What we have been up to

Connor loves playing with kitchen tools.  The tongs are his favorite.

Making breakfast-apple pancakes...yummy!

Cooking up some yummy ritz crackers

Here's what we've been up to with the house.  We cleared out this side area.  This would make a great place to ride bikes...for now it just stores the trash cans.  On the left is a big storage shed.  It's empty and we doubt we'll use it.  Peter wants to get rid of it.

Here's the other side yard.  We have been digging up rocks here.

 Here's the backyard.  Most of this concrete is going to go.  What this picture doesn't show is that the concrete was poured on different levels.  There's about four different heights of concrete in our backyard.  The area under the gazebo will likely stay concrete as well as the patio by the door.

 

 Here's the front lawn, or what is left of it.  Last weekend we went prospecting for sprinklers.  We found 16 sprinklers for this tiny lawn.  I saw the pattern and told Peter where to start digging and sure enough we found several that were buried underground.  Who needs 16 sprinklers for a lawn this size?

Looks like mole holes

I still can't get over the number of sprinklers.

In this little area we found three more sprinklers...so that makes 19.  19 sprinklers for the front grassy area.  There's a running theme of many sprinklers around this house.  There are a ton where our strawberries and peas are planted.  There's also a lot along the dirt area leading up to the front door.

Here's a pot I planted with cilantro seeds a few weeks ago.

And here's the area that is planted with pea seeds.

 Have I mentioned how many rocks we have found in our yard?  Last weekend Frank emptied four buckets.  This weekend he told us to empty all the buckets into his truck and he'll take them all to a co-worker who wants them.  We're glad to get rid of the rocks...though there are several more that we haven't found yet.  It's like digging for buried treasure in our yard.  Everywhere you dig you'll find rocks.

Today Frank put up scaffolding and mudded our living room.  Our goal is to have the downstairs complete by Christmas.

In Loving Memory

When I went to pick Connor up after work today my dad told me that Gracie died this morning.  Last night we noticed her breathing kind of hard and she didn't get up to play with Connor outside.  My dad took her to the vet first thing this morning and the vet wasn't going to be in until about 9am.  He was told to take her to the Emergency vet.  He did and they ran some tests and took x-rays and found a large cancerous tumor on her heart.  He was told they could drain some of the liquid to help alleviate some of the pressure she was feeling, but the prognosis wasn't good.  She didn't have much time left.  While waiting to do more tests she passed away. 

Connor took my dad out in the yard twice today to look for dog poop. 

Best Buddies

She liked to keep a close eye on Connor and she LOVED to swim.

 She would've been 10 years old next week.

 We love you Gracie!

Connor is 2

Yesterday Connor turned 2. He had a great birthday and enjoyed opening gifts.  

I got clothes and sandals (not pictured)

And this really cool bike.  I enjoyed "helping" daddy assemble it.

In the beginning Connor had more fun assembling the bike than anything else.  It was like the kid that would rather play with the box than what is in it.  Except he wanted to assemble more.  But once he realized he could ride this thing...he was off and rolling.  He hasn't got the concept of using the pedals just yet, but that will come soon.

Look at me, I'm Two!

Here's my birthday cake.  I helped with the sprinkles.

Everyone is singing to me.

After everyone sang I blew out my candle.

Then while the camera was not recording my candle was lit again and I blew it out again.

This evening when we got home, there was a large package on the doorstep.  It was a turtle sandbox!

Just before dinner Connor decided to help himself to some leftover cake.

I think he thoroughly enjoyed his birthday!

Halloween Fun

 A couple days prior to Halloween we carved pumpkins.  Connor enjoyed taking the seeds out of the pumpkin.

 

On Halloween when my mom got home from work she opened up the big bag of candy for the trick or treaters and gave Connor a piece.  He hasn't had much candy before so this was a real treat.  Then he was told that if he put on his costume and carried a bucket around to the neighbors he would get more candy.  He then let me put his costume on him and we went around the cul de sac.  He had so much fun we decided to keep on going so we went around the block.

Daddy dressed up too.

He was so cute with his bucket.

At one point Daddy ran back home to get a bag to help hold Connor's candy, but Connor didn't like the idea of parting with any of his candy.  So he continued on basically dragging his bucket at the end.

When we were done walking around the block.  We hopped in the car and went to visit Grandma and Grandpa O.  Connor showed off his costume and then promptly took it off.  He then dumped out and showed his loot to everyone.  He even sampled a few pieces.

It was a long night and he thoroughly enjoyed Halloween.  He now really understands the concept of candy.

Here are a few cute pictures from this evening.  Peter was making dinner and so was Connor.

Would you like ravioli or chicken noodle soup?

Now who put the candy bucket just out of my reach?

This Weekend's Adventures

Frank took the weekend off and helped fix a friend's car (cause when he's not at his normal job, he's fixing houses and when he's not fixing houses he fixes cars-he has a lot of talents.)  It was nice not to have to work on the house...though we did anyway. Actually we had two carnivals to go to and I was glad to have Peter come along.

In the morning we worked on the yard a bit. Peter cut back and removed more of the overgrown morning glories that were all over the side fence. Now the fence is bare and it is really leaning over...We'll have to prop it up for a little while before we take on replacing that. Connor and I enjoyed planting a rose bush in the front little planter area. Then we filled up two of our empty planter pots with soil and planted bell pepper, chives, and cilantro seeds in them. Oh and I'm super excited...our bean seeds have sprouted!

 Above: Before, Below: After

We ran out of green garbage cans again and it's not green week this week.  

I think we'll have to go buy a few.  This area looks so much cleaner.  Don't you just love the fence?

Do you see the bean sprouts?

I think for family home evening tomorrow we're going to buy more soil for fruits and veggies and then get started on planting our pea seeds. We also have radish and carrot seeds. The carrot seeds we got are for multicolored carrots-pink, purple, white, yellow and orange...It sounds so fun!

After a rather short nap, Connor, Peter and I went to my parents' house to pick up the costumes. I was going to be Pooh and so was Connor (yes we already had the 24month costume-it's roughly 9 years old). Well I put my costume on and with the 87 degree heat we were having I knew there was no way I was going to make it as Pooh. So we found the box of costumes and plan b was to be a clown. Though the clown costume had a few flaws that needed fixing. So it was on to plan c. I went to work as a scarecrow! I wore sunglasses and nobody recognized me until I started talking. It was pretty fun. Connor refused to put on his Pooh suit, so he went to the carnival as himself. He was really cute! He didn't understand why everyone looked so strange. I think most people scared him. He played a couple of games and then really just wanted to dig in the dirt. After the work carnival we headed to Sprouts to buy pumpkins and then headed home to make soup for our church carnival. We arrive and see that one of the games involved throwing darts at balloons. Well when the first balloon popped, Connor's face filled with great sadness and crocodile tears started flowing. Then another balloon popped and he was set off screaming. Peter and Connor roamed the halls of the church until all of the balloons had been popped.  While roaming the halls, Connor would run up to a dark spot and then point to his shirt (it glowed in the dark).  He had fun finding dark spots to show off his shirt.  Then when the coast was clear they entered the gym again and had some dinner. After dinner, Connor played a fishing game and got some funny lips. Then he went to a big pumpkin and pulled a tootsie pop out, he didn't win another tootsie pop, but left the game with three tootsie pops (it was the end of the night and Connor didn't understand the rules, and the girl hosting the game said it was okay.)

Today Connor enjoyed two more big tomatoes. He plucked one off the vine and gobbled it up. Peter saw one that split open and plucked it off. Connor saw it and enjoyed eating that one too. Last week he plucked and ate all of the ripe cherry tomatoes-there were six or seven of them. He's also enjoyed a few more strawberries.

Kitchen back splash and front yard

The back splash is in!  We love it, we enjoy sitting back and staring at it.  The only thing left to do is seal it, which we will do.  My mom will come and do the touch up painting and then Frank will be back next weekend to do the final caulking.

I love how he finished off the side by the sink.

Here is an up close look at the tile and marble.  Peter loves how the marble turned out, he wants to do tumbled marble in the bathroom too.

These two are the before pictures of the planter area that is by the sidewalk.  I weeded and removed more rocks than I care to count from this area.  The previous owners used rocks in everything! 

 

This is the planter area near the house.  We planted strawberries and bean seeds.  Connor has enjoyed plucking two strawberries already.

We also planted tomatoes, lettuce and green onions last week.

 The front planter we filled in with plants that we had in our window boxes from the condo.  Nothing spectacular, but nicer than what was already there.

 We have two pentas, some carnations, primrose, something red that I can't think of the name for, and several freesia bulbs that we found.  Should they live-great, if not, oh well-they look nicer than rocks.

 With the window boxes empty, we decided to plant succulents in them.  The house has three window box shelves.  Two in the front and one in the back by the kitchen window.  As luck would have it, we have three window boxes.  Here's the first one all decked out.  Next weekend we'll have to go to the farmer's market and get more plants to finish the other two boxes.

Next weekend's plan of action is replacing the sliding glass door and the last window in the master bedroom. 

Pictures!

Here are some pictures as promised:

The downstairs bathroom was this hideous dark brown and dark red color.  

The paint peeled off of the wall.

Here's the shower part.  It's not too bad.  We had to bend the shower door frame back into place so you could actually close the door.  We also sanded and repainted the cupboards.

It's amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do for a room.

I think our towels are a tad too long.  We have a towel rack, but it's not up yet.

This bathroom is almost done.  Eventually it will be redone.  I'd like to get rid of at least one of the three doors...so annoying, but for now it is very much livable. 

 Here's the master/Connor's bedroom.  We are amazed at how much stuff we got into this room.  There's a nightstand on both sides of the bed, then the crib, bookcase, and dresser.  There's even more room too.  Not everything is tight together.  Then there's the fireplace on the far wall, then the third wall has the sliding glass door, the changing table and then the two closets.  You come in from the double doors and you can go out the double doors to the bathroom or you can go out the third door to the shower.  I think they liked a lot of doors in this house.  The upstairs bathroom has two doors as well.

And now what you've all been waiting for.....The kitchen!  We have so much cupboard space I don't need to leave anything on the counter except the toaster and the knife block...it's so clean...and I haven't even used them all up yet either.  Oh and the granite people made us two big hot pad/cutting board type things from the pieces that they cut out to fit the sink in.  They also left us the large leftover pieces too.  None of them are big enough to use in a bathroom really, so we're not sure what we're going to do with them.

This area will at some point be the eat-in part of the kitchen.  Frank said he will build us a built in bench and we're toying around with the idea of an island too.  But both of those are not necessities right now, so they're placed on hold.

The back-splash was started today and will be mostly finished tomorrow.  We bought these really cool glass tiles to run as an accent stripe, but the amount of space under the windows prevented us from going with that idea.  Instead they are placed more like a 2x2 medallion every now and then.  I like it.  We are going to have a lot of glass tiles left over, so we're also toying with the idea of using them in the upstairs bathroom.  Though Peter wants to just return them and pay the 20% restocking fee.  I think there's plenty of color that we could have a lot of fun with that bathroom.

Well those are the pictures for now.  The house is coming along.

We Officially Moved In!

We are no longer homeless!

Yes we have finally moved into our house. Last Sunday night we moved our stuff from my parents' house over. The master bedroom is set up with our bed, Connor's crib, the changing table, a bookcase with toys and books and two night stands for now. At some point we'll take in our dresser, but we're not sure where it will go at the moment. It's a huge room, but really only has one useable wall. Peter installed closet organizers in our closet which we share with Connor and still have plenty of free space (though we haven't emptied all of our boxes yet). This room has been painted and carpeted with the most luxurious must run around barefoot kind of carpet-that we got for an awesome price. We had to buy a really big piece and have quite a bit left over. I hope it's enough to do one of the upstairs rooms too.

Our family room/kitchen is still under construction and will be for quite some time. The kitchen will be getting a back splash soon and then everything will be done except the floor, which is concrete at the moment. The family room has pergo flooring which will be removed when we replace the kitchen floor. The mantle over the fireplace was a hideous color, my mom painted it and the wall above it a nice terracotta color and then left a stripe of the previous color for giggles. The fireplace will be fixed up, but that is far down on our to do list. Other than that it's pretty much done.

The living room needs to be textured and painted, but right now that's where all the construction tools are.

The downstairs bathroom has been painted. It looks SO MUCH BETTER! It was originally an awful dark red and dark brown. It's now a much brighter blue color. The medicine cabinets are new and the vanities got a paint makeover. Eventually that bathroom will get a complete makeover, but for now it is quite usable. Just don't look at the tile flooring that is falling apart.

So downstairs is getting closer to being done. Then we'll tackle the upstairs bathroom which will be completely gutted. They had a major water leak at some point. There's clearly mold all around the baseboards, basically rotting them out. There's a funky smell in one of the rooms and water damage on the floorboards. There's also obvious damage in the ceiling of the garage. Yes we knew about this when we bought the house. We had no idea how bad the kitchen was, so no we weren't expecting to do a complete kitchen remodel and a bathroom remodel. For now there's a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs to keep Connor from going anywhere near that nasty bathroom and all that lurks upstairs.

The list of repairs is endless...as we said we bought a diamond in the rough.

____________________________

So it's been a week and we don't have internet due to the nasty mexican fan palm tree that Peter and his dad tried to remove.  Monday we're getting an estimate to remove the rest of the palm tree.  As soon as it is gone then Time Warner can come back and try to make sense of the mess that is left over.

We fixed the sprinklers near the house today.   I cleaned out the dead bushes in the planters and now they are ready for new plantings.  I can hardly wait!

Next post will be pictures I promise!  Lots of pictures!