CarmeloWalsh[.]com

Jaime and I hired a contractor prior to Easter, but the soonest he could come was this week. This backyard is near done. I’m really excited about how the front is turning out, but you will all just have to wait to see that until it is completed.

The big thing was removing all the river rock. It is all up front now. The guys who worked this, did such a great job. We are very happy. It was affordable too. Well… Fairly affordable. Your mileage may vary depending on what you want, and this is exactly how we wanted it. I can’t wait to start planting stuff like flowers and vegetables and fruits.

For March 31st, to celebrate both Easter and my brother’s birthday, we had a really big family get together. It really was special.

My Uncle Rodrigo (Igo) from New Jersey at the time visited my mom in Montreal about 10 years ago. He told her that we had family out here in Mesa when they were talking about me living in Tempe.

A few years later, I think in 2004, we contacted the Mesa family and got together. Over the next 9 years, with Brandee getting married, Jaime and I getting married, and Pat getting married, our family just grew so much. I’ve been trying to do more family related things this year so we got everybody together for Easter.

Instead of the traditional Ham, we ordered a whole pig! It was really nice using our patio to comfortably accommodate everyone.
Since we had two cameras going, we have two sets of pictures and the timestamps are off (Uncle Dave’s camera is set for California timezone). Putting all the pictures in one album would not put them in order of when they were actually taken.

Jaime and I decided that it was time to have the patio done the way we want it so that we could enjoy being at home. We shopped around and hired a local contractor to add a cement slab and then put up the behemoth that is our patio. It is awesomely great.

We hired local painters to put a fresh coat of paint up on the whole outside of the house.

We also sought a local furniture place. They created us some custom furniture that fit perfectly under our patio.

We now seek to have xeroscaping done in the front yard and a great irrigation system and many trees and bushes in the back yard.

[AFG_gallery id=’4′]

Here are links to the contractors we used.

• http://www.rictorcontracting.com/
• http://www.tpcaz.com/
• http://www.arizonaironfurniture.com

For Valentine’s this year, I bought Jaime and I tickets to the ballet to see Romeo and Juliet at the Phoenix Symphony Hall. It was fairly fancy and enjoyable. It was both our first time to a ballet and we didn’t really know what to expect, but we liked it.

We had some awesome seats on the balcony, right in the center too.

The story of Romeo and Juliet came out in 1599 and takes place in Verona, Italy. It’s a story of the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets and the love strongly shared between Romeo and Juliet. A well written and easy to understand summary can be found here.

Our view.

Since November, we have been going through an upgrade on our patio. Check it out!

BEFORE

AFTER

I would like to have more events at our place this year.

We went out to dinner and Damien drove us home. He did very well and I’m super proud of him. This is my first time riding with him driving.

Damien got a minibike for Christmas also. Since he has been taking over the garage and taking bikes and skateboards apart and putting things together, all improved, we decided that now is probably a good time to get him a little something where he can start learning about engines. Plus its hella fun from what I understand.

I even got a text message from Damien the day he got it running, telling me how much fun he is having on it. I have never, ever, gotten a text message from him like that. So I take it that Jaime and I did good on this gift. As you can see, he already started tricking it out with ground effects lights and a new sticker in the front. I’m sure it will just be a matter of time before the whole thing is stripped down then tricked out and put back together.

Carmelo quit smoking.