outside it was all over. The boss was essentially a mess. He was shaking, I think he was actually about to throw up. Liam probably took 10 years off his Papa's life with that little "adventure". So that was on Friday and by Monday evening we had...this..


Yep, all that money on those beautiful tree's and 3 days after the last one went into the ground and Liam's escapade we promptly bought a fence. It's not a privacy fence, but it's at least tall enough to keep the kids in. The boss estimates that we got approximately 250ft of picket fence, which is enough for the front yard and a lot on the back of the yard. We will also be installing a gate at the driveway soon as well. It's on our summer "to-do" list. You are probably thinking that the fence looks...really crappy. It does, but we are going to fix it and paint it the dark brown to match the house's shutters and front door. Hey we got it cheap off craigslist, what are you gonna do? It's great and I am excited about the prospect of actually being able to use our front yard this summer without fear.

And yes, if you want to, you can come help us put it up and paint it. We pay in homebrew.

****EDITED TO ADD****
The boss requested that I do tell you all about how we actually got the fence. On Monday evening at approximately 5:55pm Seth arrived home from work and in quite a tizzy. "I have to show you something!" so he whips out his iPod touch and shows me a picture of this picket fence. "It's in Cobb county, and if we want it I need to go get it tonight!" Well ok then! Go get em baby doll! --Let me break here and say that I had no previous knowledge of the fence--. I was cooking dinner and he went outside to hook up the trailer to his truck. This is always an adventure as the trailer is old and sometimes the blinkers and break light work. Other times...mehhh, not so much. After the hook up and dinner, he volunteers to take "a kid or two" and Cate and Simon were obviously choices. It is now 6:30pm. The destination is an hour and a half away. They leave. I really didn't think much about it until around the time I was expecting him to be heading home and had still not heard anything from him. So I called. Then I called again. Then I called again and finally got an answer. "Just getting here" he says. "It's a long walk back down to the truck, we'll be a while. No, I have no help" Crappy right? An hour and 15 minutes later, he is FINALLY on his way home. It's now 10:00pm-ish :-( The load was a lot more than we had been told. Which is great as far as getting a great deal...not so much in being prepared to drive home with a load twice as big and heavy as you had planned on a rickety old unpredictable trailer. It was a long ride home, but he made it home without much incident around mid-night.

I hope you all take away from this how wonderful of a father the boss really is. To ensure his childrens' safety, he put himself out working all day at his day job and coming home to immediately leave to go pick up a HUGE fence very far away. He was exhausted. He is always exhausted because he is always working. If he isn't working on our house he is helping someone else do something. He is truly one of the most remarkable and amazing men that I have ever met in my entire life. I don't know where he gets his energy but I am so grateful to have a man like that taking care of me, my kids, and our wonderful home. We love you Boss!!! You are our hero!