Why I Oughta...

Early this morning, the City of Elmhurst building inspector showed up and gave his blessing to our footings.  The process allows for the City's inspectors to make a "pre-pour" inspection to ensure that the contractor has complied with the code and requirements.  Thankfully, we passed the inspection. About 15 minutes after the inspector signed off, this guy showed up. They got busy right away filling in the perimeter footings.    They had to cart the concrete by hand to the far edges of the garage.  Once they filled the footings (16" deep), they moved on to filling the entire frame with concrete.  I had to run to work, so Nat kept me up-to-speed with her iPhone.   They smoothed it to a nice, level surface - using a piece of lumber as a screed board. They moved on to more sophisticated equipment when they wanted to get the surface real smooth. They filled the main garage, then moved on to the little 3X6 foot framed area adjacent to the garage.  We're going to bu

Wednesday and Thursday were spent clearing and prepping the site of our garage and driveway/slab, but Friday was for actual construction:  framing of the foundations. They put together the woodwork quickly, then dug some-more and filled in with wire, plastic and plenty of stone.  The plastic is a vapor barrier.   The garage takes up 3/4 of the width of our yard.  Makes me nervous to see our yard shrink so much.  We're also putting in a "driveway".  I put "driveway" in quotes because it isn't a typical driveway that leads to our garage.  Instead, we've put our garage backwards to face our alley and our driveway starts at the street and goes for 35 feet and stops.  It is more of a "parking pad" than driveway, but we're still calling it a driveway.  It was previously made of some pretty ratty asphalt and was mostly broken up into little pieces.  We're pouring concrete at the same time of the garage.  We've also made it 2 feet wider -

Guess who turns four months old today?!?  The Babe is happy we're celebrating, but she's concerned that you might take her giraffe away, though.  Look at those brows! The Babe is getting to be such a big girl.  I couldn't be a prouder dad.  However, I'm even more proud as a husband.  The last four months have been challenging, but I've experienced NOTHING compared to what Nat has gone through.  And...she's done it with an amazing level grace and patience that I am simply in awe of. I do my best to be a part of my daughter's life and we spend countless hours together.  However, Nat is really the one doing the hard work.  She's there when the Babe wakes up, there when she goes to sleep and is there (really there!) every time she's hungry.   She could NOT be a better mom. The development I've seen in the Babe's physical and mental acumen are directly attributable to all of Nat's dedication and effort.   She's the one reading the books

Have you ever walked by your neighbors yard and saw something that looked like this and wondered what the heck they were doing?  I admit, when I was younger everytime I encountered grass that had been aerated, I always thought that they were a bunch of turds.  They kinda look like it. Well...guess what?  We're now the house on the block with a lawn that the kids in our neighborhood will think is full of turds.  Late last week, we had a company called Pluggin A Lawn come out and aerate the yard and parkway.  They say that the benefits of aeration include enhanced root growth through moisture and air circulation which all lead to a greener yard.  This will be our second summer with the yard and while many of our neighbors have companies come take care of their lawns with maintenance and fertilization products, we're going to go it alone.  We won't have the best looking grass right away, but hopefully we'll get there with steps like this. I'm not totally sure that

Along with the flowering tree we planted out front last spring , we also bought a few different fruit trees - they were cheap, too, at $5.00 a tree.  I didn't have much hope that they'd last the winter, but surprisingly enough...they've come back strong! Here's (what I'm pretty sure is) our Pear Tree.  We planted it on the south side of our lot and it took in plenty of sun last summer.  It shot up and is now thriving. It has some quite pretty blooms on it - hopefully they'll pop open with flowers.  The documents that came say that it is fast growing and doesn't need an opposite sex tree in the area to produce fruit.  Nat's mom has a Pear Tree and I believe it fruits every-other-year.  We'll see what happens with this little guy. Here's to " creeping " this summer! (Note:  due to the bark on the tree - and it's simliarlity to the "Cleveland Pear Flowering Tree" in the front yard, I'm pretty sure this is a Pear Tree

Early yesterday morning our garage contractor showed up at our front door.  In his hand was this: We had received our permits and we could start to move some earth!  Finally. They walked around the yard for an hour or so scoping things out then got to work.  The first thing to go was our back fence.  We had a ratty chain-link fence along our property line facing our alley.  The guys backed their Bobcat right off of their trailer and started to knock it down.  Clearly this wasn't his first fence take-down.  He figured out a way to bend the posts down then use the shovel of the machine to act as a fulcrum and pop the post out - concrete and all - in one easy move.  Pretty cool. As part of our garage construction, we're getting a new front driveway (not attached to the garage) and they're removing a lot of old cracked concrete from our yard.  You can see an old patio/slab in the photo above.   After they took the fence down, they got busy excavating the garage floor.  He

A few months back, I spotted the original Lou Malnati's Menu hung on the wall of our take-out Lou's in Downtown Elmhurst.  We all noted how cute it was and ever so simple.  Last week, Nat and I found ourselves in Schaumburg doing some errands (bike store, IKEA) and we ran across the Schaumburg Lou Malnati's.  Nat insisted that we head there for supper. After sitting down in their cute house-turned-restaurant we were greeted with this mammoth: Go ahead and click on the picture to get it to blow up.  That menu is HUGE.  And...there's printing on the back!  A bit overwhelming for a place that serves pizza, no? As a reminder, here's the original menu. The price differences are starting: 1960's: Small pizza:  $1.50 Large pizza:  $3.50 2010: Small pizza:  $9.20 Large pizza:  $16.75 I understand the demands of expanding a menu at a restaurant and wanting to please everybody, but you tell me:  which menu do you like better?   For me, the answer is c

I've started a bit of a tradition in our house.  For the past two years, I've given Nat a new frontdoor mat for Easter.  Not the most romantic of presents, but one that helps usher in Spring in our house.  And frankly....When was Easter supposed to be romantic!  There's death, rising, bunnies, candy etc...but no romance!  Anyway....By the time early April rolls around, our mat from the previous year looks pretty bad.  What we've done is taken the old one, put it by the back door and rotated the one by the back door into the garbage can.   Worked pretty good so far. This year, I picked up the mat at Target.  It is from the Smith and Hawken collection.  I believe that they went out of business this year ( stories here ), but for some reason they have a bunch of their stuff in our Target on North Avenue.  It tends to be pretty nice stuff, so hopefully they'll keep this "line" going while shuttering all their owned/operated stores.   The mat is a pretty cut

If you know Nat, I don't have to tell you about what she thinks of peonies . In late 2008, right after we closed on our house, we planted a peony plant that we received from Nat's aunt - which I believe was split from a plant she received from another relative.  Last year, we bought a few other peony plants including a transplant of a big peony plant from my sister's yard in Hinsdale - but the original plant from Nat's Aunt was clearly the prized possession in the yard. Last summer, the plants bloomed, but were NOT spectacular.  And...if you garden at all, you know that peonies can really be spectacular.  We hosted my niece and nephew last summer for a few months and they gave our backyard a workout - including trampling all over most of everything I've planted.  I bought a few small tomato cages to put the plants in, but that just slowed the kids down, it didn't keep them away from them. Fast forward to this Spring and as some of our bulbs started to emer

The Babe is getting older, happier, and more aware of everything.  Makes for a happy dad as I see her sit up, grab things, and recognize people in her life.  But...most importantly, we're getting smiles. Have I told you guys about the smiles?  I haven't yet?  Oh...well...as they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words", right? SMILES!  SMILES!  SMILES!