Whew! It’s been a busy couple of weeks! I tried really hard to stick to my promise of writing a post every week but my heart just wasn’t in it lately. We’ve had a lot going on, which I’ll talk about in a second, and trying to make myself write when I didn’t really want to just seemed like another thing added to my never-ending To-Do list. When it feels like just another chore, that isn’t fun for anyone so it’s late but it’s written of my own free-will 😁.
The awesomeness that has kept us so busy is this:
I apparently didn’t take any day pics with the canopy. Oops.
My in-laws are very fortunate in that they worked hard and got to retire recently (yay!) and that good fortune has been passed on to us because they are moving and gave us their hot tub! This has been a plan five years in the making. When we had our deck built, it was with the specifications that we would eventually be putting a hot tub on it (Theirs or our own, but theirs was way cheaper for us 😂😉). It wasn’t all daisies and roses getting it here though, hence the busyness and stress. The hot tub’s previous home was on a deck about twenty feet in the air, two hours from home. It weighs about a thousand pounds (not an exaggeration), so getting it moved required a little bit of work. First, we had to make a trip over to unhook all the electric and tear down the gigantic canopy, which took a couple of hours (I didn’t have to help much with any of that, yay me! 😉). We ended up being gone a little longer than planned and our usual dog-pee-er (definition: someone who takes your dogs out to pee when you’re not home. You’re welcome.), Lori, was away for the weekend so the girls didn’t get let out while we were gone. We came home to a mess of dirt on the floor where Sansa apparently thought we were never coming home, freaked out, ate one plant completely, and gave another an interesting hair cut 😂. I’m not sure if she was upset and the plants looked like grass, which she eats to settle her stomach, or if she went into starvation mode and ate what was easily accessible. I’m very happy that she ate the plants that she chose though because we also have a peace lily and they are poisonous to dogs. I think she senses that though because she’s never bothered it. Sophie is crated while we’re not home, which is the only reason the damage wasn’t 1000 times worse!
Plant’s new ‘do after I trimmed up the carnage 🙄
Anyway, I had to schedule a crane to come move it from the deck and put it onto a trailer to haul it home, but that required getting a trailer to haul it on, which required a hitch to pull it. So we spent over a week preparing for this plan to hatch. Philip ordered and installed the hitch, we found a U-Haul trailer in Washington, PA (that had to be returned there 🙄), I scheduled the crane, and we bought 4x4’s to go across the top of the trailer because it wasn’t quite big enough to fit the hot tub down into it. We both took the day of the move off work, got up very early, drove to get the trailer, drove to the hot tub, and then the crane picked it up and sat it on the trailer, no problem, other than the rain making all of the being outside a fun time 🙄. We then had to drive the thing home and find people to help unload it. After backing it up by our deck in our soggy yard about five times, it was finally close enough. We spent about 20 minutes trying to decide how 6 people were going to lift this thousand pound thing over the railing when someone had the brilliant idea to take the railing off. That made it 100% simpler and we were able to move it without much trouble. The fun didn’t stop there though. The trailer had to be returned to Washington that night (a three hour roundtrip), a new breaker box had to be installed and electric had to be run into the house, and the canopy had to be reconstructed (which is about as much fun to put together as is standing in line at the DMV..and takes about as long, too.) Philip took the trailer back while I went to teach a yoga class. He ran the electric while I was at work the next day, but I wasn’t worried because he was being supervised by Sophie.
Yes, she’s sitting on him 😂.
We put the canopy together two days later, which consisted of two and a half hours labor and several fails attempts at stretching the canopy over the frame. If you’ve ever stretched a tonneau cover over the bed of a truck in winter, this was similar but worse. The hot sun didn’t help at all with making it pliable. Moving it over the hot tub once it was assembled by picking it up with my arms overheard would have been way easier if I was about two inches taller or had worn high heels. Sophie really enjoyed all the new parts and pieces that she could try to steal. I seriously lost count at how many screws I’ve taken out of her mouth. She also tried attacking a hole saw attachment and got mad and barked at it when it rolled against the hot tub and she couldn’t free it 😂. She’s been extra destructive lately. She managed to remove her Seresto flea and tick collar (that she’s had on for a couple of months, is supposed to last for 8, and costs around $55) while I was in the shower the other day and chewed it into pieces. I was worried about toxicity but Dr. Google said she was most likely to only have stomach upset and to just make sure she didn’t have an obstruction in her bowel by monitoring that she was able to poop…no problems in that department..ever! She is now on a monthly pill for fleas and ticks because the ticks are HORRIBLE right now and I hate them.
I know the above seems as though I’m complaining about the whole ordeal but I truly am not. I’m super grateful to my in-laws for giving us such a great gift, which they could have sold for a substantial amount of money. We have enjoyed using it this past week and I’m excited to have a reason to spend more time outside, which is where I would live if bugs didn’t exist. I’m very happy for them that they get to spend their time wherever and however they choose and enjoy life! ❤️
We have a pretty great view from the hot tub 😃.
Between all of the above, teaching yoga
(Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6pm at Hannibal United Methodist church, and Wednesdays 8 am & 6 pm at Isaly’s Fitness Center in Hannibal, OH, if anyone is wondering 😉), and going to work, I haven’t had much time to focus on crafts these past few weeks. However, we did spend some time in our garden. Everything is now weeded and planted out! I’ve already had my first salad with spinach that we grew. We would have had romaine, too, but the stupid rabbits ate it before I got the fence put up 😡). We haven’t had any intruders since putting it up though so that’s good.
Cucumbers
The girls have been busy, too. Sophie is now a toddler and testing her limits. She has begun to get into Philip’s chair at the kitchen table and we are *those* parents who stop to take a pic before yelling at her to get down.
Sansa has been working on having the patience required to live with Sophie. It’s not an easy job. When I tell ya’ll that she sits on Sansa on the daily, it’s total truth. I could post a pic every single day, some days more than one. It’s ridiculous but never not funny so I’m always capturing the moment while I roll my eyes lol.
She doesn’t even have the decency to look sorry about it 🙄🤷🏻♀️.
Pushing the pillows off the couch and onto the floor,
Checking on us in the hot tub,
Or keeping watch.
This dog sure keeps me on my toes.
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