Simply Stunning

Greg has finished the foyer and living room. Thank you to Brian for your help with all of the furniture moving! We owe you! The hallway should be wrapped up today. We are thrilled with the results.

Morning Tidbits

Mia needed a potty break at midnight. I had only been in bed an hour. Afterward, I looked for an easy option to get her back to sleep quickly, so she slept with Brutus in Lauren's bed. Lauren has not yet slept in that bed this spring break. It worked beautifully. I woke her after my "alarm" went off at 6:45 am. The first sounds of the morning were, "Mommy, get into the kitchen. Ty is hungry." This particular alarm does not have a snooze button.

When I entered my kitchen I noticed additional writing on the menu board from Erin, who has grounded herself because "we don't know how to be parents". That addition read as follows, "you are what you eat? Funny, I don't remember eating any sexy beasts". She's one of a kind.

My morning routine is out of whack. My entire house is out of whack. A lot of my neighbors are curious about the flooring process so we've had a parade of visitors seeing my dust. The house is a disaster. This little project has shown me just how weak I am. I need instant gratification. I want a quick and easy makeover, not a messy, dirt revealing, time consuming transformation. I can't take it. We have friends who survived a complete kitchen remodel that lasted months. Those people are my heroes. But I digress, I made the alarm his first of many breakfasts and started my cup of tea. The gliding rocker I have sat in to start my tea each morning for over seventeen years is tucked away in my filthy garage so I sat on the vacant steps and stared at the work to be done today. A few moments later, I popped a few Advil. The day has started.

Mia, shared the steps with me this morning.....she doesn't know she is homeless. Apparently, very few do as we still have no one willing to adopt her.

And she does have her own bowls, with easy access but she finds the challenge of eating Brutus' breakfast too inviting.

And finally, Mia likes to help with Daddy's "vacuum". Ty loves his new "vacuum" too.

Family Photos

Picnic Break

Our flooring mess left us without a clean surface to have lunch. So we took a much needed break and had a picnic at the local park. All of the kids had a great time even though a few objected to being photographed! The floor is coming along but I doubt I will ever get the dust out of my house! Ceramic tile should be outlawed. That is all.

The neighborhood creek

Had to add this one because his pose cracked me up!

The Dust Storm

On Friday night my parents came to help us celebrate Erin and Greg's birthdays. We shall call that the calm before the storm. Just after they departed on Sunday morning, Greg pulled out all the necessary tools for the demolition of the ceramic tile foyer. It was a mess, to say the least. Dust was hanging in the air hours after the completion. We used both the vacuum and the shop vac to clean up. Twenty four hours later, we are still living in a cloud of dust. When Greg was first getting started, Ty ran into his room and emerged within seconds wearing his toy safety goggles and brandishing his plastic hammer. "Do you want me to try, Daddy?" It just doesn't get any cuter than that.

Our wood laminate flooring for the foyer, living room and hallway was delivered today. We will move out all of the furniture and carpeting tomorrow evening after the boys go home. I have the remainder of Spring Break off from babysitting but suspect our own son will be supervising a little more than appreciated. I am looking forward to the finished product, God willing by the weekend, but the process is labor intensive.

Woody, renamed Gunner found his new home Thursday afternoon. He is living with a family from our church. I was pretty disappointed when they chose him over Mia as I still had hope Greg would let us keep him. He reminds me so much of Brutus' disposition. So, we still have feisty little Mia who I regularly remind is the last of the litter to be adopted. She is spirited to say the least. We really hoped to have her placed before we started this project. We've had a few interests but nothing has panned out yet.

Sweet 17

Seventeen years ago today, Erin Gabrielle entered the world and changed us from Greg and Sherri into Dad and Mom.  Love, unlike any other we'd ever felt was born in that incredible moment. She is our first and she wears that badge well. We've made all our first mistakes with her. We continue to wade through uncharted territory with each stage of development first with her. She is bright, witty, beautiful, sarcastic and honest. We are proud to be her parents. She has recently decided that growing up isn't all it's cracked up to be so moving forward, she'd like to have reverse birthdays. She is facing college choices, career plans and life goals with the realization that she has always been a little adult and perhaps wasted being a kid the first time around! Welcome to the mind of Erin! Her future holds two current plans.....

Plan A....graduate high school and travel the world, living with kind strangers willing to take in a homeless girl and perhaps fall in love with some foreign speaking, very attractive man so she will finally learn a new language (four years of Spanish didn't actually teach her to speak it!)

Plan B.....graduate high school with enough advanced placement courses to enroll as a sophomore at the University of Louisville while working part time at UPS so her college is paid for, start her teaching career as she continues her education with an emphasis on special education or Montessori certification, get married to someone who will dote upon her and perhaps adopt a few kids so she never has to have a blood test

Happy birthday Erin. We love you.

He is pretty awesome

Greg finished the benches....I love my dining room!

Traded Glue Gun for Camera Today