An Exciting Saturday Morning!

Back in January of 2014 we had our back tree cut down by my cousin Bill. We wanted to have our front tree cut down as well, but it just didn't work out at the time to do so. Fast forward more than a year and we were ready to get it cut down. Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for my cousin his business is booming down south so he doesn't travel up north to do work anymore. Enter Facebook where I asked local friends for recommendations and lots of friends responded. We ended up only getting one estimate since the guy was so nice and very reasonable in price. The company is I'm In Tree Services. Plus he showed up to give us the estimate wearing a Seahawks beenie and I'm all about supporting other 12's! 

Here is our tree the morning of it's demise! It was funny the night before we had it cut down I actually had the thought pop in my head....this tree doesn't know that this is it's last night alive! Silly I know! 

Greg had said he'd be out on Saturday morning at 8am and in my mind I was thinking...sure it will probably end up being more like 8:30 or something. Nope....at 7:58 he was knocking on the door. Great work ethic!

The kids were very excited to see all the action and they really did watch for almost the whole time.

The first branches coming down!

Sending it through the chipper...this is my favorite part because it makes the outside smell like Christmas!

Greg starting to climb up...cutting as he goes!

It was fun explaining how he used his gear to help him climb the tree.

Once he got high enough the kids and I moved up to the master bedroom window so we could have a better vantage point.

By this point there has already been a lot of branches put through the chipper. I was amazed that the pile still wasn't high enough to see.

Getting higher!

Not sure how the guys liked having an audience the whole time they were working, but we really enjoyed watching the whole process. It's just another day at the office for them, but it was sure exciting for us!

Four cute kids crowded together sitting on my dresser! 

I wasn't sure how high he was going to go before he just cut the top of the tree off. I actually had my phone plugged in charging when I heard the kids go...."Whoa!". I grabbed my phone just in time to see this giant piece fall to the ground! 

It fell perfectly inside our yard...didn't hit the fence and Ella pointed out it didn't hit her slide that was on the right side of the lawn! 

Now it's just a naked tree trunk! 

Greg cut the tree into small pieces as he gradually came down. 

They would just fall into the yard and bounce wherever they wanted to. 

We have a few people lined up to come get all the wood. 

Once the tree was about 8 feet tall he just got down and cut the rest at the base. 

Over it goes! 

The other worker did a lot of work with gathering all the limbs, chipping them and then stacking up the wood next to the fence. They also both did a great job cleaning up the yard and the driveway. 

Now to tackle the 8 foot stump in the backyard. This was from the tree my cousin fell for us. We had asked him to leave the trunk because we had dreams of building a playhouse on top of it. We wanted it to be big enough for Owen to still use for a few years and then of course it would need to be safe enough for the kids. But....after making up a list of the materials we'd need we made a trip to the hardware store and priced it out and it was going to cost over $2,000!!! As you can imagine we can think of a lot of other ways to spend that kind of money so that was scrapped! So we were left with an ugly 8 foot stump in our yard! 

Thankfully Greg took care of that for us! 

This was a big tree...it was almost 40 years old and it definitely took some work getting it cut into smaller pieces. 

There were also still some huge rounds that my cousin had cut from the tree and they were just laying down the hill. People had tried to come cut them, but they were just too giant for a regular chainsaw. Greg cut those into more manageable pieces so now people can get them. I'm so happy that my yard will soon be free of these huge chunks of wood!!! From start to finish the job took around 4 hours. 

Here's the before view! 

And after!!! Our house is so exposed!!! 

Now you might be wondering why on earth we'd want to give up that privacy and shade. Well that lovely tree has ruined our driveway! I actually have to push the gas to get my van out of the driveway because it's pushed up the driveway so much on the left side. It's so uneven we can't possibly think about installing a basketball hoop for the kids because the ball gets bounced all over the place. And to top it off there have been a few people that have fallen in our driveway and we would really like to not have to file a medical claim through our homeowners policy! One thing the kids are really excited about is the fact that there won't be any shade next summer so the pool will always be in the sun! 

The next thing on the to do list is getting the driveway repaved. Of course that's going to cost a pretty penny and since we follow the Dave Ramsey way we have to save for that. I'm hoping that we'll have it done sometime in within the next 2 years.