When does it stop?

The answer is never. Never ever. I have come to believe that life will never be slow or boring again. In theory our lives are not busy or stressful. In reality they are both. So I sat down and started looking at blogger I realized that I had not posted in 2 1/2 months. Then I started to ponder why it was I was such a slacker. Oh right, becuase of the afore mentioned busy & stress thing. Jeff still has a rediculous amount of credits he is taking and a teacher who assigns him pretty much a book a week to read. Durring the week when he's not in class or reading he is now out shoveling cow dung (litteraly) on the Romriell Ranch. Then on the weekends he works (or tries to) on whatever car we currently have getting ready to sell and then he tries to cram in some projects around the house somewhere in between. But don't feel too bad for him yet... Sunday? He sits on his butt and watches football uninterupted all day!! And as much as it pains me to say this, he deserves it. Don't tell him I said that.
As for me, only 2 months left on making this crazy baby boy. I realized the other day that I pretty much had not even begun to even THINK about what I needed to do before we have him. So of course since then I have been stressing out about it. Which is probably good because as we all know, there is a TON to do before a new baby arrives, and I was not joking in the slightest when I say I haven't even thought about it. So if anyone needs something to do....
Alex. Crazy kid. He split his head open last week which was pretty sad and made us feel like bad parents. We opted for no stitches since it was, again, on the back of his head and the scar will be covered with hair and the bleeding stopped pretty quickly. However, anywhere else and we would'a been cruising to the E.R. It was pretty nasty, but is now scabbing up nicely and doesn't seem to bug him much. He's getting skinny and smart too. If you ask him to count for you there is no way he'll do it, but if he thinks you aren't listening he'll count away. The other day he counted 8 toys in the tub with no problem. However if you try to get him to count it goes a little like this: one, two, three, four, three, three, three, one, three, etc. Stinking kid. If you ask him where his little brother is, he will point to his own stomach. If you ask him what his little brother's name is he usually says Bruce (the shark from Finding Nemo.) But I like to correct him and get him to say Luke because he says Yuke. It's cute how he says it.
That is pretty much our lives in a nutshell. Hope everything is well with everyone, and I'll try to not be such a slacker from now on!

Ta Da!!

So here we finally are, some before and after pics. Keep in mind we still have a lot of finishing work to do (painting, trim, hardware etc.) but for the most part we are up and functional. Up above you have the main kitchen wall, which also held the only cabinets that were in the kitchen. Those were obviously removed and replaced, and you can see the false ceiling up above that we ripped out. That gave us an extra 2 feet of head room. All of my cabinets are now a full 8 feet tall, with 2 feet to spare on the top! Its a little bit crazy how much bigger that made the place look.

Down below here we have the wall directly to the right of the upper pics. You can see there was nothing on it. Also the wall to the right in this pic is the wall we ripped out. That gave us an extra 3 1/2 feet of space in the kitchen. Not to mention how much it opened it up to the rest of the house, but we'll get to that.

And here we have the other side of that wall we hated so much. We didn't have to do too much in this room once the wall was down. We refinshed the floors, textured & painted the ceilings, replaced the light fixture, replaced a broken window. Um.. what else, a LOT of paint.

Ahhhh.... the living room. This one alsowasn't too bad. Except for the electricity. This room only had one outlet in it so we added a few more (which was no small feat, just ask all the blood splattered on the walls and the curse words echoing out of there...) In here we also textured & painted the ceilings (we actually did that in every room....) removed the wall paper, replaced light fixtures, repaired lots and lots of holes, and painted the heck out of it.

So, there you have most of the main floor. We are getting our bedroom carpeted soon so I will post some pics of that once it is done. But for the most part, now you have visted our almost brand new 90 year old house!!

Holy Crap!!

Ok, so my house has been completely all encompassing this sumer, and there hasn't been a post about anything other than that for a while. However, we are just about done (with the major stuff) and I can finally point out that SOMEHOW we managed to squeeze in a little fun this summer also. So here is some of our summer in a few pics. There are more but I am having issues getting them uploaded, so I will try for more later. Here we go!

Ross Park! We went to this swimming park on Jeff's birthday and had a blast! There was a lazy river, a regular pool and a kids activity play pool where the water is only about a foot deep and there's a big play toy in the center. There was also a slide that we were hard pressed to get Rhianna off of. She definitly was much braver this summer than last.

4th of July. We had sparklers. We watched fireworks, we had a BBQ. The usual.

Alex's first head wound. He fell backwards off a chair and landed on the thread post on my sewing machine (top pic.) It took a big chunk of scalp off and we were afraid he was going to have to have stitches. However, since it stopped bleeding and the scar would be covered by hair, we opted for no stitches.

That's what I have so far. I'll post more later!

Let there be a kitchen!

Oh man my life is exciting!! I have a sink, I have appliances, I have a coutertop!! I know, I know, all of you have all these things too. However, I can guarantee you that none of you have the tremendous appreciation for them that I do! So here is a 'durring' pic of my new kitchen. Off to the right here are my full lengths. Or massive wall o' cabinet. Please notice how tall the fridge is (it's not a small fridge) then how much farther up the wall the cabinets go. A full 8 feet of storage! Down below here are just some more durring shots. None of the uppers have been installed yet, that is happening tonight. So they are sitting all over the floor and you can see Jeff's butt in the pics because he is screwing the doors onto the frames as we speak. The last pic down on the bottom is out at my dad's shop while they were still building them. Jeff is sitting on the floor doing something... probably taking a nap. Anyway, hopefully soon we can post some DONE pics!

Moved In!

So, we got moved into our house last week. It's a little bit like camping seeing as how I still don't have a kitchen, but it's nice to have sooooo much more space than we are used to. Alex and Rhianna get up in the morning and just run laps around the house. You can hear them upstairs just running back and forth into and out of eachothers rooms having a good old time.
My dad brought over a few of my new kitchen cabinets today (just the boxes, they don't have doors or shelves yet) and I am a little amazed at all the new skills my Jeff has picked up in the last few months. In the last two days he has mowed the lawn, rewired and installed the plug in my range jack, drained and snaked the main line in my house that clogged (we have a weeping willow eating our main line) hooked up my washer and dryer and installed a light over them, then he helped build and paint (with a compressor sprayer, not a brush & roller) my 8 foot cabinets. Who the crap is this guy???
Anyway, right now you get no pictures because mostly the house is still in a massive state of disarray. There is stuff EVERYWHERE!!! So as soon as we get a little more cleaned up and you can actually see what it looks like I'll post some pics.

House Updates

Ok, so here we go! Here is (finally) a pic of the front on the house. The only thing that has changed out here so far is that boarded up window has been replaced. The other pic is of our living room ceiling (sweet light fixture huh?) we forgot to take pics of it before we textured it, but here it is textured, and you can see the line of where we had painted. It's amazing, we never really thought that some texture and a nice clean white celing would make SUCH a difference, but it really does. The wall in the kitchen is fully removed and the support beam that replaced it is pretty much done. The majority of the wiring has been completed throughout the whole house, and the are building my new closet in my bedroom as we speak. We have also fully removed the chimney and patched all the walls that had to be ripped down to do it. Most of all the walls have been patched and are ready to paint, and almost all the ugly 40 year old wallpaper has been removed. It still looks pretty much like a disaster in there, but we have made some really good progress over the last few weeks (thanks Dad!) It is starting to look like it might actually be completed one day! I'll get some more pics to post soon.

Babies are Crazy

Since I keep forgetting to take my camera over to the house to take pictures of all the amazing work my darling husband has been doing... I'll tell you a funny store instead.
Yesterday Alex and I walked outside into the rainy 58 degree weather (apparently Idaho Falls has banned both spring and summer) and he looks at me and says "Col!" (cold) So I say, 'col-d." with a real emphasis on the D, you know, sounded like col-duh. So Alex, being the good boy that he his , repeated it perfectly, Col-duh. I was so proud of the genius that was my 2 year old. We head inside and a little while later I give him a cookie. He eats the whole thing the walks up to me with his hand stretched out and says 'More-duh?'
So much for being a genius.

Our House

Alright, here are some pics of our house so far. It seems I haven't taken one of the front on the house, so I will be sure and get that done and post one of those. This first is the missing chimney. It was an old closed off coal stove chimney that was leaking and causing the plaster to crack all the way down. Also it was smack in the middle of the wall that I wanted to rip out. So we ripped it out as well! Let me tell you, the day Jeff took it down it was SOOO windy! He may have been a scared little girl the whole time he was doing it.
This is the back of the house with the chimney still in tact. This picture actually does not do the house justice, the paint is WAY worse than it looks in this picture! :0)

Here is the super cool Coke kitchen. And this set of cupboards with the sink were the ONLY thing in the kitchen. No other cupboards, no appliances, nothing. Those are gone now, as well as the false ceiling that you can also see in this pic. The ceilings are actually 10' high, we are not sure why someone would put a drop on it... guess maybe it was cool 30 years ago....

Here is the wall seperating the kitchen from the... well we aren't really sure what this room actually is/was/will be. So we shall call it the.... dining room? Sure, that sounds good. It is also the entery to the house, the front door is on the wall that you can't see in the pic. Anyway, this is the wall I wanted ripped down.

And here it is mostly ripped down. That chunk in the center is the chimney. The chimney that was just poured concrete. A lot of concrete. It has since been removed (ask Jeff how much he LOVED that job...) and the support beams are being built as we speak so by the end of the day this should be one huge open space!!! That's the majority of what we have done so far, but I will continue to take/post pics as we keep working. Sorry it took me so long to get all of these posted (sandy...:) I am a bit of a slacker. I'll try to be better from now on.

Whoops

Please read the next post, then understand that I forgot this pic. How could I forget this one? This is at Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers. I would like to say that Alex thought this was fascinating, but really, this was all about Jeff!

Detroit

So, Detroit. We had a blast! We went to the zoo first, then to a Tigers game (where they got spanked by the Red Sox.) Alex found the tiger claws (no foam fingers in Comerica Park!) but he didn't get any because... anyone wanna guess how much they cost? $15 each! Can you believe that?

But he did get this super cute hat that he loves!

This is the tunnel at the zoo. It goes underneath the seal habitat and they show off for the people. One of them just hung out letting the jet blow on it's face for about 5 minutes. Alex thought this was pretty fascinating, especially when they swam over our heads.

Since the movie The Golden Compass Jeff and I have both added Polar Bears to our fantasy army. Thus of course we had to take a picture with this one.

The fish kept swimming by in this tank, and anyone that sees alex... ever... knows what he is saying here. Whereareyou?!?!

I wished we would have had more time in Detroit, there was SO much more to do. Next time for sure...

Michigan

Here is a snapshot of part of our trip to Michigan so far! We went to Mackinaw island and there is an old Military fort up on the hill. This was inside one of the bunkers where they made a room into a 'kids quarters.' There were lots of activities and stuff for Alex to destroy. We thought he was just WAY too cute in the soldier uniform.....


Or as an actual soldier....

This is from a balcony at the fort looking out over the island. On this island the only cars alllowed are emergency vehicles. Everything else is horse and buggy or bicycles. You should see the construction buggies. Big old horse drawn flat bed trailers with all the construction equipment on them. No tractors or anything! That would SUCK!

Yup, he fell off. It was awesome.

Here are just a few so far from our trip. We are having a pretty good time, but the weather has been crappy pretty much the whole time. We have really only had decent weather 2 days so far, but it is supposed to be nice friday & saturday. Those two days are important cuz the Tiger's baseball game is Friday, and we travel on Saturday. So here's hoping the forecast doesn't change!

Dance Fever

As you can see this was from around Christmas but baby dancing is always a good time!

6 Blocks Down!!

So, I finally finished my 6 quilt blocks for this month's class. Here is the last one, Whoot whoot!

We had our next class tonight, up next? Applique. Crap. I'll let you know how it goes.

My Child

These are just some of my favorites from the last week or so. That kid is getting pretty dang funny. He tries to ride everything!

My Quilt

Here is my new hobby. Turns out quilting is an excellent way to keep your hands busy. So, 5 blocks down, 1 to go before next month when I get the next two. The class is two blocks a month, then at the end of the year we put it all together for a super awesome quilt! So far I am IN LOVE with my fabric choices, even Jeff likes it. This first block is called the Double Four Patch.
This is Nine Patch on Point

Friendship Quilt Block

Kansas Troubles. And trust me, Troubles is an appropriate name.

Dutchman's Puzzle. This one is my favorite so far. I love love love the blue. Will post more as I get them done! (ps, Sandy let's see what you are learning in your class...)

Alex archives

We finally found the cord to upload videos so we have some old ones. This is from last summer. Alex got this ball popper for his birthday and it went over pretty well.

Updates all around

Well, somehow it has been a few weeks since I last posted again. Thus an update of all the random sort. Alex: what to say about that kid. I'm pretty sure the picture says it all. He's growing like a weed and getting a few smarts. He has a deck of 'first word' flashcards that he loves, you can show him 3 or 4 then lay them down in a random order. Then ask him to pick one out for you and he gets it right every time (unless the card for Table is involved. He seems to have a blind spot for tables either on flashcards or when running...) He loves playing with PJ, being as picky about his food as his dad and Grandpa Price.

Jeff: Poor poor Jeff. We had a COLD spell here for a while. I mean it was freeze your nostrils shut COLD. And poor Jeff would have to treck across campus to and from his car/classes every day. Thus by the time he got home to the warmth and the comfort of his couch he was hard pressed to leave it... Did you know you could take beautiful winter scenery pictures from your couch (as shown by the reflection of the ceiling light on the window pane in the pic...)

But on a more serious note, he just finished mid-terms (we find out how he did this next week...) and sinc, and since we joined the gym back in January, has actually been swimming again. Good for him!

As for me, I have been keeping myself pretty busy. I am currently trying to teach myself to sew and have made a few weekend bags (the pic below) that turned out pretty cute. The first one I made for myself and my mom loved it so much she commissioned me to make the second one (the one pictured.) I started taking a quilting class this month and am pretty excited about that. I bought some STINKING cute fabric for the quilt and can't wait to start making my blocks. I also have a recent fascination with sourdough. I have a starter, but as of yet am not quite sure what to do with it other than bread. Not that homemade sourdough bread is EVER a bad thing. But I ordered a new cookbook that should tell me everything I ever needed to know about whatever it is you do with this starter. I'll keep you posted.

Anyway, I think that is about all that is going on here. Other than it has been around 40 degrees for the last week, which is all but a tropical vacaction! Maybe Jeff will actually go outside to take his next scenery pic!

It Speaks!

So, Alex has finally started talking over the last few months. Which is pretty much awesome. Now, I want to be clear, just because he can say the word doesn't necessarily mean that you can understand it. Those two things do not go hand in hand. Here is a list of of the words that he can say that have the highest chance of being recognized as English.

Mom

Dad

Ball

Kiss

Nellie (but only when talking to Nellie)

please

yes

no

what is it?

here it is, or there it is

hi-ya

bye

shoe

sock

hug

Kyle

PJ

Grandpa (I think... either grandpa or yaya...)

baby

Loralei (sometimes....)

fish

more (which was his first real word other than Mom & dad. He ALWAYS wants more.)

That is about it for the ones he says on a regular basis. Pretty soon he is going to learn "Stop shooting me in the butt with your nerf gun daddy." I have $5 on that being his first full sentence. He makes lots of animal sounds and recognizes a few upon sight. He is also learning to pick the correct flashcard out of a lineup. Oh! He just said a new word! OW! Looks like his first sentence might now be "stop shooting me in the FACE with your nerf gun daddy!!"

Anyway, that's pretty much what is going on here. Great, now Jeff is showing him how to shoot the gun......