Wednesday, July 20, 2011

My Summer Project

 These are the before pictures. I can't describe the nastiness. Just be grateful you weren't up close and personal.
I was so proud of myself for getting the toilet and the cabinet out by myself. Are you ready for the finished product??!!






 I really wanted to get the walls smooth after taking off the wallpaper. It looked kind of okay in the natural light coming through the window, but once I reinstalled the light fixture I was so disappointed. I'll be texturing these walls someday -- just not this year.
 Here is a picture of my first tiling project. I tiled the bathroom, through a little hallway, and the laundry room. It's amazing how much difference the tile made!
The mirror was a $15 thrift store find, and the light fixture was what was there before -- only it was a rusty, used-to-be shiny brass. Is it weird to have the light fixture and mirror an aged copper color and the towel racks and faucet chrome? What would you do with the mirror and light fixture?

So there, you don't have to be afraid to ask to use my bathroom anymore. Now can we start summer over, please? I think I missed it.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

No more glasses!

Yes, we have cause for cheering today! Nikki had an eye appointment this morning, and she no longer needs to wear her glasses. The doctor said she could still use them for reading, or if her headaches come back she could start wearing them again. But, if she had just been coming in for a first-time visit she would not have been given a prescription for glasses. This is so wonderful because I am tired of reminding her to put her glasses on, and I know she is tired of hearing me remind her.
She didn't have glasses because of being near- or far-sighted. She got them because her eye muscles were not converging well, which means that she had a hard time adjusting from looking far away to focusing on something close, like a book. So, she started getting headaches in first grade as she began doing more reading and writing in school. However, the glasses were not what helped her overcome that. I recently found Kim Ashby of Creative Tutors who worked with both Hannah and Nikki with Interactive Metronome therapy. It's an alternative kind of therapy, and it was really neat. They each needed it for different reasons. Nikki worked on her vision problems, and she also worked on some mild auditory processing issues. After seven sessions of working with Kim, her eye doctor said today that the muscles in her eyes were working beautifully. Which means her headaches shouldn't come back, whether she reads with her glasses or not. So wonderful! We love Kim! We were sad when we finished our sessions with her that we won't get to see her anymore. It is really amazing what she was able to do with our girls.

My first Project Life attempt

I saw this great idea called Project Life. It's a scrapbooking kit that you can get to document all the little things that happen in your life each week. It looks like a scrapbooking idea that I could do, but it's also expensive. And I'm not sure I would keep up with it (I intended to make this post on Sunday and here it is Tuesday!), so I thought maybe I'll try doing it on my blog for a while. If I still like it, maybe I'll give something like that a try next year. So, here are a few bits of our life from last week.
I asked Hannah to get Ryan's swimsuit on while I got dressed myself before going to the pool. It's not as easy as you might think.
 Swimming at the pool. I can't believe this is the middle of July, and these are the first pool pictures I've taken. We LOVE our pool. There is hardly ever anyone there when we go, so it's really fun to invite some friends over and have pretty much the whole thing to ourselves!

I have done a terrible job keeping up with making bread this summer, so I have made a lot of muffins on the mornings we are planning to head to the pool. They work great for breakfast, snack, and lunch! I know, that's really sad, but they don't complain.
 Isn't he SO cute?!
 With our friends, the Barnetts.
 Nikki finds a way to fit in a little gymnastics in just about anything she does.
 Wow, they are playing together without fighting! Just had to mention that for history's sake.

We have s'mores (cooked in the microwave) for our family night treat quite often, but last night instead of chocolate chips we used Nutella. Yes, we all had seconds!
The mess on the floor in the background is noteworthy, too. I got my sink and toilet installed yesterday. The toilet works, and the sink leaks. For a normal person, the job may have taken an hour. For me, well the only plumbing work I have ever done is to replace the flushing mechanism in a toilet (which started to leak again, JW), so the job included several runs to Home Depot. Actually, after I was there the third time and the workers started recognizing me, I went to Lowe's for my next trip. Anyway, it took me most of the day, AND IT LEAKS!! At least it looks nice -- while the rest of my house has exploded from my neglect.
 Here is my hero. Without her help, I never could have made all of my trips to the store. She is such a trooper and stayed home with Ryan and Nikki when I am sure she had better things to do than watch Thomas the Train with Ryan.

Hopefully it won't take until my next weekly report to get pictures of my new bathroom taken. I'm going to paint the mirror today, and then maybe I'll ask JW to fix my sink next week. I'm done with it. My kids need their mother back.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

It's Nate's Birthday!

 Happy birthday, Nate! 

If you have a couple of daughters, you kind of just have to roll with it when you end up with 34 pink candles on your cake. It was an awesome cake, no matter what color the candles were! We love you, Nate!

This is what Ryan thought of me baking a cake that was not the red birthday cake he has been asking for.  If you ask him when his birthday is, he'll say, "August 20th for my trains presents. I want Sir Handel, Diesel, and James!" We're up to three trains now. The list keeps expanding. We have a couple of cousins' birthdays coming before we get to his. I'm not sure he's going to be able to handle it.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Preview of my old age

Well, maybe this is a little of what I'll look like when I'm 85. I was sanding the walls in the bathroom today, and this is actually after I had cleaned up a bit. Even my eyelashes were completely white. I was going to just do it with the wet sanding sponge, since they say you should avoid sanding the mud if you want to prevent lung cancer, but there was no way I was going to spend a week going over the walls with that tiny sponge. Bless my husband's heart for buying that electric sander! I really think mudding is an art, and I'm not that good at it. I took it on as a challenge to see if I can actually get the walls smooth in our bathroom after removing the wallpaper. The verdict is still out. If I end up texturing the walls anyway after all that sanding, I'm going to be so frustrated.

Wednesday, July 06, 2011

4th of July

I didn't get a single picture of our celebrating this week. But as I was finishing off my peach pie for breakfast this morning, I thought that the true test for me of whether my holiday celebration was any good is determined by the food. In that case, it was a great holiday!

Nate decided on Sunday that he was in the mood to grill, so he grilled some honey shrimp, corn on the cob, and fresh vegetables. So yummy! Then we had peach pie and liquid homemade vanilla ice cream. We were pretty much out of ice, so Nate dumped what we had in the bucket of our ice cream maker and added ice packs and bags of frozen peas and spinach around it. Didn't work -- but tasted great anyway!

Garner always has a big party and fireworks show on July 3rd in order to not compete with Raleigh's shindigs. We have really wanted to go these past couple of years but it's hard because it seems silly to drive about a mile in the terrible traffic and parking to get to it, but it also seems silly to walk a mile with a stroller and no sidewalks in 95 degree weather. When Ryan decided not to take a nap, we decided it wasn't worth it to take him. We laid him down and Nate left around 9 pm to walk with the girls down to the park. They camped out in somebody's yard and enjoyed the fireworks, avoided the traffic, and were home by 10:30. Perfect!

Our church here in Garner has a great tradition of having a breakfast on the morning of the 4th, and once again the food was fabulous, the company was great, and Nate even got in a game of tennis. He didn't have a water bottle, so a guy playing on the court next to them gave him one. He said he was an EMT and didn't feel like having to resuscitate Nate on the holiday.

Later in the day we went to Mike & Sherrie's and I got to see their new house for the first time, which is great. Had some more great food, and then we went out on the boat. When we saw three bright streaks of lightning come down together right behind the trees, we headed straight for the dock! There was only supposed to be a 20% chance of rain, but we sure got hit by the storm. It made for a great adventure, though. Of course when we got back to the house we ate again. :)

We got home late, and I just threw Ryan's pajamas on him and put him in bed. At about 5 a.m. I heard, "MOMMY!! MOMMY!!" I ran into his room, and he said, "We didn't brush my teeth!" What?! No matter what I tried to do, he would not lay back down or give up until I had taken him into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. He wanted the light on and I told him I couldn't turn it on or it would hurt our eyes. He didn't believe me, so I turned it on and after we were both blinded he asked me to turn it back off. So stubborn! About halfway through this escapade I heard from the girls' room, "Ughhhhhh." My feelings exactly!

Even if I did lose a little sleep because I didn't brush Ryan's teeth, I am still grateful for the 4th of July. What an amazing country we live in. I am just so grateful to be here, and I always will be no matter what happens in politics or our society. I feel very blessed that my ancestors made the effort to come here and build successful lives, so that I can have all that I do today.

Sunday, July 03, 2011

It's never too late...

I know we're on to another holiday, but I wanted to make sure I put this on the blog. For Father's day Nate got breakfast in bed, but we slept in late so he actually had to get back in bed, after getting mostly ready, to eat it.

Thanks for all you do for us, Nate. You are a great father, and life is so much better when you're home. We love you!