What We Did to Stimulate the Economy with the Economic Stimulus Check!

While some people went out on shopping sprees or paid off credit card debt or put their check toward a lavish vacation, all I wanted to do was spruce up the backyard a bit...maybe add a couple bushes (yes, I said bush), some flowers and ideally, a nice pond -- you know, for some ambiance...

Our back yard is pretty pathetic. Grass is dead. No nice trees for shade, no flowers for color. It's just dead grass and a fence. So, I asked Ryan if we could maybe try and put a pond back there or some sort of water feature. He agreed! So off we went to Lowe's to check it out. We found it, exactly what we were looking for. We looked at what we needed and it seemed easy enough. The labor would make us sweat, but that's what we wanted...and here's what it looks like:

But then I got overwhelmed with it all, the kids were screaming and the more I thought about whether or not we could accomplish it, the more frustrated I got...so we walked away from the idea. And now, this is what we get to look at:

So, what did we do with the check so far? Well, since we pretty much axed the idea of the pond, we opted for a different water feature:

And for atmosphere, we get to hear this:

Thanks, Georgie, for the money. I'm sure you can see from our two purchases, we have used it wisely.