Kristin and I discovered that when you have a new house built, there are many phases that you go through. What starts as an open field, soon sprouts stakes. After the stakes grow, a hole begins to form and your money will start to be sucked into it, never to be seen again. Actually, you do get to see results, as time goes by. Your money turns into cement and then cinder blocks, wood, tar paper, aluminum, and glass. Eventually it looks like a real house
After the house is done, your work is far from over. Now you must fill the house with your old (and new) belongings. If you are not moving very far, this can be accomplished with minimal packing and unpacking. Think you're done? Nope, sorry.
It is at this point in time that I discovered an interesting paradox: as long as I can remember, I have disliked mowing the lawn (as I'm sure many of you do). This would have been the perfect opportunity to asphalt over the entire yard and be done with it. However, children need green grass to run and play in, so we invested in having grass planted. Not only that, a few months after the grass began to grow, I decided it wasn't growing fast (or green) enough, so I fertilized it. Now I have the pleasure of mowing our 3/4s of an acre every 7 - 8 days.
Lastly (at least for the first year) a yard would not be complete without landscaping. In order to save money, we decided to do the planting ourselves. However, since neither my wife nor I know much about plants and shrubbery, we had to find someone who was willing to design a layout we liked. If you enjoy working outside, I highly recommend this since it saves you the costs of labor.
