Chippin' away at the to do list

Mom and Pop drove straight through on Wed and made it here around 9pm. I'm soooo glad they are here. Mom's been helping a lot with Inara so I can get some work done around the house and prep for Saturday's party. Pop has been working like mad. Shawn was able to get off work today, so he and Pop started bright and early, made a trip to Home Depot, Ace Hardware, and even ran to Walmart. They bought a garage door opener for the single car garage. They hope to install in this weekend. They also cranked out the backyard and pulled up all the weeds and trimmed the bushes. They decided to get rid of the flower bed areas and are going to Home Depot tomorrow to buy grass so they can fill those in. They put together a shelving unit for the garage so Shawn's tools don't need to be on the ground any more. They even got to hang curtains in Inara's bedroom and the guest room. We inspected the crawl space in Inara's room. Pop was impressed by how new the wood still is in there. I told Shawn when she gets older, we should get Inara a rope ladder and she could use the crawl space as a play area. J/K of course. Then the three of us finished moving all the boxes out of the single car garage. Most of them needed to go downstairs, so that was a fun project. I'm starting to hate all the stairs in our house. Can't remember if I mentioned it before, but Pop went through all his storage and brought me all of Michael's and my old toys. It's probably about 20 or so boxes worth. Not too bad considering we have 1400 sq. feet of storage in the basement. Shawn wondered what I wanted with all my old toys. I told him why not recycle them and give them to Inara as she gets older. I now have birthday and Christmas presents for Inara for the next few years. Yes! Can't wait to pass on my Barbie doll collection and all of the Star Wars toys. So thank you to Shawn and Pop for all their hard work these past couple days. It was great seeing Shawn outside working so hard. Thank goodness my dad's here to show him the ropes. The best part though has been hearing my dad's praise of the house. From his comments, I think he approves. :-) I know he loves the basement and even told Bob Miller he'd kill for a basement like that. When he first walked into the house, he was taken back by the entry way. He said he's love hang a few deer heads and fish on the wall. Thank goodness he's not decorating the new place. Well better get to bed. Tomorrow's going to be a busy day preparing for Inara's first birthday party. I'll be sure to take LOTS of pics to share with everyone.