So, Saturday was an extremely productive day for Neal and I.

First, I had to sleep in. The Olympics — and Michael Phelps — has been killing me, HAHA. I was up late every night this week and needed to sleep in. Neal started making noise at 9:30, and I think that was my cue to get up.

Neal was geared up to finally rip up the incredibly nasty carpet on our deck. We have no idea why the previous owners put carpet down, but it was moldy and gross. It was still wet from Thursday’s (yes, Thursday!) storm, and we had just had it with the carpet. It was time to go.

First, we had to dismantle this large canopy that was attached to the deck. Boy, was that fun….. not! It was horrible. Almost all the nuts/screws were rusted and Neal had a hell of a time getting them unscrewed.

Funniest thing was he couldn’t find his ratchet set. I finally found it downstairs in our basement after much searching. Neal and I comment all the time about how disorganized we are and how we can never find anything we need. I guess we are too lazy to do anything about it. We watch “Jon and Kate Plus 8,” this show on TV with these people with eight kids, and always comment about how we could never do that.

So after searching forever for the ratchet set and finally finding it, Neal said, “If we had eight kids, we would either leave one somewhere, one would die, or one would become horribly injured.”

HAHA!!! So glad he has confident in our parenting ability. But hey, our cats are still alive! That should count for something, right?

Anyway, after our stupid, rusted canopy was down, it was time to start cutting and ripping the carpet.

Yes, Neal is covering his nose. Why? Well, the carpet smelled like a combination of fish and mildew. It was bordering on revolting. See how disgusting it is? Part of that was under the picnic table, so it never got enough sun to really dry out. Ugh.

Wood! I see Wood! Beautiful, treated deck wood!!!!!!

Neal did so much work tearing up this carpet. It was gross, wet, dirty work. There were bugs we’ve never seen before hiding under this carpet, and one massive hornet. But he spent a good three hours of physical labor between dismantling the canopy and tearing up the carpet. I think it makes both of us feel good putting in the time to make our home what we want it to be.

I tried to help him as much as I could, but I was either not strong enough or not tall enough. He suggested I work on pulling weeds. I hate pulling weeds. But he was doing harder work, so I pulled some weeds.

I know I look like a sumo wrestler with my hair like that. I just don’t care, HAHA.

Simone was really cute, as usual, while we were working outside. She sat right inside our screened door with one paw in my sandal, as if she was wearing it. It was so cute.

They are so cute. They sit right inside the screen door whenever we are out on our deck. It’s adorable. They usually roll around and act cute and meow.

Anyway, back to the deck. We still have to work on the trim and do some work cleaning up the deck, but for now, we are just happy to look out and see wood.

The deck looks so much bigger now. The canopy didn’t extend all the way out to the edges of the deck, so it sort of made the deck smaller than it was. It just seems like we have so much more room now!

We want to let it sit for a while and just dry out. I’m not sure if it ever actually dried under that carpet!

My parents gave us an old umbrella and base to put in our picnic table so we have a little shade. I love it!

Whew. Feels great to look out our back door and actually see what I want to see.

We also ran to Petsmart and got the cats some new toys.

We also ran to Old Navy and Linens ‘N’ Things to get our new coffeemaker (see previous post).

We were pretty exhausted by the end of the night, but like I said, it felt so good to get some stuff done. We’ve been talking about taking up that carpet since we moved in over a year ago, but I wondered when we’d actually get it done.

Tomorrow, I’m off to my friend Jess’s to make softball uniforms for next weekend’s softball tournament. Can’t wait to brainstorm a team name…