You Know You're Officially OLD When...........

..........You tell your husband you don't want any of the traditional gifts for Christmas.  Not diamonds, not perfume, not clothes or shoes or even a new camera lens.  Nope.  None of that.

All this girl wanted for Christmas was.............

A fence for our new home!  

Yep, I'm lame and I admit it.  But pause with me if you will and take a moment to drool and swoon over these pictures of my beloved new fence before I share with you all of the reasons why this was at the top of my list this year.

My entire backyard now smells like a giant bouquet of freshly sharpened wooden #2 pencils.  You know the smell.  Every time I walk out there I take a deep breath and soak in this refreshing scent.  It's the smell of pure satisfaction, just like the smell of the freshly painted walls that still linger throughout our new house.  Ok, maybe I'm weird but I like these smells because they smell NEW and as the smells permeate my brain I can envision my "honey do" list getting shorter and shorter.

Dontcha think it's just begging for a nice sparkly blue swimming pool?!

Maybe I will be lame again next year and ask for THAT!  =)

I took this picture from the far corner of our yard, but obviously we couldn't possibly fence ALL of this in!  Do you know how much a fence costs these days?!

I'm not a vain person, I swear.  But for the past two days that we've had the fence, every time I turn the corner onto our street, I just get giddy over the sight of it.  I love our new home very much too, and I should also add that it was part of my Christmas gift as well.  (Duh!) But this fence is something I've been patiently waiting for since the day we put an offer on the house.

So here are the reasons this project was at the top of my wish list......

First, and most importantly, the house to the left of us has a pool.  A BIG, beautiful pool.  A big, beautiful, deep, freezing pool which has no fence around it!!  How is that even legal?!  I thought that by law if you had a pool and you lived in a neighborhood, you were required to fence it??  Maybe I'm wrong, but I wasn't about to go stir up drama with our new neighbors so I just decided we would be the ones to put up a fence, since we had several other reasons for wanting one anyway.  Obviously, with a toddler and two small dogs, having the temptation of something as dangerous as a pool that close to us is just not a good idea.  So that alone was reason enough to warrant making this a priority.

That same house to the left of us with the big, beautiful sparkling blue pool also has a BIG, beautiful, furry (but seemingly friendly) German Sheppard who also does not have a fence.  Well, he's bound by an invisible fence and I've never seen him cross it, but guess who CAN cross into it?  My kid and my two annoying little dogs.  And believe me, they do!  You'd think with the gi-normous yard we now have, they (all 3 of them) would be perfectly content staying within the boundaries of our own property.  But nooooo.  It never fails, they make a bee line straight to the neighbor's yard to antagonize that poor dog.  Who, by the way, is usually laying fairly close to that big, sparkly, deep, cold swimming pool.  My dogs may only be 5 pounds and look like froo-froo pups, but let me tell ya, they are SMART!  They know exactly how to torture that poor sweet dog by dancing in and out of the boundaries of the invisible fence, barking and yapping at him, knowing all the while that he cannot possibly come near them without getting jolted with electricity.  As I said, he seems friendly and I've even petted him myself, but I've just been waiting for the day when he gets fed up with my little ankle biters and grabs one of them up by his big ferocious wolf-like fangs and eats them for a snack.  Maybe that's dramatic, but I'm sick of running over and playing referee every time my dogs go out to do their thing.

Maybe this next reason is just because I'm flat out lazy, but I'm ok with admitting that.  I like to be able to open the back door, let our dogs out and keep my happy hiney inside my warm home.  When they've done their thing, I just open the door and let them back in.  But in case y'all didn't know, it's like two degrees or something here in Tennessee.  Yeah, it's cold.  And I'm a Florida girl.  A Florida girl who wears t-shirts and flip flops.  So, I have spent the past month risking death by hypothermia while standing out on the back porch waiting.....and waiting.....and yelling.....and eventually chasing and retrieving them from the neighbor's yard.  I'm pretty sure if one of them ever went head first into that freezing cold swimming pool, they'd be on their own.  I'm referring only to the dogs at this point, just FYI.  Kyndall would be worth a dip in the pool I suppose.  So my days are much more pleasant now as I am able to simply open the door, shew the little rats out and close it behind me.  I go about my business for five or ten minutes and then let them back in.  Easy peasy!

Lastly, I just think the fence makes the house looked "finished".  Maybe that's not a valid reason to drop several thousand dollars, but the reasons above validate that.  I like the way it looks and I also don't have worry about anyone just wandering onto our patio or peering into our back windows or jumping on our super fun trampoline while we're sleeping at night.  Ha!

I'm looking forward to the warmer temperatures when I can let Kyndall play independently outside while I get things done in the kitchen.  I can see the entire backyard from my kitchen and living room windows, so it's the perfect set up for her to be able to play without me having to sit out there with her the entire time.  We had a similar set up in our previous house and it was so great, especially in the Spring and Summer when she LIVES to be outside!!

So, maybe you still think I'm old and lame and weird for asking Santa for a bunch of cedar planks for Christmas, but I couldn't be happier!  Another project marked off the to-do list!

What did YOU ask Santa for this year?