Hello August

It's been awhile. I've thought about sharing some vacation pics.  Truth be told, it was such an amazing trip and it was so very hard to come home that my heart just hasn't been into the retelling of it.  I think of the trip and wish I was still there.

August is by far my least favorite time of year in TX. It's just hot. Stupid hot.  And there is no break in the heat, ever. And we want to go out and do fun things and enjoy the end of summer break, but it's so stupid hot. Swimming brings little to no relief because the water temperature is like a warm bath and that's just gross in the middle of summer. And everything and everyone is all about back to school, except for me. So there it is.  And I look at vacation pictures and in my whole heart that's where I want to be with my little family.  Not here in hot Austin.

All of that aside, I suppose a bit of a recap of July is in order.  Fireworks on the 4th - was hesitant to go since we were heading out of town the next day.  But, we were all pa.  cked and we had a great water balloon fight, there was a bit of a breeze that night and it was great.  Fireworks on the 4th always make me happy.  Then we left and we had 2 amazing weeks of hiking and travel and adventure. Came back, headed into appointments and real life and it mostly just sucked.  Then my birthday happened and that was fun.  My sweet boys (all 3) took such great care of me and we had a lovely lazy day and lots of great chocolate cake.  We made another trip to the farm to visit my friend and her very special cow.  The boys gathered eggs, we played, had lunch, lovely visit. And back to life.

So that pretty much wraps up July. I haven't mentioned anything about the ongoing efforts to sort out some minor allergy/asthma issues with Ben.  It's not really noteworthy other than to say we've spent too many summer hours sitting in Dr. offices, too many follow up appointments. Even had fun with x-rays.  There is no trouble, just a nagging little thing we are trying to sort out. Ben is in perfect health.  It's just been an annoying part of the summer.

We were very lucky to get to meet Spencer the special cow, luckier yet to see him a second time.  Sadly, he died last week.  The heat got to be too much and with his health problems he just couldn't handle it.  Makes us all sad, he was more like a dog trapped in a cow's body than a cow. Anyway, future visits to the farm won't quite seem the same without a tipsy cow following us all over the place.

Can't end an odd and somewhat depressing post on such a sad note. So. Maybe just one pretty vacation picture. Carhenge.  Just because :-)

Separated

We can't seem to leave well enough alone when it comes to house projects.  No sooner are the stairs done and we are jumping into the next thing.  In my never ending quest to get the boys to clean up their toys I decided that we should rearrange some things in the house, making it either easier for them to keep things clean or easier for me to close a door and ignore the kid mess. We've been talking about this for awhile, but figured it would, in all honesty wait until the fall or the very least after vacation. Nope, just days after the steps are done, we're at it again.

The playroom no longer exists. Instead, Alex and Ben each have their own rooms now. We didn't set out for this to happen, it just sort of did.  We planned on having the boys do a long overdue purge of toys and things and then move the remaining things upstairs, either to their shared room or to the art room.  I think we figured that the art room/office would cease to be an office and maybe become an area for Alex to work on his models, or maybe move my sewing room in their or toy storage or something.  Point being, lots of shifting of stuff was in the works. Anyway, what ended up happening was the big purge followed by the separation of rooms. We polled both the boys, they both wanted the new room, ultimately Ben was given the choice.  In the end, he chose to stay where he was.  I was skeptical that it would work.  Not only has it worked, it's been amazing for them both. They love it.

As for the playroom.  It's now sporting a brand new coat of paint and furniture will be moved accordingly tonight.

I think that really is it for the projects... except for the fence. Which we paid someone to do, and he did a horrible job. So now one side needs to be redone. Sigh. That's a topic for another day.

But, in the last year we have...

• Updated the living room (new floors, new paint)
• Updated the library - new built-in book shelves
• Went from carpet to wood on the steps
• Converted playroom to dining room
• converted office/art room to bedroom
• rearranged master bedroom
• re-mulched the front yard
• new fence around the back yard
• had the trees pruned (yes, it's a noteworthy thing. They are huge, have to be pruned here in TX for several reasons).

Anyway, lots of love for the old homestead lately.

The Stairs

I finally finished the stair project yesterday.  What was supposed to take just a couple of weeks ended up taking 3+ months.  Yes, a large part of that was time spent waiting for wood to be delivered and then taking the time to properly finish said wood.  But still, there was just a crazy amount of work on the installation, namely those bottom 3 angled steps.  No part of those bottom steps was easy, at all, ever.  Every time we had something figured out, we would have to tweak it. Every. Single. Time. Happily I only miscut one 99 cent piece of wood. Better to have the mistake there than on the much more expensive tread.  Anyway, it's done, they look fabulous. It's time to move onto the next project.

The End

We've made it to the end of another school year. Almost.  As usual, I can't wait for summer break.  There are lots of very amusing blog posts out there about the evils of May and limping to the finish line and all of that stuff.  And yes, I see bits of all of that here.  I sent Ben's half-eaten homework (courtesy of Winnie) to school last Friday and I didn't even care, didn't even bat an eye. Earlier in the year I might have printed out a new copy for Ben, but I certainly didn't care about it 2 weeks before the end of the school year. I see lots of people talking about how their kids' schools stop doing work and just play games and have parties the last couple of weeks of school.  Not so out here, there are still assignments due, still homework to do, tests to take, it doesn't end until it's over next Friday. We are all struggling to get up in the mornings, so many more fun things await us all instead of a day at school. I'm up there too. I just finished reading with my charges last week.  The teachers decided to give them a break the last two weeks. I need the break! I've replaced the reading with inventory.  I am inventorying the book room. Thousands and thousands and thousands of books, and only one of me. Not such a bad job though, no one to talk to, no one to interrupt me. It does get tedious, but that's what breaks are for.

We may yet skip a few days before the end of the year - have to have a donut day, never did manage it during the school year. We'd like to pick some peaches, though it seems we may have already missed the boat on that this year thanks to zero winter and a very wet spring. We may just skip because we're done and don't want to go anymore!

At any rate, we're at the end. Summer awaits, it ought to be a good one!

Choose Your Own Adventure

There's always lots going on and I write these posts in my head all the time.  I know, doesn't do you all alot of good that way. So today I write for real (sort of).  You get a one or two sentence blurb of an event and you get to fill in the details on your own.  Sounds fun, right?!  In no particular order I now invite you to...



The stairs - construction is still ongoing, little by little, the end is sort of in sight.

Camping - took the boys on their very first real live camping trip a couple of weeks ago.  You get to decide how it went!

Dogs - apparently bunnies are REALLY fun to chase, especially over a fence in the midst of a severe raging thunderstorm with continuous lightning and torrential downpours. Coyotes are also fun to chase at 11:00 at night.

Alex - new red glasses, no more booster seat, violin lessons, new bike, Rube Goldberg projects...

Ben - FINALLY got the "Out of this World Leader" award, guitar lessons, new guitar, still in the booster seat, robots.

The garden - sunflowers, pomegranates, peaches.

Mike & Christina - still here, 19 years (almost), can't wait for summer vacation, those darn stairs.

Texas - usual crazy silly weather, missed strawberry picking this year, peaches are early and plentiful though.

School - ALMOST over, not soon enough.

Happy Spring!

Spring has arrived in most beautiful fashion here in central TX. Thanks to an extremely mild winter and a good bit of rain the wildflowers are stunning. Added bonus - it's still not hot. We've hit 90 once I think, maybe again some next week but that's ok because we'll be into April by then.

Let's see... not much new to update. Kids are still here, still great. Love them to bits. Got our annual bluebonnet pictures in over spring break. Some of our usual spots weren't in bloom this year - there were floods in the fall that wiped most of the flowers away. But, there are plenty of other places that are just beautiful. At some point I'll have to go back through the years and line up all the bluebonnet pictures in a nice little row.

The stairs - well, it's taken decidedly longer than I thought it would.  Primarily because we still don't have all the supplies, namely the wood.  The treads are on order, I expect them soon. Then we can knock this one out and get to something else.

I'm having the piano tuned Thursday.  Why is that such a big deal? Well, it hasn't been tuned in my lifetime, probably longer. There is a key that doesn't work quite right, again, it hasn't been quite right for as long as I can remember, probably longer.  Guess I'm jumping the gun a little, a piano tuner is coming, if he can, he will tune the piano.  There is a chance that it cannot be tuned - rusted strings, worn out parts, etc. So, fingers crossed that this very special little piece of my family gets the love and attention it deserves and continues to bring us many more lifetimes of happy tunes.

Miss Winnie continues to be wonder dog - she's so sweet and gentle and kind.  Just a lovely dog.  I don't know how we got so lucky, but it certainly is pretty cool.

Easter weekend was nice - had a bbq with my sis and bro-in-law. Got to meet their new doggy, he's super cute.  Belton is a blind pug, so they have a few challenges, but overall he's a pretty chill little dude.  Nice that we all have the right amount of pets again.

Spring break was fun too. Nice and laid back. No schedules, didn't do too much.  We took a little day trip to Waco, the intention was to head to the zoo, but there were some traffic snarls and such and it was the most beautiful day ever so the zoo was beyond capacity so we ultimately ended up going to the Mammoth National Monument to look at mammoth bones and then over to the Baylor campus to check out the Mayborn museum - fabulous place.  It was a really fun day.

And since I started this several days ago, time to wrap it up and get it posted. More later.

New Project!

I've been needing a new project. So today I decided to tackle the stairs.  Here's the "before" picture...

 I have just pulled up the carpet at this point. Still trying to figure out exactly how to finish them. Couldn't determine that until we saw what was underneath the carpet. We got lucky, there's real wood under there, so that leaves us with a lot of options that aren't too difficult. The boys aren't overly thrilled that we're in construction mode again, they don't like the house being torn up.  Hopefully this will be a relatively quick and simple project though. At any rate, here's where I stopped for the day.  Clearly LOTS of work still to be done.