Bathroom Redo

I did forget to mention our new master bathroom remodel that Nate has been working on.  It's finally done (except for my last little bit of plastering, which, I'm not crazy about the results, but the thought of re-doing it is even more depressing).

For those of you lucky enough to never see our "before" - the vanity area was open to the bedroom (kind of like a hotel room). Not very sleeper friendly, when you have one person working days and the other nights.  We had some fabric that we had up as a wall of sorts, but certainly not ideal.  We only had one sink, and that counter - well - it was just always cluttered!!!

We (by "we", I mean Nate) built a wall and installed a pocket door,  "we" tiled the whole area, and installed a new toilet.  "We" put together a new vanity and also installed two new vessel sinks that we (and there, I do me we two) purchased at least two years age, in hopes that we would one day, we'd really get to the bathroom.

Before.....

.....After

(somewhat) Before (you can see the fabric "wall" that we were using)

After

This is shower/toilet before - we wanted to redo the entire shower, but we also wanted to keep the costs to a minimun.

Notice the beautiful wallpaper - yay, wallpaper!

Did I mention, that I despise removing wallpaper - this was the biggest PIA.

Now, here is my aforementioned plaster job (in process) that I am not thrilled with, and therefore, have not finished.  Which is beginning to irk Nate.

Tile work before....

And after.

So, since we decided that the shower redo at this time was just more than we wanted to spend at this time of year, we threw up a shower curtain, and found we actually weren't disappointed with the ourcome.

THIS is was the plaster was supposed to look like.  I finally figured out what I was doing wrong.

And this is what it's not supposed to look like.  My choices are, live with it for now, or repaint and replaster - I'm choosing the former, for now anyway.

Do I dare try again.....?

Ok - it's almost been almost TWO YEARS since we last posted anything....and I make no promises that there will be another posting before Christmas 2012!

I did update the blogs main picture.  If nothing else, you can all see our updated family picture.

Hannah started high school this fall, and other than her hatred of math, she appears to be liking it as much as any kid really like school.  The scariest thing going for me right now, that in just a few short months, she will be getting her learners permit!  YIKES!!  Any volunteers for teaching her?  (I say that this is the scariest thing right now, because she has no boyfriend!!)

 She's not taller than me yet! 

Abe started middle school this year.  He enjoys it for the most part, as well.  I think he now no longer lists recess as his favorite time of the day - now that it's "P.E." and you have to 'dress out'.  It makes it more like an actual class and not just free play!

 Oh, I look forward to the days when we get real smiles for pictures again.  Although, as they go, this one isn't too bad!!

Nate is still doing work as a sleep tech (and still hates working nights) and I have transitioned over into the respiratory side of the office (geesh, there isn't much I haven't done in the office now!!)  I currently do Pulmonary Function Tests and work with patients three mornings a week in our Pulmonary Rehab.  I mostly enjoy it (although, I do sometimes gag when big honkin' loogies are involved!!), and neither of us will be sad if (when??) we win the lottery!

Well, there you have it.  A catching up of sorts, however brief.

I do not promise to try harder to keep this updated.  But, maybe a once a month update?

Once a quarter?

Who am I kidding?

See you next Christmas!

Pics from December

So, we got a new camera last month, and I just now downloaded the pics, I have noticed little 'spots' on some of the pictures :( I cleaned the lens today, and I am hoping that will solve the problem and that it's not something else.....

Pics from Christmas







I may delete this one soon, never to be seen (or heard) again!!



These are from my birthday, we went over to Universal for the day and had a good time.



(btw, that is not the sun behind her, that's her halo......NOT.

What Slackers Are We?

So we've been horrible about posting, even family members with new a new baby have been better posters than we have...... oh well.

We have been busy painting and building. We mixed several 'left-over' paints to paint our upstairs hallway and came up with what we have come to call "elephant". I think I will contact Behr and see if they will buy my formula!!

When I was painting the wall I told Nate that a red would look really good up against it.

I was told emphatically that:

"We are not painting the walls red."

So they are painted "Terra-Cotta" (wink wink).

Nate has been wanting to build floor to ceiling book shelves since we moved in 3 1/2 years ago (.....hard to believe we have been in one place for so long!!) and he finally got down to business and got them done.

They turned out fantastic (of course).

Although, our book purchases have greatly reduced since Santa brought me my e-book a year ago; it's nice to have all the extra shelves.

The yellow is also a 'leftover' paint from our last house - I think Larry referred to it as
"school bus yellow".

We have now used it to paint the entry way. It's bright and cheery, and uses up some paint we've had in the garage for years.

This picture doesn't really look as it does in person, the green and yellow don't really "compete" like they do here. We didn't "hate" it (Hannah did tho), so we figured we see how reactions went over the next several weeks before decided to paint over it or not.

Scooby Snack Update!!

So, Reba asked what did Leo think. Leo thought at the first opportunity that they looked yummy. Hannah was holding Speckles yesterday morning and lunged at her and got her. His tooth must have hit her eye just right (... or maybe that's just wrong) and her eye popped out!!

After a few hours of wondering do we cut it off - leave it hanging - and consulting ER doctors and finally a vet (one of Hannah & Abe's friends mom is a vet) and she was going to take her in today and gas her and cut it off and stitch her eye shut - but thought this morning that she looked really good and we should leave well enough alone. We are going to let it shrivel up like an umbilical cord and fall off.

Hannah want's to know if anyone can sew a little hamster eye patch?

Meet Jen & Speckles

We have two new members of our family. Jen & Speckles

We have been fighting getting hamsters for quite sometime - there's something to be said about how kids are like wind & water - that after a time - they can wear you down!

Hannah did use her own money (We were not paying for rodents that we didn't want to begin with). So, she had won some tickets to a Britney Spears concert and when she found out that they cost $125 each!! She wasted no time having me find someone to purchase them. Suddenly she had all the money she needed for her new wards (dwarf hamsters). I am just hoping that they really are both females!! If not - well I hope you all have room in your hearts for new companions too!

One of our main concerns was the fact that Katie is a HUGE squirrel chaser!! What more could she ask for from the family than tasty morsels brought home for her!! I think she is truly smiling in this picture!! (THANKS MOM!!)

But, she was surprisingly gentle with them. Hannah even had Sepckles crawling on her belly at one point. Not sure I would leave her home to critter-sit for me - but I don't feel as if we purchased pill pockets (you know... little treats you use to give your dog medicine!! LOL)

But actually they are kind of cute watching them burrow around and hide food.

Blogs, Twitter and now Facebook.....

So first came the "Blog" and I will admit that we are not faithful bloggers - we try - but, oh well there you have it. I was hoping that Nate, now working nights, would kind of 'take over' and blog at least a little (although in his defense - he has been helping train a new tech the past few weeks). So, maybe he will see this and now step up (at least a little).

We both do "Twitter" Nate is 'mastrnater' and I am "zenfrogg' (if you tweet and care to follow)- our updates aren't much - but i do like following some things, currently fans of Big Brother 11 on CBS, and I love getting all the updates from the people that tweet about the live feeds that you can subscribe to - really - 24 feeds - just tweet 140 characters about it to me - and I will be living the life your not......just don't stop tweeting about it please!!

So the newest thing is FACEBOOK - ok - there is a lot going on here. I signed up for it over a year ago - only because a friend had a baby and wanted to see some pics of the cute little guy. And then promptly forgot about it. I would maybe post/ck that page once every four months or so... every now and then would get a random email - "so and so wants to be your friend".....hmmmm I'm having enough trouble keeping up with the blog.... So, Nate did one because, well, I don't know why - but then he started getting requests and so I started looking at mine a little more and actually finding people that I haven't thought about but fleetingly through the years - and found that it's kind of nice to see how they are doing and where they are.... so no promises - but we will see....

Photograpic evidence that Hannah has a brain!!

Okay, so this is the first image as it is coming down from the top of her skull - we liked this one because we were able to tell Hannah that she had a very small brain (LOL!!) just kidding

This one is a little further down, showing her the full size of her very LARGE brain!!

Now, this one is cool, because you can see her eyes.... and the very itsy, bitsy dot on the left (but right) eye is the one that scared us!!! But it's all good.

So, I did a little research on the drusen and what I understand is that the blind spots that it may cause (in almost 75% of cases of drusen) is peripheral blindness and there are special tests that they will do as she gets older to see how bad the blind spots are. But for now we are grateful it's not a tumor and we will take the blindspots!!

Enjoy the brains!!