more nursery photos

New photos of the baby's room are here! I finished hanging the owl prints tonight.

painting makes such a huge difference

Blog, I know that I owe you quite a few posts. Here's one to start with.

Our bedroom, rearranged and painted.

Another shot, sans cat.

The living room, kitchen to the right.

Living room take 2, the other half of the room.

From our bedroom, view up the stairs.

I just realized that I neglected to take any photos of the beautiful wall with our large painting hanging above another new addition to the house - the Clavinova keyboard that I grew up learning on. It's a nice little setting...I'll try to remember to post that vantage point sometime soon (aka, before little hodges arrives mid-November).

cats on porch, april 9

Yes, this post is a little late.  We had some technical difficulties loading the photos.

We are letting the cats come out onto the screened in porch.  They haven't made any attempt to climb screens or escape yet.  Here are some fun action shots.

Dandy was the first one to go out.  Note the beautiful scooter parked just out front.

Mister Bungle the scaredy cat looks for a perch.

"I'm just big-boned."

Success.  Mister Bungle on the bench.

"I'd like to come up too, please."

Looking at some birds.

Someone's getting a little adventurous.

Cat plant.  My favorite.

The boys looking at their friend Stumpy.

Stumpy the squirrel.  He has no tail.  Ellorie thought he was a bunny at first due to the large hips, stumpy poof of a tail and interesting hopping movement.  Alas, he is indeed a squirrel, and we see him around quite often.

Stumpy runs away to the tree.

I thought I'd start this entry out with a beautiful image of what skin looks like after going through approximately 100 cheap plastic gloves, size XL, that just cjan't stand up to the chemical properties of Minwax stain. It's the reverse Michael Jackson:

Here's the floor after a coat of polyurethane. Note my grand taping job around the vent. Certainly no sanding dust contaminated our heating/cooling system!:

Two coats later! Done!:

And done: That's 10:39 PM. A HUGE improvement over our performance the night before! To be fair, we didn't start the staining process until about 10:45 the night before:

Dennis running up the basement stairs:

That's that. Unfortunately, we didn't have the camera handy during the moving process - so, alas, there are no photos of that. We'll snap some more of the house in partial order in the next week and post.

severe negligence

Here come the photos!

We closed on the house Friday, March 7. We then promptly left for Michigan to see Morgan's musical. This is what it looked like outside as we were leaving:

We had tasty pita chips for a snack:

This is us at a stoplight:

Me enjoying some coffee (yes, it's caffeinated. They say that 1-2 cups is okay!):

We arrived in Michigan many hours later. They had a grand reception for us.
Actually, once Mom, Dad and Jane arrived, they set up a whole great toast to our new house. That was quite convenient, since I couldn't figure out how I was going to get all of the adults in the same room to give them our even bigger news:

Mom and Jane shocked to hear that I'm pregnant - notice that they're looking at Dennis?:

Ellorie and Jason. Lucky them, I gave them a few more seconds for the news to sink in before getting a chance to snap their photo. I hear Ellorie's excited to be an aunt:

The girls entertaining us:

Morgan as Veruca Salt in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:

We got home a few days later. Possession of the house was on Tuesday. Here we are - the beginning of the end. I'm sporty full safety gear:

Dennis the monster tearing out carpet:

Me the normal tearing out carpet:

Dad arrived just in time to start pulling out staples, a task that he completed the next morning. I swear, we didn't make him stay overnight!:

Next day, first swipe with the drum sander. It's impressive how much damage this machine does on the first swipe even:

After several attempts to use the edge sander to sand the edges, we were left with light scorch marks all over. Dennis called the place we rented the equipment from, and they informed us that there was likely wax on the floors that was melting, heating up, and burning. So we proceeded to scrape the wax and finish off of the edges of all of the room. This was second to staple pulling, maybe..., for worst task:

The staining begins! Obviously, I'm skipping many steps here:

The staining ends 3.5 hours later:

And yes, that would be 2:14 AM - I had to be to work at 8:15 the next day...man did that day blow!:

THE END, for now. More photos to come tomorrow!

homeowners!

That's us! Friday's signing went swimmingly.

The rest of the weekend is another story...
We went up to Michigan to see Morgan's 4th/5th grade musical - Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. It was really cute and well done.

When we tried to leave on Saturday afternoon to come home, we discovered that half of our trip would take us through Level 3 Snow Emergency counties due to the uncharacteristic snow storm. Level 3 means you get a ticket/in jail if you drive.

We decided to stay another night. When we left on Sunday, about 5 miles into the trip, some interesting things happened to Dennis' car, resulting in the clutch needing to be rebuilt.

We took Ellorie's car back to Ohio - and here we are!

Tonight we'll be purchasing all of the needed supplies for carpet tearing-out. Even though we technically have possession tomorrow morning, we'll just head over to the house and start. I don't think Andrea, the previous owner, will mind if she comes to check the house cleaner's job and we're there. She can't - it's OUR house!