Updates

So, my mom brings it to my attention that there haven't been any new entries here... she's right. June is a busy month (as she knows!). Kasey is wrapping up his game, so he's working long hours. This month is National Homeownership month - for the uninformed, it was declared this by President Bush several years ago. All that means is that I have promotions and many mailings happening this month at work.

Among those two things, I am signing Robbie up for Preschool to start in the fall (getting his immunization card signed, checking out the school, etc), I have scheduled several new playdates for him - let you know how those go at the end of this week, and we have received a warning from our Homeowner's Association that we are in violation of code 9.5 :)

So, here's my rant about my HOA... they are morons! And although we have wanted to something about our landscaping (code 9.5 is that we need to maintain or install landscaping), it's not really on the top of our list. We did weed it... what more do they want? Oh, wait, they want us to spend money we don't have to either build a fence that won't last very long because the soil is still settling or put down pebbles or bark that not only isn't the look we'd like, but that can get very messy (especially into the lawn) when you have little kids.

They seem to think our list of priorities is something like this... 1 - spend outrageous amounts of money to install rock in a part of the yard that we never see, 2 - build a fence that could fall over this coming winter, 3 - provide for our family.

Our list is something more like this... 1 - provide for our family, 2 - ignore the morons at the HOA, 3 - mock the morons at the HOA, 4 - work against the morons at the HOA.

Rant over, I submitted plans to the HOA to build a deck in the back. Once the deck is built, we plan on installing lawn which includes putting topsoil down... we can continue this on the side yard to please the HOA. However, this probably isn't going to happen within the deadline they have given us (June 30th) since it takes them "up to 30 days" to approve any request. By the way, did I mention that in the CC&Rs it states that we need to have the approval of the HOA for structures that are above three feet off the ground. The deck will be only two feet, however, we are playing their little game since they seem to think they need to approve all decks.

It probably become my newest cause soon as I'm pretty sure we have submitted a plan that they won't like. I'm sure we will eventually comply, but I need to get my frustrations out first... and that means a little bit of a fight.

So there you go mom, a new blog entry. Oh, on a more exciting note, Robbie's strawberries are turning red. I'm just hopeful that they finish turning and he gets to pick them before the bird discover them.