Where has 2015 gone?

We’ve put together a grand total of 5 blog posts this year. That is pretty sad considering we put out at least one a week for 2 or 3 years before 2015, and that doesn’t include anything we put on mintfortwo.com. So what happened? Well for starters, we built our dream house. Somedays we are just sitting around marveling at how wonderful it is. Other days we are busy doing all of those things that “they” tell you will take up your time as homeowners. And on all of the days in between, I’m not sure I could honestly tell you what we’ve been up to. What I can tell you, however, is that we have been on a roller coaster of super busy and recovering from being super busy and have totally neglected the blog.

The last thing I put up here was that I had left Cloud Sherpas and started a new adventure at a company called MobileMind. At the time I had only been there for 2 weeks and things were chugging along nicely and not much has changed since then. There was some drama with my original technical colleague, which could not have turned out better for me. I was forced to be the sole technical resource for a couple of months, giving me the runway to prove myself to the company, and 2 weeks ago we hired one of my good friends Pete. He is another ex-AirWatch guy and could not be a better fit for what I needed from a 2nd in command. All of my strengths are his weaknesses and vice versa. Time will tell how this adventure will actually turn out, but as of today I am still very much enjoying myself and things are still looking way up.

As for the house – we have officially moved onto trying to get the outside to look as good as the inside. During the designing and building phases of the house, we had always just assumed that we would work on the outside of the house ourselves. Partly so we could save some money at that time, and partly because we had no idea what we actually wanted to do and we were already overwhelmed with decisions. Now the time has officially come to get that show on the road, and let me tell you, it is a lot of work. Even something as simple as getting the grass to grow and look as good as it can is a constant struggle. I am sure that doesn’t come as a surprise to all of you long time homeowners out there, but you really don’t appreciate it until you live it, and that’s just the beginning.

Our current major project is to put in a flower bed in front of the house so it doesn’t look quite so barren. After meeting with a potential landscaper (who was WAY too expensive), we took the good parts of his plan and turned it into a plan we can execute on our own. Or at least try to. Last weekend we started down that journey by taking up the necessary grass with a sod cutter, tilling out all of the existing dirt, covering the entire bed with over 1 ton of compost, and then re-tilling the new bed. Mulch was supposed to be delivered this past Monday so we could cover up the bed, but it rained everyday this week so we were stuck waiting until Friday to get the mulch in place. And now that the foundation of the bed is 100% done, we are focussing on the actual arrangement of the plants that will go in the bed. Or should I say that’s what Jes is doing while I am writing this post. We aren’t sure if we can plant anything right now in the hight of summer, but at the worst we can plant in the middle of fall. And to be perfectly honest, it might be a welcome break after the amount of effort it took to build the bed in the first place. 

Hopefully however things have died down enough to be more diligent with putting items on the blog, so we can put the planting plan on when it is done. And keep you up date on Phoenix as she starts preparing for agility competitions, starting this Tuesday. Or any other random musings that happen to come along. Until next time.