ah, suburbia...

WE FINISHED OUR FENCE! WE FINISHED OUR FENCE! IT'S FINALLY DONE! YAY!

The construction project that was begun on June 28, 2008 is finally complete. Posts are in, frame is attached to the posts - at the correct angles, of course, which, uh, took us a couple tries - the boards are nailed to the frame, and, the entire things is stained a nice shade of cedar! Whew, what a project. Who knew that something as simple as, "let's fence our backyard!" would lead to such exhausting days and tired bodies. Well, actually probably a lot of people knew this would be hard and time consuming. Good for you.

Something else we learned throughout this process is how nice people in our neighborhood are! Our house sits on a corner lot, and because it is somewhat near the entrance to our development, we get a lot of traffic driving past our house (hence the reason for the fence, right?). So as we've been out working on this, pretty much the whole neighborhood has had a chance to observe our progress (or lack thereof at some points, while we waited for it to stop raining or to cool down enough so we didn't die of heat exhaustion). This last week, we've been out every evening, working desperately to finish staining the dang thing. At first the comments of drivers passing by were sporadic and brief: "nice job!", "looking good!", "you're almost there!". And then people started to SLOW DOWN and pause by our yard: "you guys have done a wonderful job", "I hope you are pleased with your work", "we live down the street - thank you for doing such a great job on your fence".

We debated the veracity of people's comments, I mean, it is just a fence! Were people just being nice? But why pause, slow your car, roll the window down (allowing 90 degree heat into your car mind you) and stop to actually chat with us?

So, we've concluded that our neighbors actually are please with the finished product - which is great, because we are too. Only in the suburbs...