It's finally all happening, the Warrens have hardscape!!!!!

It's happened...after 2 months of waiting and planning (and 7 months of living in the house with a mud pit for a back yard), we finally have concrete!!! It's looking so good out there, I can't believe how quickly it's been transformed.

First, they placed the rebar (sp?) while Galileo supervised. And then, the concrete trucks and about 47 dudes (I might be exaggerating) showed up. I was at work so I'm so glad Robbio took all these pics so I can see what I missed. I guess our cute little neighbor kid sat in his window all day long and watched all the big trucks and dude stuff - adorable!


By the way, an extra fun fact: our main concrete dude's name is.....wait for it....Beaver. Seriously, Beaver. Can't go wrong there. Here's Beaver and company in action:

Here's our landscaper contractor Mike supervising: And here's the finished product, isn't it gorgeous? I love all the curved seams. You can see where the slate is going to go, around the BBQ and up to the courtyard:

The steps coming into the backyard that will have ground cover in between: The east side of the house where the trash cans will be kept:
This is my favorite part: We really wanted to sign our names in our garage as it was being built but the Shea customer service reps somehow knew we would be THOSE PEOPLE and put the kibosh on it...so we definitely wanted to do it during landscaping because dang it, we can. Since I wasn't there and the concrete was drying quick, Rob did it for us. Unfortunately Galileo wasn't cooperating so some of the landscaping guys tried helping Rob push G's paw down - I get this great visual of a bunch of manly dudes trying to force this little white paw into submission. ha! Needless to say, G protested and it came out all funky, but dang it, it's beautiful and makes me so happy:


At the end of the day our slate was delivered. It's called Beijing Multi Colored and it's gorgeous, lots of reds and yellows - very warm looking. They delivered 5 crates-full, and we're hoping they won't need all of that...or again, someone has to sell a kidney. :) I've been freaking out because they had to leave it in our cul-d-sac and I had a momentary paranoia that someone might come steal it all. Rob intelligently pointed out that it would take a major effort and forklift to do so, but it still scares me to have thousands of dollars of stuff just sitting out. Supposedly slate is going in on Monday, woot woot!!!