Last One until Midterm

I'm distracting myself.  Whenever tests come along, I always tend to get very A.D.D. moments.  Tomorrow the laptop will be shut down, my cell on silent.... and, ya.  Hopefully those tactics allow me to get some good quality studying in.

 A creepy large spider at my mom's place.  

She's by a creek so this guy was about the size of  quarter.  Ew!

Our backyard....

Poor Jake is hating the leash.  It makes me nervous that he doesn't have claws and that the road is fairly busy.  The backyard is in a desperate need to be fixed up.  The fence is buckling because some previous owner piled up soil against it, without some kind of "retaining wall".  Chris and I dug these messy soil piles out of the front yard, it's still about half way completed.  The backyard will be a huge project because it's quite large and has four big trees and a few little ones.  I didn't realize how much maintenance trees are. 

One of my crazy landscaping ideas.  We have two needle trees in the back, which seems to be destroying the lawn.  Chris was told that those needles are toxic 'therefore', kills the soil.  I don't know anything about trees, but I do feel bad about cutting them down.  The rough sketch is my attempt to "save the trees".  Whenever I shouldn't be distracted, I will look up the type of trees and learn some more.

All of these needles... Sadly this was the amount that fell in one week.  We continue to rake, and they continue to shed.  

Do you remember these?

I loved soaking them in ketchup. 

My sister created a super cute blog with her friend.  It's about potatoes.  Her first post is very entertaining :)  I think she is a very talented writer: witty and smart.  Then again, I'm a biased critic since it is my favorite sister
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