Some Pictures!

Long awaited, much requested, here are some pictures.

First some of Emma's room ...

In progress stuff to build the L shaped book shelf.

The bed (mostly painted). Those are shelves without their faces on the bottom. The bed will be visible about 8 inches in the opening. The external colors will be the same as the wall.

This shot from the door at the foot of the bed (that will lead to the little raised patio) of the headboard and crystal light.

The light.

Here's our new doors (while still at Home Depot).

The kids table at cousin Benny's birthday party.

The cake.

Timmy at teeball.

Emma Reading ...

Emma read her first "real" book by herself, and then she wanted to read it to us ... Cyndie caught a bit of it on video:

WINDY

Wow, it is really blowing today. I have the window open in my office (because it's also 70 degrees out) and the gusts have blown my door closed twice ... with a LOUD slam. Cyndie and the kids were working on covering up the building supplies outside, with minimal success due to the wind. I was painting some stuff in the garage earlier and had to close the garage door because so much dust was blowing in. It makes me feel like we're back in SoCal what with the warmth, wind, and dryness. Ah well, it's also supposed to rain for the next 2 or 3 days ... definitely not SoCal like!

Midweek is here

Good morning and good midweek.

Not a lot of excitement here, but we're nearing halfway through the week. I guess the only news of note is that we picked up the doors that we got at Home Depot. It was a really good deal (not sure if I mentioned this before). We got some $2300 doors for $500 ... they were a custom order that someone returned. Since it was going to be $59 to deliver, we decided to go get them using the Uhaul trailer while we still had it. We also go the rest of the wood needed to finish off Emma's room (minus the desk which will come later).

When Cyndie returned the trailer to Uhaul, the guy there told her that she did the best job backing up with the trailer of anyone he'd ever helped ... way to go Cyndie! You're ready to be a trucker now!!

That's about it for now.

Pooped!

Okay, so we spent three hours yesterday (that felt like six) moving the two platforms for the play set from Elkhorn to our house. This involved renting a Uhaul trailer*, going to the house we picked up at, loading a twelve foot tall platform (that probably weighed 600 - 800 pounds), driving to our place, unloading**, driving back to Elkhorn, loading, driving back to our house, unloading. It was tiring! Thanks to Mom and Dad for helping with the loading/unloading and watching the kids!

*We were not impressed with the Uhaul people ... it took half and hour to rent the dumb thing of which 25 minutes was us just sitting there while they tried to figure out the paperwork!

**We only had one small hiccup on the whole thing, that being a slight intersection of a tree and an extended beam off one of the platforms. The platform survived, but not fully intact ... a bit of repair work will be required.

Fortunately, the weather was great. Now we just need to find some time to complete Emma's room and then get to the playset.

In the midst of all that yesterday, the kids had teeball ... this time in beautiful weather. Today is a playdate for Timmy and his "friend" Makoto (Makoto is actually only 16 months, but they should be okay together). Emma has swim lessons tonight as well.

Monday

Hey all you blog readers. Good Monday morning to you.

The quick weekend recap ...

Friday night ... dinner out, ran a few errands.

Saturday ... Helped Dale out with a computer problem, worked on harvesting the play set thing that we got for free, went down to Dave and Amy's for Ben's birthday party.

Sunday ... church, early lunch, Cyndie found another playset to harvest*, raiding a friend's construction site for left over lumber.

So it was a pretty busy weekend with not a lot of sit around time!

*We had driven by this place a couple of times before on the way to/from Dale and Jeanine's. There was a play tunnel thing out that looked like it was being gotten rid of. So Cyndie asked at the house and they have two free-standing platforms that we can have. Today we're going to rent a trailer to get them back to our house. I told Cyndie that she has to stop finding stuff because at this rate we'll never get all the stuff that we have currently up! It's pretty amazing, though, how much really good stuff that we've gotten for free just because Cyndie was willing to ask! Good job Baby!

In the midst of all this, we're still managing to get a bit down on Emma's room too.

Beautiful ... mostly!

It's a beautiful Friday morning. I took the trash out this morning at 7 am in shorts and a t-shirt with no shoes on and I wasn't really even chilled. A couple of hours later, the sun is out and it's really rather pleasant, just pretty windy. The rain appears to have gone home for at least a few hours. I think it's supposed to be in the 50s today.

Emma has a friend coming over this afternoon after school. Then tonight Rachelle the baby sitter is coming over and Cyndie and I are going to go to a Japanese place over in Delavan.

The bed is coming along just fine. It's all sanded down. Last night I built the drawers. I just need to mount them now and then we'll be ready to paint!! I'm sure it will take a couple of coats, so I would guess we'll be painting through the weekend.

Timmy is wearing big boy undies ... no accidents yet, although it's only been a day. He and Emma have been enjoying his new video that he got as a reward ... What's New Scooby Doo* (Season 1). They really like that show (we've borrowed several from the library).

*Whenever they watch Scooby Doo, I always laugh because Casey Kasem is the voice for Shaggy and I totally recognize him. I guess that comes from a lot of listening to Casey Kasem's Top 40 countdown when I was a kid.

Tomorrow we'll be down in Crystal Lake for Ben's birthday party.