The yard project

Before we had Isaac and Evan, we were anxiously awaiting for it to stop raining so that we could get a big machine in and move a LOT of dirt.
It finally stopped raining the week after they were born and my fantastic brother wrangled a back-hoe for us to use for the weekend.
Seriously, not the best of circumstances, but Jon liked having a distraction. That's what the days are full of- distraction after distraction just to keep from thinking about how much everything sucks.

Here's a before picture that I took awhile ago.

You can see the rock wall running toward the street and that there are 2 different levels. Our patio area by the french doors was also raised and had large rocks all around the border and the grass yard was on a lower level.
We thought that was lame. And I didn't like all of the weeding areas. And it's a pain to mow.
The part that you can't see is that back behind the house the yard has 3 different levels. The lowest level which is the level that the grass was on was not very big. So we decided to scoop that area out and fill up where the yard was lower and end up with only 2 levels.

In case you didn't know, our yard is HUGE. Which is both awesome and a pain at the same time. Awesome because of all the space and that we don't have neighbors right on top of us to wake us up at 6 am on the weekend by talking really loudly on their cell phones outside or to keep us up late at night with their loud music. It is also awesome because of the possibilities. We are lacking a garage and master bathroom/closet, but we have plenty of space to build those things in the future. The pain is the upkeep and the cost of getting it all put together (sprinklers, fence, grass, trees/bushes/plants)

This is a view from not quite the back corner looking toward the street. All the dirt that you can see up by the right side of the house was grass before and about 2 feet lower. You can see the patio furniture and some green which is where the patio area is. All of the dirt around there was brought up 2-3 feet all the way out to about where the big tree is and gradually slopes down. We have a driveway access to the right of the big tree that the dirt slopes down to and it gradually slopes up to where I am taking the picture.
To the left of the house was all dug out. It was a little area that was raised up higher than the rest of the ground.
Directly behind the house was also filled in a little to bring the dirt up to almost the foundation line.

 

This picture shows the view looking into the back. We scooped dirt out to the 3rd level. There was a whole second level there. It came up much closer to the house. I think there was probably about 15-20 feet from the back of the house to where a single level rock "wall" was which held up the second level. that was another 20 or so feet and then it stepped up to the 3rd level (which is where our garden will be).

This is just a closer view of the scooped out area

This picture shows most of the yard. Seeing Alex there kind of gives you an idea of just how big it is! Oh and the rock wall before was probably close to where you can see the edge of the shadow of the house or a little closer in to the house.

We're excited to be making progress. We likely won't do sprinklers until the fall or possibly next spring. We'll probably get the swing set and fence up in the coming months, both of which are totally fine with just dirt. We can plan our sprinklers around each of those which will work out great. I would love grass tomorrow (I do love me and have missed the UT grass!), but Alex loves all of the dirt. He told me that he doesn't want to have grass at all. I'm okay with having to water only the front yard by hand this year. Last year with our leak issues, we killed off a major portion of the lawn and spent the rest of the summer trying to revive it. And then the sod they planted during a weekend we were gone when they finished our road didn't fare too well either. So really, it's a good thing we don't have lots of grass yet.