What a difference a few months make.

After months of work we finally put grass in this last week. It is such a stark transformation. We didn't just go from dirt to grass, we went from sloping rocky expanse, (seriously one guy who did our cement commented repeatedly that they should have put a gravel pit here and sold all this rock, cha-ching)
to dirt with about 6 truckloads of dirt,
add some cement, a garden, trees, and plants
Finally there's grass. Such a difference.
The last step is to add a pathway and a planting area along the left border and put plants and rock/bark in the rest of the areas. (This is a photoshop mock up of what it might look like, yay photoshop.)