You can take the boy out of South Dakota, but you can't take the South Dakota out of the boy! This is a picture of our backyard taken in May. This is just downright classy. I would look at this and often wonder if I did indeed live here. Because lets be honest it's a bit embarrassing, but at least it's not in the front yard, right? My favorites are the tires on the left and the transmission on the right. The transmission belongs to my brother which he promised would only be at our house for a couple of weeks....well it's still here....it's okay it made the picture look more white trash so no hard feelings here! 
More backyard...just the playground. 
We hired 3 young men in our ward to pull up a bunch of sod in the back. It was so cold and rainy and I felt really bad, but they did in all in about 4 hours and it saved Cory and I a ton of work. Parker was the best helper of all, I wish I had a pic, but he would come in and out of the house getting drinks and candy bars for the boys and he was muddy and wet and just loving life. He was just working along side the big boys! 
Once we removed all the sod in the back we got a bunch of curbing done around the back and all around our house. Then we needed gravel and wood chips. We have an awesome friend who let us use his truck and trailer so we could get the wood chips for the playground area and gravel to put down in the corner for the shed to go on. This was an all day job, it was so hard shoveling all the gravel where it needed to go. We were so sore and had blistered hands the next day. The boys gladly jumped up in the trailer to help push the wood chips out for us:)
Digging holes for fence posts. This was a real adventure..me and Cor with a giant auger digging holes in the ground trying not to make them too crooked and not hit any sprinklers, sweating, and swearing along the way....oh the memories! 
The kind of BIG projects I like the best are the one's I don't have to do! We hired a guy to come to our house and build the shed in the backyard. 
It took 2 of them 5 hours and they got it done! 
We bought paint to match our house and he painted it. 
Ahh, we are finally done! We put the garden in the far corner, the tomato plants are taking over. It's our first garden so we have a lot to learn, but it's been great so far. 
Here is the former white trash spot of our yard. We had a friend do the concrete work and it's so nice to have no more gravel on the side of our driveway for kids to throw everywhere! The kids are loving the backyard now and we are glad all the work it over!Next up: kitchen cabinet makeover....stay tuned:)
