What kind of sod did they put down? If it was anything but fescue, then it will look dead during the winter but return to a great lawn as soon as the soil warms up and the rains come. If it was fescue, then you should wait to spend all your money until the fall.

yeah it was fescue.

Here is the problem with reseeding in the spring: when you start to water the grass seed on a daily basis to keep the seed moist, then all the summer weed seeds germinate. In the case of crabgrass, it sprouts and grows much more aggressively than turf grass. Furthermore turf grasses need more time than a few months to develop sturdy, heat resistant roots. As it gets hotter in the summer, what you end up with is a crabgrass lawn by mid July.

Fortunately crabgrass dies in the fall. If you want to seed in the fall, then you don't have to worry about starting crabgrass.

If you put sod down in the spring, you can often skip the crabgrass. Sod needs plenty of water in the spring, too, but if you keep the sodded grass tall, the crabgrass will not get enough sunlight to take root. Sod is not fool proof but it is a much better choice for establishing a lawn in the spring.

Do you have a lot of shade? Fescue might not be the best turf for you. Fescue does work in the shade where other grasses will thin out. But if you have full sun, then you might consider Kentucky bluegrass. It will become brown in the winter and come back fully in the spring. But KBG forms a very dense turf that is very weed resistant.

I have a ton of shade and trees. I was thinking I could get seed now before the leaf fall in october, and it would give the chance for the seed to germinate in more sun as the leaves have not bloomed on the trees yet. Pretty much October to january, I'm blowing leaves out of the yard. What suggestion on grass do you have?