Yard Work

Last weekend we invited my mom down. To help us with yard work. :) We got so much done! I didn't remember to take before pictures, but Shannon took some during pictures. Above my mom and I were trimming hedges and weeding. In the front we trimmed all the trees, flowers, hedges and wedded all the landscaping. The lawn was mowed and edged and we laid new wood chips out. We also painted our house numbers black and put up a new doorbell button. On the side of the house, we mended the gate and the fence and weeded along the house.


Keagan spent some time with us on the front stoop while we worked. She was very good (and cute).


In the back yard we weeded both corners and trimmed down the trees and bushes there. It looks so much cleaner.



We also put of the sunflower from Grandpa on the south side of the house.


It was a good weekend. Got lots done. Now when Aunt Diana and Grandpa come next week the outside of the house will look much better. I just need to find some time to clean up inside. :)

Home Organizing

Last weekend my mom came down to Tulsa to work with Shannon and I on the nursery. It ended up being a project that affected 3 room, but not the 3 originally planned.
Originally we were going to move my sewing room and Shannon's office to our bedroom downstairs and then move our bedroom up to Shannon's office and make the sewing room a nursery. Well, we were thinking about it and realized that wasn't the best plan. Here's why.

The baby will be sleeping in our room for at least a few months, in the cradle from when Shannon was a baby (awesome huh? (Uncle) Randy made it back in 1980, all 11 of the Dick grandchildren used it). And we would like to stay in our room for some time and not have to start sleeping upstairs now (with still 2 months before she's born).So we decided to move most of Shannon's office down to our bedroom (it's a stupid big room anyways). Some of the book cases (and random stuff from the bedroom) was moved to the spare room. And we kept the sewing room as is. Now Shannon's old office is the nursery.

We did a lot this weekend. Here are some pictures to show it!

This is Shannon's office before we moved everything out. We moved Shannon's big desk to our bedroom, two of the book cases and their books to the spare room, the other two to our bedroom. We had to remove the door to fit the desk through it... jeepers.



In the spare room we added the two book cases and moved the small black computer desk from out bedroom up (with "computer" and all!). We also moved all the Fall and Christmas decoration boxes to the storage in the garage. That cleaned this room up.


Our bedroom lost one small black desk and gained one large desk and two bookcases. We also moved our bed a little.


After moving things, of which I did little to help. We got to the redecorating. This was only in the nursery. The other rooms still look the same, just with more stuff and eventually more organized. We puttied, sanded, and started to tape, but ran out.


So we took a break which involved SmashBurger for lunch, Target, Lowes, Babies-R-Us, Crib City, Baby Depot, and TGI Friday's for dinner. Then, back to the house for more work! We finished taping, then primed the walls and the chair rail, and watched some Olympics.


Sunday morning, Mom got up earlier than us and painted the whole ceiling and half of the brown walls, and some of the molding. :) Eventually we all helped and got the chair rail marked and the room painted. It's an oatmeal color on top and ceiling, with a gray-sage-green color below. The chair rail is painted white.



While we let that dry, we went out and spent some big monies on furniture. Well, Mom spent all the monies. It's her gift to us and the baby! Thanks Mom! We got a really nice crib for 330$, a nice big dresser for 350$, and a glider with ottoman for 270$. It's all a dark espresso color. The cushions on the glider and ottoman are a dark taupe color. The crib is the only thing we are waiting on. That should be here in about a month.


Then, when things were dry, we put up the chair rail. Shannon got to use his new miter saw! It made the job much easier. That and going to Lowes to buy a 10$ stud finder. All of the walls in our house are not square or straight. It was impossible to put up the molding nice without the stud finder, we tried. There were gaps all over the place where it wasn't against the wall. However, now it looks pretty good. It's all held on, puttied, and painted. Made the room look more fancy.


After that, we vacuumed and spot cleaned the carpet. Then moved the furniture we had into the room and enjoyed.


I still want to make at least one bookcase, too. But that will come later, probably after we get the crib so we know how much room we have, and where. We also put all the stuff we have gotten so far in the room too. I hung up pj's. :)

So, thanks to Mom for coming down and all of her help! There is NO way we could have done this without you. Not only was your manpower useful, but your knowledge and baby names were too!

:)

I'm pretty excited. I like the way things are going so far. :)

Pre-Thanksgiving Photo Tour

Before I post about Thanksgiving, I've finally got some pictures of stuff since Halloween. So here is a picture tour of my past month.

Our house all Halloween-ified.
Playing safely with sticks on the swings at Jayme and Charles'.
Baby bellies at about 15 weeks.

Playing with Maria and her dog Hendrix at Hunter Park.
Most of Thanksgiving dinner before we cooked it.

My blister about 1 stage before I accidentally popped it. It was even bigger than this when that happened.
But then while washing dishes, I shook my arm and the blister popped. Now it looks more like this. (for some reason it keeps rotating the picture, but you still get the idea, much better.)

Happy Halloween!

All sort of happy this time of year!
Shannon and I carved us some pumpkins Monday evening. While we carved we watched Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin and part of Hocus Pocus. That movie is so much fun. It always makes me want to dress up like a witch!!



I made a haunted house and he a spooky tree. They came out good!

Replacing a Floor

When we bought our house (almost a year ago!), we knew we'd have to fix the bathroom upstairs. Not only was it wallpapered with this horrid hunter green/cream vertical stripes, but the floor by the sinks was carpet and the floor by the tub was laminate that had been leaked under and showed a bit of damage.

We took the wallpaper down about 3 months ago and painted the room a much nicer brown/yellow/tan color (it's called cattail) . And that was pretty much it. Until this past weekend.

For another round of updating our house, both my mom and Shannon's mom came down (again). This time, we were on a mission to tile the bathroom floor.

Here is a before shot. You can't see in this pic, but there are those really cheap vanity lights up too. Like these, but in gold.


Here is what it looks like now that its done!


Friday night we took out the toilet and removed the molding from the floor and around the doors. Only one piece broke. But I should be able to fix it. Then if I just hide it behind a door, you won't notice. We also tore out the old flooring and were left with this.


Saturday we went shopping for the supplies. It was under 300$ for everything we needed to do the room. Including a new blade for my mom's tile saw. When we got back home, we started to layout the tile and then we cut the pieces we needed to. We decided to lay the tile on the diagonal, so we had a lot of pieces to cut. Here is the Hardi-backer down.


Then we were hungry, so we ate a bunch of sushi. In case you live in Tulsa and like sushi, I suggest you try Asahi. It'd on the northwest corner of Memorial and 71st hiding in a strip mall. The sushi is good and half price so long as you get enough!

Okay, tummies full of rice and raw fish, time to cement down the tile. Mom did this while I watched. The bathroom was just too small for more than one person to work on this. We finished around midnight and hit the hay. This is the cemented floor with the 3/16" spacers.


We had to wait 24 hours to grout, so I did that by myself Monday after work. But on Sunday, while we had the mom's there, we changed 8 light fixtures in our house. :)

A nice weekend. Not only because we updated parts of our house, but we had sushi, AND got to see Mom and Rhonda!

This is the grout down, but not the finishing touches, like molding and cleaning and curtain and the such.


And this is another view of it all together. Would have finished sooner, but the 5 gallon bucket of primer got moldy. Yes moldy. So we had to buy new primer. But the day we were gonna go do that, our car battery died, so we had to wait till tomorrow. But now it is done! What in improvement!

Fairly Common Sensical.

Life has been pretty good lately. Shannon's dad, Gary, is visiting. He came in on Tuesday and is flying back out on Monday. However, Thursday night to Sunday night we will be traveling to Manhattan (with a little bit of Wichita). It's the first time he's been here since we've moved. It's kinda fun having him over!

In other adventures, I started to clean up our two little "gardens" last night. I did about 2/3 of the left corner...


...but none of the right corner. That'll come next week, maybe.


Also, Gary is trying his hand at some stained glass!

Happy First Monday of Spring

This weekend was a special one. The last two weekends we've had guests here, which is awesome. I love having people come over on weekends. The weekend before that we helped Jay and Charles move, so that means we were out of town. The next 3 weekends Shannon and I will be gone. So this weekend will be the only one in 7 that Shannon and I are home and can do stuff around the house. So we did (and we played a lot of Blood Bowl too).

We started on Saturday by trying to fix our yard. It is mostly weeds and those evil baby trees. We raked and then on Sunday sprayed the entire yard (front and back) with weed killer. I fear we may have to take more extreme measures though. We will see. Here is a picture from before we raked.


And this is after. It looks like more of a difference in real life. I really hope the weed killer works!


The other thing we did was to paint our second bathroom. Yay! I know, I know. Everyone whose seen the previous wall paper (below) is thrilled. Try to contain yourself. We aren't done with that room yet.


We still plan to replace the carpet with some pretty tile. We also will change the lights, add some pretty decorations, and maybe even new faucets. We'll see what we find (and how much Mom wants to do!)

Yay! It's so nice getting things done around the house.

Cody say hi me.

This weekend Shannon and I visited Wichita. We got to see lots of people (Mom, Jay, Charles, Nikki, Rhonda, Maria, Cody..) and meet Charles' cousin from Bartlesville, OK (Aaron), Maria's puppy (Hendrix), Cody's doy (Mary), and Jayme and Charles' new place (a rental house)!

It was a good time. We ate a lot of good food and cleaned a lot of windows.


On Saturday, Charles and Aaron moved all but about 8 boxes and the washer and dryer by the time our crew got there. So we helped moved the last of the things into the living room and then dropped the truck off. When Jay got done with class, we had some lunch (sponsored by Jayme and Charles) and then headed back to start cleaning the house.


We cleaned about all the windows and all the cabinets in the kitchen. Plus other random things, like floors and the such. The house is still being worked on and hopefully everything that the landlord said would be done, gets done. If not, then there will be some drama. (p.s. Jayme lost a bit of weight!)
That night Mom treated all 9 of us to Sal's, a Japanese steakhouse. It was tasty. Then he relaxed, watched City of Ember, and went to bed. On Sunday we did some more eating, cleaning, and backrubs.


It was a nice trip. We even got some Christmas gifts from Rhonda! Shannon got the entire Calvin and Hobbes set. It is quite heavy.

But to add to an already great trip (really, me and my two sisters with their boyfriends and my mom and my neice, and my mother in law? wonderful), there were doggies! I finally got to meet Maria's golden retriever, Hendrix. He's almost 3 months and he is so cute. Such a stereotypical puppy, low corrdination, furry body, huge paws and legs, adorable face, not house trained (yet, but getting there).


There were 4 dogs running around Mom's house. Dakoda obviously lives there, but it was Atari's last night at Mom's house. Jayme is taking her now that they have a house. There was the previously mentioned Hendrix, and Cody (Maria's boyfriend) also brought his dog, Mary. Mary is a well-behaved pit-mix. She is pretty and really fun to play with too. The dogs mostly got along really well. Atari was more of a barking referee than a playmate though.


I still want a doggie!

The Lone Star State

This weekend I made my first trip to Texas. I've never been before and K-State Hockey scheduled a weekend of games down there. So, Jenette, Shannon, and I went down to watch the team. Michelle rode with us too, but she goes to every weekend the team plays (I mean she is a coach).


Michelle and Jenette got here Friday night and we at at Abuelo's and then went back to our house and played Pandemic with 4 people. This game is really fun. Newgen bought it for Shannon for Christmas and we've only been able to play it with the two of us. That has been fun, but everytime we play we want to try it with more people. So we got our chance and it was really fun. We played about 3 times and lost all 3 times, but were SO close the last time!

Then Saturday we left for Texas. Before we went to watch the games, Shannon, Jenette, and I went to Fort Worth to see Audri's new place. Her and TJ (her husband) just got it 1 week ago after a few months of chaos. But thanks to a really nice guy who works with TJ they got a HUGE house. I mean, huge! It's got like 5 bedroom all with walk-in closets half the size of the bedrooms. The master suite has a bathroom that is substatially larger than our upstairs bedrooms. Plus there are 3 living areas, a big kitchen, and a nice sized back yard! It's pretty groovy.


While there we also saw Brenda and Audri and TJ's two kids. One of which is 1 week older than my niece. It was fun to see how similar yet different they are.

Okay, then to the rink to watch the team. They played Texas Tech first and pretty much stunk. They looked slow and not together. It was rather frustrating. Plus it was the first time I've watched the team and not played on the team. I'm sure that helped in my opinions.

The second game Saturday night was against Univeristy of Texas. We played really well. We were tied 1-1 for a long time and then we were down 2-1 for the rest of the second period (I think). But then UT scored a bunch and we couldn't match. We ended up losing, but the team played together and I think they matched/out-skated UT in the game as well.


After that, we met up with Lyndo at Applebee's and had some un-impressive food. Applebee's really isn't that good. Everytime I go I am just disappointed. But, not many places are open past midnight.

Sunday we woke up and watched 2 more games. We played Texas A&M and University of Texas Arlington, lost both. But again, they played pretty well. In the A&M game, one of our defenseman covered the puck in the crease, which resulted in a penalty shot. C-r-a-z-y. You never see penalty shots.

Well done, goalie.

Besides not having enough shots on goal, there were a number of absurd penalites. The refs in Denton called a totally different game than the refs in St. Louis. Plus it seemed to be incosistent at times. In one game, one of our guys got called twice for roughing while using his body on the boards to get the puck. Totally clean at St. Loius. In the same game, one of our guys got elbowed against the boards and got his upper arm injured a bit, but nothing was called. And we weren't the only ones a little taken by this. A few players and fans from other teams commented to us that it should have been called, but eh. What are you gonna do?

It was a good weekend. It was awesome to see the team and talk with old friends. I didn't realize how much I missed friends and family until I saw how nice it was to just sit and talk with them in the bleachers.