Weekend wrap up

The couple did stop by a little before 4pm yesterday afternoon to see our inside of house layout. A nice young (well, probably early/mid 30's, young to me, LOL) couple with 2 little kids. They have done well with the local business they purchased a few years ago. 4pm was a bit late haha, since dh will talk your ear off and I'm sure they wanted to get back home for dinner, LOL. A couple of times I had to just get him to stop talking so we could move on with showing the house. It kind of sounds like he wants a 1 1/2 story, like we have, but she wants a rambler, so it was probably good that they could see inside to see what it actually looks like. I think she was surprised at how big the rooms upstairs were. She loved the dog wash and all the wood trim in the house. She was also smart enough that after we stood in our foyer for the first 15 minutes, just talking in general about building the house, she took the kids back out to their car and set them up to watch something on an ipad, LOL. He did not ask for our houseplans ;)

A bit quieter next door for the weekend. Saturday they apparently loaded up bikes and actually went somewhere to ride and were gone a good part of the day. That evening they *tried* to do a fire in their firepit.....to sit around the campfire....but it just ended up a huge almost bonfire, smoking mess and everyone seemed to ditch that activity pretty quick, LOL. Is it really that hard to throw a few pieces of wood and get them started to make a nice small campfire, to sit around and roast marshmallows? Our whole backyard was thick with smoke for awhile. They were also gone most of yesterday, so that was nice, too. Two weeks down, two to go........At least now, when they leave, because they no longer have that one barking dog, the other dogs do not sit and bark after they all leave, so at least we are not having to deal with that, like we always did in the past. Sure, it was great to have them leave, but then we'd just have to listen to 5 dogs barking for hours.

Looking at the calendar I just realized that next Tuesday is 4th of July. I also get Monday off. I was just trying to figure out when to go see my mom next (was thinking on the weekend) and since I have next Monday off, I'll just go in that morning and see her and get groceries. I also need to stop and get some chicken feed. The last bag I bought, I had to get a different brand than I normally get. That was about the same time that the chickens were coming out of winter and starting to lay again, but for the most part I have not got near the amount of eggs I got last year. I get about 1 per day now, total, from 3 chickens, some days none at all. I have read some articles the past year about lots of people saying their chickens are not laying much eggs and they think it's something changed in the brand name feeds. I have always used the feed store's brand, but they were out last time and I had to go with another brand. Hopefully they still have their brand in stock next week and it will be interesting to see if the egg laying improves once I get them back on that food. 

When dh had to walk neighbors dog down the street, to take him back, he got a chance to see the work DAN did to put his culvert in. He was kind of chuckling at that. He said the culvert is like 2-3 times as big as it needs to be, plus he didn't get it dug down deep enough, so it's actually making a rise to go over into his "driveway". Dh said that culvert is so big a bear could sleep in that! Neighbors culvert, and our culvert are both the same, normal sized under our driveways, LOL. DAN has not been back for about 10 days, so I guess he's done with that project and hasn't started on anything else, though his little mini excavator and sani can is still there. 

Speaking of the sani can. The truck came to clean it out the other day when dh was out front mowing. Rather than just pull forward a little more, after he was done, and turn into DAN's new cut in driveway, to get turned around, the guy backs up the truck to in front of our driveway and is going to back in at our gate and try to get turned around. DH stops him and nicely just says "hey, there's turn around just a little past that sanican you pumped" The guy is thinking dh means the driveway DAN just cut in and says there's a pile of dirt there (there was off to the side, but still MORE than wide enough, way wider than our driveway is) and dh said well, just a bit past that, still on pavement is a culdesac to turn around in. The guy says "oh, well that down there looks like private property. Dh says "buddy, this is all private property and I'd prefer my gate not accidentally get backed into" LOL. At least now the driver knows, for the next time he comes to pump, he can just easily pull forward one lot and turn around. Truck drivers in our neck of the woods aren't the best, most experienced drivers. We've had them accidentally go off the edge of our driveway entrance before. Best they just stay off it and use the actual turn around put in for  that reason.

I'm starting to hear tidbits that is making me think the economy is heading for a slow patch. DH was talking to some friends, who he worked with in the large metro area we used to live in, and they said work is slow (heavy construction industry). Sales where I work are way down. My boss said that the huge commercial construction company her dh works for is going to start laying people off.  

Well, our 52% increase in property tax assessed value officially came in the mail Saturday, so this week I'll be getting my appeal put in. It has to be done within 30 days. Because I was recently looking up appealing property taxes on Google, in my google newsfeed has been popping up articles about record # of appeals coming in. These were articles from other states. I think the first article was Nebraska. I can't remember where the other one was from.