Making Progress

With our move out date of our rental house coming up quickly hubby has been working his tail off to get the house livable enough that we can move in.  The pressure is really on now that the owners of the rental house are moving back in, now there is no chance of extending our stay. On the upside however we no longer will have to pay the break lease fee. Whoohoo!

  

Hubby broke down and paid a carpenter to come and hang the bead board in the laundry room. Hell didn't freeze over like I think he thought it would. Hubby hates to pay someone to do something he can do but when you're in a time crunch...

Hubby installed the cabinets and the counter tops are being made this week.

I am excited about all the storage space these additional cabinets are going to give us.

The electrician will be coming this week to hang the light fixtures  and hubby will be madly installing tile in the shower this weekend. If all goes according to plan we should be able to have the bathroom up and running by the end of the month. 

Birthday Fun

Over the weekend we celebrated little lady's 4th birthday. We decide to celebrate with a day packed full of kid fun. 

Little lady was thrilled when she woke up and found this massive princess castle balloon floating in her room.

In her birthday dress and special princess party hat.

Little lady had requested an Ariel cake. We are all still wondering what she wished for though, she was so serious and really sat and thought it over before blowing out the candle. I am dying to ask her but then that would be breaking the cardinal rule of wish making, never reveal your wish.

Can't you just see the sugar rush kicking in from the butter cream frosting?

After getting her all jacked up on sugar we decided to take her to the indoor playground at Jungle Rapids. What better way to burn off some energy.

One of her favorite schoolmates happened to be there so the two of them had a great time playing together.

Bounce, Bounce

Aunt K tested out the kid sized chairs, I won't show the pic where it was stuck on her rear end!

A little clowning around with their mascot.

I have to admit that little lady had a great time there but I had to really suppress my want to completely wrap her in a germ free bubble. Especially when I saw her in the BALL PIT, AAAHHHHH! THE GERMS!

 All in all, I think we managed to spoil her rotten on her special day, so mission accomplished!

Monday, little man turned 2 months. What a difference 4 weeks makes. We will go for his check up early next week, it will be interesting to see what the official weigh in is.

One month old.

2 months old.

Quick Update

 The upstairs bathroom is really coming along. Hubby has been working night and day to get it all put together so we can move in soon.

Walls and ceilings are now painted. Shower is ready for tile.

View of other end of room.

This is most of the bathroom, unfortunately it is sitting in the living room. Tile, tile and more tile. Sinks and faucets all picked out and ready to be installed.

 Cabinets are being picked up today so things should progress pretty quickly.

More exciting than the bathroom renovation is that little man is starting to give some super sweet smiles which I just have to show off.

Nothing cuter than a smiling baby!

Where there's smoke there's fire, weekend adventure, and a little comparison

It's never a good sign when you look out your front door and you are greeted with the smell of smoke and more than one cop. Well any cop outside my door is bad news as far as I'm concerned but that's a story for another day. ;) Yesterday afternoon the woods a few blocks away from our home unfortunately caught fire. The worst part of the whole situation was that it was a very windy afternoon. The fire actually started across a 4 lane road and then the wind blew it across into the back of our neighborhood.

The police set up shop literally in our front yard. Our house was the cutoff for where they were asking people to evacuate.

The view down the block from our front yard. It was snowing big ashes for several hours. 

They had 1 helicopter and two planes circling and dropping water.

The fire department had it under control in about 5 hours, unfortunately three houses in our neighborhood were damaged. Today they are doing a controlled burn of the area to help ensure that what is still burning does not get out of control.

A little less exciting was our visit to the annual Azalea Festival.  



Hubby and I got a kick out of seeing the new nice marble benches the city installed on the waterfront. I guess beggars can't be choosers when it comes to business sponsors to buy the benches as the one hubby was resting his rear end on was bought by the local strip club! LOL! Not sure if you can make it out in the picture but their logo is a little pair of legs doing a high kick.  Nice.

Little lady was thrilled that she managed to sucker us into buying her a blow up monkey at the festival. Meet Snowflake her pink monkey. :)

I couldn't help satisfy my curiosity about the complete difference  in my two children as babies. Little man just seems so big. Last night I put him in some jammies that were little lady's when she was a baby.  Little lady shown on the right was 9 weeks old and was basically swimming in the jammies.




Little man shown on the left at 7 weeks 2 days is practically busting out of them. It will be the last time he wears them as his poor little legs were just barely able to fit. I also went and dug out little lady's baby book so I could refresh my memory on her weight as she grew. I was shocked to find that little man at 7 weeks out weighs her 3 month weight by 2 lbs! It's no wonder my back is aching! What a little bruiser!

Busy, Busy...

 The last two weeks have just flown by. I have turned the computer on several times to post and then get sidetracked until hours later I realize the computer is still on and I never even touched it! Little lady was on Spring Break the week before Easter so we were off our normal schedule and then this past week has been filled with school, swim lessons, tile shopping, etc. So here is a quick recap to catch us all up...

Easter egg hunt in the backyard. Little lady loved the super shiny eggs the Easter bunny left. I loved that they were super shiny so I could remember where I hid them.

This is what happens when hubby hires 5 guys to come help. It was amazing how fast they finished gutting the two bathrooms! They also did a wonderful job getting rid of this enormous pile into the dump truck Hubby brought. I would say that you could fit a car in the garage now but that would be a total lie. We have just managed to fill it back up with other mess. ;)

This dust has essentially coated the entire house, Hubby spent the entire day today mopping and cleaning so that we can bring the kids back in the house.

The upstairs bathroom is progressing. This picture was from a few days ago. Hubby had a guy come today to finish the sheet rock.

After removing a linen closet from the hallway and moving the door to the bathroom to where the closet once was the bathroom now has an additional 50sq ft. We finalized the choices for all the tile in the room but have not decided on the vanity, sinks and light fixtures. I need to get on it, this is where my indecisiveness becomes an issue. It is so hard to pick with all the choices out there these days. 

I did manage to use Hubby's leaf blower one afternoon on part of the backyard. It is just filled to the brim with all kinds of neat plants and pathways that we never even realized were there.

Little lady and I had a wonderful treat last week, a visit from a dear old friend, one of my college roomates and her family. She has a little girl who is just a little older than little lady. We took the kids to the aquarium and they had a great time. This was the best picture I got because the girls were so excited to play and be together that they barely could hold still.

An added bonus of that visit was that my friends daughter convinced little lady that the tree swing at the new house was indeed a cool thing to do so now little lady who was deathly afraid to try it is now begging for someone to put her on it. Monkey see, monkey do at its finest!  

The worst of the mess in the house is now done. The plumber, electrician and now the sheet rock guy have all done their stuff so now it is time for the fun stuff to begin. We hope to begin laying tile this week.



Hi ho hi ho it's off to the pediatrician's we go!

Last night after little lady's bath hubby and I noticed she had lots of eye boogies. It couldn't possibly be pink eye rearing it's ugly head again so soon could it? Oh yes it could!

Poor thing got up this morning and walked in the room saying "My eye is sealed shut, Help Me!"

 After a quick call to the doctor's office for an appointment we were on our merry way.

Fortunately she seems to really like the new pediatrician's office,  she thinks its super cool that she gets to take off her shoes to weigh in

After a quick exam by the doctor, it was determined that she needed another 10 days of antibiotics, Yippee!

Thank goodness it's spring break so there is no school or swim lessons this week. Hopefully we can make it more than 2 weeks without another trip in. At least we have already met our health insurance deductible for the year!

The Demoltion Continues...

With the upstairs bathroom almost completely gone it was time to move on to the downstairs master bath demolition.

Before~ Vanity and jacked up pocket door that didn't work.

Closet ~ There is a separate fairly large closet in the actual bedroom so this space will be added to the future bathroom.

Potty~You always want to be able to rest your knee on the toilet paper holder don't you?

Claustrophobic Creepy shower and Cabinets

Shower after I attacked it for several hours with a sledge hammer.

Hardwood floor and vanity removed - hole in floor to access pipes for plumbing work

Hole in ceiling of downstairs master bath,  Hello! Upstairs Bath!

The plumber and helper working ~ I was glad that no plumber's crack jokes were necessary ;)

I beginning to think that my car will never see the inside of the garage! Hubby and I have just been piling the remains in the garage. I'm not  really looking forward to loading that up to take to the dump.

Hubby and the plumber worked all weekend to get all of the new plumbing run, the water has finally been turned back on to the house and the new bathtub has been put in place upstairs. Progress is being made!

When the the little lady (aka the little princess) and I went by the new old house to check progress she was super excited to get to hold a gigantic worm hubby had found in the backyard. It really tickled me to watch her in her fancy outfit and tiara so thrilled to hang on to the worm. It took some major convincing to get her to put him down, I'm pretty sure she wanted to bring him home.