Don't ask me twice

So we had some requests to see pictures of our house. To be honest we had one request, but I did read it several times.

Before I post the new pictures, I want to either show for the first time, or remind people what we moved into. This will only be about the family room. That is all that I felt like cleaning right now.

Here goes.

Take notice of the gross slump block fireplace over there looking a tad 1965-ish.

Make sure you soak in the beauty of the exposed beams in the ceilings. Make sure you also relish in the luxurious "popcorn" ceilings that have marinated in the smokiness of 2 disgusting foremer owners

Finally here is a small sneak peak of the kitchen from the family room. You can only imagine the destruction that took place in there.

Now, hold on to your hats. Here come the afters. This is the current state of our family room. I hope that you find it a little fantastic.

Here is the corresponding picture to the first one posted. Notice the remodeled foreplace complete with flagstone seat. Notice the lovely carpet and repainted walls. But, make sure that you absorb the most significan undertaking. Recessed lighting in a flat roofed house. (Flat roof houses do not have attic space.)

Oh how soothing are the warm colors that flow from the overhead lighting. With the popcorn ceilings removed you actually get a reflection of outside light back into the room from the ceiling. Oh and the french doors are totally new too. Those were easier to put in than I thought they would be.

Finally the sneak peek into the kitchen. We worked hard on this room, and we are totally happy with the way it turned out. Hope you like the new look>

Chad

What used to be fun

Painting. When we first got our condo, back in the day, I couldnt wait to paint. It was fun to see our little place transform just by picking a new color; putting our stamp on the place. I have now decided that a lifetime retirement from painting is in my near future.

We are so happy to finally have our ceilings done. Looking at holes for a couple of years has not been a highlight of our house, but painting these new ceilings has been draining. Everyday they are staring me in the face, taunting me until I finish them. Today I am working on this -what feels like - a never-ending process.

We worked really hard on Saturday and Chad and I finished the painting in our family room. What an accomplishment! Yeah! our room feels home-y and inviting. Its a breath of fresh air! It made me so excited that I am anxious to finish the rest of the house so we can actually wake up on a Saturday and not already have our day planned with house work. I know that is Chad's dream too :)

So, enough with the complaining. Its time for me to get to work. Plus, I just bought some cute drapes for my dining room and I cant hang them up until the ceiling is painted. There's my motivations for the day.

One Final Push

(Picture of the kids at Zoo Walk 2007)

Autism Zoo Walk is tomorrow! We are excited to go, but we need some donations. If you can spare even a small amount to this great cause we would be appreciative.

Just click on the link to the right, under Zoo Walk. When filling out the form in the memo box put "ASU Research Foundation". This makes sure that your funds stay local and are put back directly into our community.

We are really grateful for all that we have received so far from our family, friends and the community. For all of love, support and service that has come to us and into our home, we will be forever thankful. By participating in the walk we feel that it is our chance to give back to a community and honor those who have given so much to us.

What was yours?

Who gave your favorite talk during conference and why? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Mine was Elder Corbridge - in the Saturday afternoon session. It was a talk that was completely different to me. I appreciated his plainess in speaking. He had no stories (not that I dislike stories - Im always glued when President Monson starts talking) and his sentences were short and to the point. If you didnt get to see it, I highly recommend looking it up. If you can get video feed of it I suggest that to. There was something in his delivery that I was completely drawn to. I really appreciated his words about reaching high standards and how life teaches us that if the bar is set high, we learn that only a few choice people can reach it, but how that earthly lesson does not apply to spiritual greatness.

Conference

If anyone would like to have an activity packet for children. Let me know I have a great packet that a friend sent me for General Conference that I would be happy to forward to you. Just leave me your email!

Construction Conversation

Me: I just saw a car with an Alaska license plate. That would be a rough drive.

Employee: Especially over the water.

Me: Where do you think Alaska is?

Employee: It is an island by Russia, right?

Me: It's connected by Canada!

Employee: Oh.....It's been since 5th grade since I had a geometry class.

Me: That's nice, but when was your last geography class.

Employee: Oops! At least I got the "G" and the "try" right.

Me: It's geograPHY!.....You're fired.

Totally a true story. This was from a 35 yr old.

a little prick on the knee?

So - when I tell you to look at that little spot on my knee you probably think... "no big deal so you got pricked by a pin or something", right? (And I'm sure you think, "Dang, you need a tan" - but that is not what I am dwelling on right now.)

Well it is so much more than that. It is actually the entry point where the blunt end of a needle (with thread in it) entered my knee. (Did you pull back your gag reflex yet?)

Here's the story: I was crouched down pulling a blanket out of our closet. The blanket didnt give like I was expecting it to, so I fell forward and my knees went to the ground. When my left knee hit the ground I heard a really weird, odd, disturbing crunching sound. When I looked down at my knee I saw the needle protruding from it. "Okay, dont panic. Just pull it out" I told myself.

I pulled and tugged and it was totally stuck. I couldnt get a good grip on it and it was in far enough that I couldnt move because it had pinned my knee in place.

So I called for Chad (thank goodness he was home!) When he got there I said (very calmly I might add) "Go get some plyers and pull this needle out of my knee."

He ran to the garage and returned with some needle-nosed plyers and said"Okay, I'm going to do this really fast"

To which I replied "Just do it"

When it came out it became apparent that it was more than an inch in my knee. The crunching noise that I heard was most likely cartalidge or bone. I am too stubborn to go to the doctor to have it looked at. The wound just looks to sissy. This all happened Tuesday night. It really hurt yesterday, but today I woke up and it felt fine. I'm just going to watch it and if anything else happens then I will consult with my physician. I promise.

Anyway, I hope that this prepares you to go eat a lovely dinner!

Oh, after it came out Chad took it to the bathroom to further investigate it. When he was looking at it the needle broke - most likely from the stress put on it. I'm so lucky that it didnt break off in my knee!

While we were gone

We had a lot happing at our humble abode. Our ceilings were finally completed (minus the painting) and we couldn't be happier. Well, we could be happier if the process wouldnt have left a layer of dust on everything that we own. Seriously, every crack, shelf, table is covered in dust. My mom was nice enough today to come over and help me wipe down the walls. yes folks every wall has to be cleaned to. But really, it is nice to have the work completed. We finally feel like we are close to having our house done. I started to think about it today, and I honestly dont know what we will do when our house is "complete". We will be bored, but it will be a good bored :)





these pictures of the finished product may not look like much to most people, but they look like heaven to us. We've been staring at holes in our ceilings for too long.

I would like to give a huge shout out of thanks to all the men that came over to help Chad move all of our furniture. It really means a lot.

I would also like to give a huge thank you to my sweet husband for all of his hard work.

All alone

This man was not meant to be alone. It has been 9 days without Emily and the kids, and I am feeling it. at first I thought that I would be so happy to not have anyone dictating my time. Turns out, I don't really want to do anything else. Last night after dinner I was geared up for the bedtime routine and found myself wandering around the kitchen of my friends' house.

To make matters worse, my own house is in a major state of destruction. Everything moved out of it or into the playroom. Dirty, dusty, depressing state over there.

The silver lining is that my family returns to me tomorrow night. The house will be done (barely) and I will have to get crackin' on cleaning and moving things back in so the kids will have a place to sleep. (not to mention a place to welcome Emily home).

10 days is too long. I can't wait to no longer be a man alone.

A Weekend getaway

Well, I'm off for the weekend with the kids. Just me, my mom and two children in the car for ten hours until the treck finishes in Sacramento - more specifically - "Aunt Sissy's house". Caitlyn couldnt be more excited to see her cousins and play, but when she realized that she was going to miss school elephant tears began to roll down her face. She said with tears streaming " but how am I going to learn?". It was a sincere, heart - felt concern of hers that she was going to be behind the curve when she returned on Wednesday of next week. I explained to her that I would make assignments for her while we were away and that we could have lessons with her cousins. This soothed her for the time being. When I took her to school this morning she explained that she was going to say goodbye to all of her friends because she will miss them so much "I'll even miss Brendan" she said. And so my perspective goes back and remembers the time when time seemed to crawl. I remember sitting for hours (or what seemed like it) on our kitchen floor watching the clock and waiting for a friend's birthday party to start that afternoon. Little things to a child make such a huge impact.

We'll have a great time, but we'll miss Chad. He has been out of town since Sunday afternoon and we are definitely feelin' it. We are leaving tomorrow to help ease the pain of the construction that will be going on at our house over the weekend. The construction will leave our house pretty much unliveable and therefore, impossible to have kids in. So, visiting family seems like a good option. Chad is coming home tomorrow to move all of our funiture out of the house to help with the work on the ceilings - so if anyone has a husband to spare on a Friday night... send them to our house because he'll be working into the wee hours of the morning to ge the place ready.

So - until next week... signin' off!