photos for last post

Another action shot. Mister Bungle is out on the porch. I'm inside. He's looking through the window to inside the house. And check out our trees!

mmmm. waffles.

Flash shot of our new water canteens.

Spike the cat.

No flash shot of our new water canteens.
I drank a whole one already today. I'm well on my way to daily hydration!

happy anniversary!

Today is our 2-year anniversary! Hooray! Dennis made me gourmet waffle breakfast, and it was dee-licious.

Pictures coming.

Also, we received our gift to ourselves, a non-BPA water container for hydration's sake. Here's some info about BPA, in honor of Earth Day and not getting hormones from plastic.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/bpa-in-water.php
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/bisphenol_a_and.php

Pictures coming.

Also, Mister Bungle decided that it was a good idea to sit in the tub this morning when I was ready to get in the shower. I turned on the faucet, and he backed up to the back of the tub. I told him to get out, but he didn't, so he got a little shower when I turned the shower head on. I called him Spike for the rest of the morning.

Pictures coming.

Happy Anniversary!

the cable finally arrived

Here it is!  The long awaited, vindicated, extrapolated video. - Dennis

spring rain

We have two amazing red bud trees in the front yard next to the street.  They're the biggest ones on the block.  Today it started to rain, and the petals of all of the blooms started floating down.  It was like a scene from a movie.  Unfortunately, the photos didn't capture it very well, but here they are anyway.  

Our trees with our neighbor's truck - it's always parked there.

A closer view.

The cats coming in from the porch.  I think they were getting wet.

The petals on the ground after the rain slowed down.

Mister Bungle checking out some petals that blew in through the crack next to the porch door.

Dandy  hanging out.  On the right is the little flower bed in the front yard.  I hope we'll get to plant something in it next weekend when the fam comes to visit and help us with some stuff around the yard.

Another view of our pretty tree.  The blue house is across the street - we love the color coming through the muted tones of the blossoms.

We especially love the color combo when you add the buds of another tree that's in the front yard.  They're almost the color of the baby's room!

something to tide you over

Until we can get the video up...

Here you go. The head is on the left side.

And - that's right - only ONE!!!! Due date: November 15.

families are great

In the spirit of our family members being ultra-great to us, Ellorie and Mom are coming down to Columbus for the weekend of April 25.  They've offered to paint the baby's room and do a bunch of stuff in the yard with me.  I'm pretty psyched.

We purchased the paint for the baby's room yesterday.  I did a test swatch on some posterboard this morning - it's exactly the color I had envisioned.  A light/bright yellow/green - Pear.

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.

looking at what I just wrote, I guess it wasn't so gloomy after all.  Oh well.

the gloomy post

Kate harasses me about not contributing, so here I am.  

I just finished our taxes, it was not a good year.  We made more than expected but didn't account for it in estimated taxes (the joy of self-employment) and got hit kind of bad.  But, hopefully with the house and soon-to-be dependent... I mean bundle of joy, we should be okay next year.  I plan to still make ordinary estimated payments and cross our fingers it will work out.

I accidentally figured out what Kate got us both for our anniversary and I'm beyond pumped.  One of our favorite bands, Man Man, just released a new album (it's sweet) AND they're coming to Columbus this Tuesday.  We saw them for free last summer at a local college and it was memorable to say the least.  We're both excited to see them again.  It will rule.

There's no way I can top that, so I'll have to think of something nice and meaningful.  That is not my specialty.

Anyway, that's all for now.  I have to go now, my planet needs me.

updates/being bored

I'm bored, so here's a family update.

I'm now officially over morning sickness. I, most gratefully, thank anyone who prayed or sent any sort of vibe my way about this one. I never actually got farther than nausea, if you know what I mean, but that was enough to make it nearly unbearable. So here I am, at 9 or 11 weeks pregnant, with no nausea. What's a girl to do?

Well, for one, try to drink lots of water. I'm a pretty good water drinker ordinarily, but I'm amazed at how un-often I hit the recommended daily intake of water. It's definitely possible for me to drink that much, but I really have to try. If you see me out on the street, and I'm not taking a drink of water, just give me a little reminder. Together, we can hit that daily quota...I'm sure of it.

Next Tuesday is Tax Day! And the big ultrasound day. We'll find out if my dread is unfounded about twins. Man, we are really not ready for two infants. Just one, please. Of course, a blog post will happen almost the instant we leave our 1:00 p.m. appointment. That'll be by 2:30, I hope. The less sick time I have to take off now, the more I have to piggyback on my regular paid maternity leave later.

We haven't purchased any baby items yet. So far we have: a sock tiger (a la sock monkey), a really soft white and green blanket, a toy (i can't think of what it is right now), 2 bibs, and I think there's something else - sorry if you gave the baby something that I can't remember right now.

Oh yeah, and Dennis is doing great.

the apartment lament

All of the things I love so dearly about 219 W. 5th Ave.

The huge dark wood trim - original to the apartment, from 1920. This is around everything! Every floor, every window, every door, every entryway. And of course, the chair rails:


A fireplace. Although you can't actually have a fire in it, it's cool to have as a focal element of the room - and for Christmas stockings. Where, oh where, will we hang our 3 Christmas stockings this year? Our child will be completely deprived...:


The original doorknobs abound :

The extra sun room above our back porch. We hardly used it, but it was just so cute:


Something I didn't love about the apartment. I had to build a ramp from two 1/4 sheets of heavy plywood, attached with two hinges. I had to drag that heavy ramp and put it over the 3 steps into our backyard. I had to pull the scooter way back across the alley, and I had to get a running start to make it up that ramp - with barely enough room for me to squeeze through the gate opening next to the scooter while pushing it. Then I had to put the scooter cover on, chain it to the big cement post on our back porch, and go drag the ramp back up into the backyard. I had to do that every time I came back from somewhere. Here's to you, old ramp:


Another thing I didn't love. We had these caterpillars that infested this one type of bush that was on both sides of our staircase up to the front door. You can see that, although the damage was done in the early fall, the bushes have not been removed yet. (No, that's not political commentary, although it certainly applies...):

I intended the last photo of my lament to be an artsy photo of our front door with the street numbers - but I guess I didn't load it up into Picasa. So here's my alternate. A puff of smoke where the scooter used to sit (on another 1/4 sheet of plywood to keep the tired off of the wet/snowy ground). Magic!:

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!