Patio

We continued on with our home improvement projects in January. Our front patio area was hard-packed dirt. Susana would head out every morning and sweep up the loose dirt on top of the packed dirt, so that it would not blow around and get the clothes dirty that were hanging out to dry. For a Christmas present, we told Carlos and Susana that we were going to put adoquines on the front patio, which are a kind of cobblestone/cement block. We ordered the adoquines before Christmas, so they would be ready when we got back, but they sold our order to someone else. Because I wanted to get started, I started hauling some of their older blocks while the newly made ones were still drying. 

Luckily the blocks dried fast and we could load them up onto a larger truck to haul them. This guy is the maestro that we hired to help put the blocks down, so that I didn´t try and do it and end up with an uneven slope or something. 

Here is what the project looked like as they started to lay the blocks down. We made a little red path to the doors, and little red flowers sprinkled around the patio. One of the things we were hoping for is that the blocks would help with the puddles that always formed in the rain. Whenever it rained we would end up with huge puddles in the yard. The main problem with this is when we went out to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and it was dark, we would step ankle-deep into one of these puddles. Not fun when you walk back into the cement floor room and tried to decide how to dry off your foot before you put it back into the bed. Or better yet, if Bentz went out to the bathroom and just stuck his wet foot right back into his bed.