Home improvements

We've been swamped with home improvements the past few weeks. We live in a wonderful city that is right on the water. Although our house isn't directly on the water, it was built with clay sewers so the water can flow through. Unfortunately, tree roots flow through also. Our big beautiful tree and it's monstrous roots caused our sewer to collapse in January, amidst the feet of snow and ice hard soil. Several thousand dollars later, we had a new sewer, custom built with gorgeous white PVC piping. As Spring arrived our yard was in need of much attention; our landscaping had been destroyed and we had a mound of unsettled dirt that evidenced we buried Big Foot in our front lawn.

After months of planning, we ventured into some pretty large projects. We built a new walkway with brick pavers and lined our much too narrow driveway with the same. My husband thought the pavers were so beautiful, that we should rip up our old brick paver patio in the backyard and install a new one. At the same time, my mom offered to give us her hot tub because she doesn't use it anymore, which meant the backyard patio had to be dug extra deep to sustain the weight of the hot tub. Weeks of rain, the bobcat getting stuck, thousands of dollars later, and endless back-breaking hours of labor, it was all complete. The only remaining work to be done was landscaping. Yesterday & today the landscapers came and created a beautiful design on our front lawn. They are cleaning up their mess now, but essentially it's complete. It's gorgeous. I can't wait to play with our children on our new lawn or set up a tiny plastic princess castle on our new patio. It's difficult to part with the money that I feel should be saved toward our surrogacy journey, but it's also liberating to know that each improvement we make is a step closer to making our house a home not for a couple but for a family.