My life as of late

We've been spending a lot of time in our yard the past few days. In our backyard there is a dog run off to the right of the house. Originally we thought we would rip the fence out, but now that we have Jackson I think it might be useful. Since we moved in however, it's been overrun with weeds. Not little dandelions or something like that. These are monster weeds. Like the entire thing is up to at least my chest and parts of it are as tall as me. After we got a new lawn mower and got the rest of the lawn taken care of, we attacked the dog run. Daniel went in there with a weed eater and hedge trimmer. The weed eater wasn't working too well, but the hedge trimmer worked quite nicely. After about 15 minutes our roommate came out to help us. It was nice that we could just let Jackson sniff around and lay in the shade while we worked. Daniel cut down the weeds while Paul and I raked them up and put them in big yard garbage bags. We got about half of it cut down when I took over. It took me about 5 minutes to cut completely through the electric cord with the hedge trimmer. Oops. It was after noon by then, so we just figured it was time for a lunch break.

After lunch, Daniel attempted to fix the cord. It didn't work. By then it was getting close to 90 degrees anyways so we let it go. Then yesterday, Daniel bought a new cord and we went at it again. This time it only took 20 minutes for Daniel to hack into the cord. But he didn't cut all the way through so he was able to fix it with electrical tape. We finished it up and now the dog run is just dead weeds. We have three huge garbage bags full of branches that we cut down. I really hope the grass just moves in and takes over. If we have to keep chopping weeds down until it snows, I will be very annoyed. I think eventually we will put Jackson outside while we're in class, and just use his crate for bedtime. That way he can run around and sniff and pee.

The days have gone by quickly, though we haven't been doing a whole lot. I have really enjoyed cooking with Daniel. We cook lunch and dinner every day. Our friend Jeff came over yesterday to see the house, meet Jackson, and talk about our summer. He went to Italy for a few weeks during his sophomore year at DU (he's one year ahead of us) so he told us a lot before we went. He wanted to know all about our trip. And he is going back to Italy in a few weeks to study abroad this entire quarter. So he wanted to ask us all the places he should go while he's in Europe. He also told us about his big 21st birthday trip to Las Vegas. I've never been interested in going before, but it sounded like a lot of fun. The whole fraternity is planning a trip over Spring Break because most of the guys will be over 21 by then. And I've already been invited.

I'm also working on a scrapbook as a thank you gift to Grandma and Grandpa. It's so much work, but it'll be awesome when it's all finished. And of course we've been playing with Jackson. Mostly fetch in the backyard, going for walks, and we're working on sit, down, stay, come, etc. He's so smart it's really amazing. I've only been in Denver 6 days and I'm already looking forward to going back to Phoenix. It's getting a little boring here. I'm excited to see my sister and my grandparents before school starts. I ordered my books yesterday. It's not too much longer! My third year of college. Holy cow.