The Stump

If you go back and look at the damage from Ike, you'll recall the large uprooted tree stump that was left behind. We've (when I say we, I mostly mean Derek) spent the past several weekends trying to chop off the roots still sticking out, dig out the ones that were stuck in the now dried mud, smash it down and whatever else we could possibly do to get it level with the ground.

Yesterday I was taking Katie on a long awaited shopping trip and we turned off of our street and went around the curve where I noticed a truck with a strange looking machine on a trailer. I backed up, rolled my window down and said, "do you do stumps?!?!?" realizing how idiotic I sounded at the time. He said yes and I asked for a card, but apparently he had already given them all out (which I would guess meant he plastered them all over the mailboxes because that's usually what people do around here). So he said that he needed to look at it before he could give me an estimate, so I backed up and had him follow me home.

We may have gotten ripped off since we didn't shop around, but Derek and I were expecting to have to pay several hundred dollars to have that thing taken care of. He shredded up both stumps for $100. And we ended up with enough mulch to cover all of our flower beds in the backyard (which usually takes about 20 bags). So the stump is gone and we didn't have to buy mulch. Our work is not finished though. We are going to have to backfill the hole because the ground is very spongy and then put new sod down. But we are saving that for another weekend. But what a great feeling to have that part behind us.

In other news, we celebrated a huge victory in our lives this past week. We finished paying off a HUGE amount of credit card debt. Let's just say one of us could be driving a nice luxury vehicle if we had not been so careless a few years ago. It is a great feeling and one that we hope lasts. I saw a window decal on a truck last week that said, "Live Like No One Else. daveramsey.com". So here's to us living like no one else.