Jul

Okay, so head over to TeamKirith Tidbits (our home page). I bought a new template from 11 Mystics – love, love, LOVE their stuff! Also love the ease of getting advanced features all the while be clueless as to HOW they happened – compliments of iWeb. Made some quick pages for Samara and Eli, too. Will be updating mine/Craig’s work pages soon. Stay tuned!

  

Apr

I am a planner, so I have a running list of dream house projects – this week’s topic was not difficult for me at all! Well, limiting to 10 was…

1. Build onto the back to create a giant master bedroom, master bath, and kitchen.
2. Build out the attic so we have a full second floor upstairs.
3. Big screen LCD HDTVs in the living room, rec room, and our bedroom.
4. Hardwood floors in every room but the kitchen and bathrooms (replace tile in those rooms).
5. Granite countertops.
6. Oil-rubbed bronze appliances throughout the kitchen.
7. A huge wood play set outside for the kids, complete with climbing wall.
8. A 25-foot (or whatever the maximum allowable by law is) fence shielding us from the neighbors.
9. Gorgeous (but low-maintenance) landscaping throughout the yard.
10. A fabulous solid wood front door with stained glass inserts, complete with sidelights and a glass arch over it.

Sigh…mostly wishful thinking, but hopefully not all of it! Now gotta come down out of the clouds and go teach a class!

  

Oct

So this morning I was taking the kids out to the car to run a quick errand, and happened to glance up across the street and saw this…

Holy crap! We had a horrible storm last night, and I remember waking Craig up at one point and telling him I heard something, but he said it was just thunder. Obviously not!

I sent over and talked to our neighbor later – he said it was a miracle they weren’t crushed by the tree. He had woken up from the storm, too, and the wind was so strong he was worried a tornado was coming. So he woke his wife and daughter up and they went down to the living room to see if the TV was tracking the storm. He said about a minute after they got down there – BAM – the tree fell on the house. And, where it fell – right on top of their bed. If they hadn’t gone down to the living room, it would’ve fallen right on them.

Does that give you cold chills, or what?

  

Mar

So, our neighbors built a boat in their backyard. Fine. It’s a pontoon boat. Gotta say, I’d rather buy a boat than build my own, but whatever.

Anyway…the boat’s still there. They finished last Friday and spent the weekend partying on it … while it was still in their backyard. So I thought … well, they just finished it, they’ll put it in the water next weekend. Now here it is the weekend again, and … they’re still partying on the boat … and it’s STILL sitting in their backyard. Seriously.

Maybe they know something I don’t about another flood…

  

Mar

Air conditioning repair man just left – two capcacitors on our AC unit have blown. Because it’s so old, one of them has to be ordered. It will be FIVE DAYS before it comes in!!! Five 80+ degree, VERY HUMID days. Craig is getting fans, but circulating hot air is still hot. Sigh…

  

Mar

Our air conditioner is broken, and we’re heading into our first 80 degree days of the season…

  

Dec

Craig is in the hospital. We were going about our normal day, when he got a phone call saying to go to the ER or he would die. There really just aren’t words…

It’s 3:00 am now, that phone call came 11 hours ago, but it seems like eternity. His kidneys have failed. All of a sudden. They found it through a blood test that his nurse practitioner added on as an afterthought at his regular checkup today. We still don’t know much. We waited in the ER for 8 hours before he got taken up to his room. He STILL hasn’t seen a doctor. They’ve taken him off all his medicines, and are hoping they can reverse the damage. The process has been maddening.

He sent me home, so I could take the kids to school in the morning – they are staying overnight with my friend Kate. But I want to be with him at the hospital. I can’t sleep at all. Like I said, there really just aren’t words…

  

Feb

Taneka’s challenge this week: go through the house and take pictures of things that make me happy.

Okay, well, my house is kind of messy right now!

I think I will just list things rather than show pictures.

One of my favorite things about our house is our deck. It was really the deck and the huge backyard that sealed the deal for us in terms of buying the house.

Another thing I love about our house is that the master bedroom is downstairs, and the kids’ bedrooms are upstairs. I was not sure about this when we first moved in, but now I LOVE this! It’s nice to have privacy and peace and quiet once they’re down. Though Samara likes to hover on the stairs to see what we’re up to!

I also love my scrapbook room. Though I would love it a whole lot more if it was nice, neat and organized.

I also love that our dining room adjoins the living room in such a way that we can set up a whole extra table at the end of our dining room table when we’re having dinner parties.

Finally, I love that our kids have playrooms both downstairs in the basement, and upstairs near their rooms. Again, would love these things more if they were clean and organized.

  

Dec

This one is easy – I’m not the world’s greatest housekeeper! %-) The only hard part was constraining myself to 10!

1. Cleaning the toilet – pretty self explanatory.
2. Dusting – requires an attention to detail (not my strong point! %-).
3. Folding laundry – too tedious.
4. Pulling hair out of the shower drain – this just disgusts me somehow, even when the hair is just mine!
5. Picking up the kids’ rooms – I *live* for the day they’re old enough to do this all on their own; how can two kids *possibly* have so much s—?!!
6. Changing the litter box – the smell gets me every time.
7. Cleaning the mirrors and glass table tops – there is NO way to avoid streaks!
8. Putting the trash cans out by the street, or moving them back after pickup – I actually have no idea why I hate to do this, I just do.
9. Pulling weeds from the flower beds – I like the weeds not to be there, but it really kills my back, plus I can’t really tell what’s a weed and what’s a “real” plant half the time.
10. Washing the kids’ hair – they hate it, which means I do, too!

I’m not sure what this leaves. I guess this explains a lot about the state of my home…

  

Jun

Of course, now that I’m caught up on these, the topic would have to be – sharing a picture of my “art” space. NO WAY!!! It is just oo messy right now. I know, I know, the challenge said don’t clean up, it doesn’t matter, blah blah blah. I would just be way too embarrassed to show pictures of this room in its current state. One of my goals for the summer is to get it cleaned up and organized. If I succeed in my goal, I’ll post a picture then. How’s that for a cop-out?!!

As it turns out, in my house, my art space and work space are really the same – my husband and I share a large study, though his “half” is much smaller than mine! %-) I have a desk and another table along with a filing cabinet and numerous bookcases and shelving/drawer units. All my scrapbook stuff is here, along with all of our personal/household files, plus my work things I keep at home. I have a fair bit of space, but it is in no way used optimally.

I’ve tried numerous organizational schemes for my scrapbook supplies – paper/sticker binders, 12×12 stacked paper trays, a ScrapRack, the new Cropper Hopper vertical paper storage things, tons of little “things” that hold embellishments, etc., etc., etc. Of all of these, I actually like the ScrapRack best – I like their recommendations for storing things in 3 broad categories (calendar, rainbow, and theme), and I really like having paper, fibers, embellishments, etc. all together in one place. Unfortunately, I would probably need 10 ScrapRacks to store all of my stuff, and they take up a lot of table workspace.

So, right now, things are “almost organized”, meaning there’s a little bit of everything, everywhere. There’s just NO WAY I’m posting a picture!

  

May

The 4th meme challenge from Two Peas was to highlight ways we’ve been crafty in our houses.

Hmm…I haven’t done much of this. I have goals to paint quotes on the walls like Lisa Bearnson does in her house – I love quotes! But I haven’t gotten around to it yet. In fact, we’ve lived in our house for 2 years now (!), and I’m not even done unpacking yet. I do have nice art up in the house, but it’s by other people, not me.

Oh, well, no one’s perfect, right? I’m adding this to my goal list – do something crafty in the house. Craig will love it! %-)

  

Oct

Yes, it has been about a year now since we wrote any blogs or updated the web page. I’m not going to apologize – this past year was one of the most stressful we’ve had, though also wonderful in a lot of ways. Eli is over a year old now (!), and Sami is racing toward 3 with great enthusiasm (though she’s just learned to hold up her fingers and show people “how many” she is, so she will likely be content to stay 2 a little while longer). We are also homeowners now – finally! We absolutely love the new house.

We are also extremely glad to be having some “down time”. Yes, life is still hectic, but at least we’ve had a little bit of a break from major life events. Think about it – we’ve been married for 4 years now, and in that time we’ve had: two children (and a miscarriage before Sami was born), two deaths of close loved ones (my grandfather and Craig’s mother), and two job changes for me PLUS we’ve moved 4 times, and adjusted to Craig having diabetes. And that’s not even factoring in the (often major) stressors that we’ve helped our families and friends through. So, we are relieved that (for now) our stress is just mundane day-to-day things like kids having temper tantrums and deciding on what to have for dinner.

Oh, and since everyone keeps asking us – no, no more babies on the way, at least for now. When we got married, I originally wanted 4 kids. Now I’ve scaled back a little bit, but I do still want to have a third. I can’t really explain why, it just seems right. Craig says he’s up for it, too. Unfortunately, having kids is UNBELIEVABLY expensive (as most of you know), especially when they’re in daycare. Since we can’t really afford to have 3 in daycare (unless we want to eat beans every night and never go anywhere or do anything! %-), the current plan is to wait until Sami is starting school and then have the third one. But, a lot can happen in 2 years, so we reserve the right to change our minds.

So, moving on. I do hope I will be able to make more regular posts from now on. But no promises. I do realize as I get older how important it is to stay in touch with people, both for us as a couple and for the kids. I want them to grow up feeling loved by lots of people! Thus far, I’ve been pretty bad about keeping up with people, and I feel guilty about it. However, I can’t go backward, all I can do is go forward and try to do better now. So if you get a phone call or email from me and you haven’t heard from me in a while, try not to give me *too* hard a time!

  

May

We’re *not* moving!!! I know that is probably a strange thing to say, but in our case, not so much. We’ve moved every year since we got married (and actually moved twice right before we got married, since we weren’t living together and we had to get both of us to Alabama). So, 4 times in 3 years. This time, we’re staying put. No, the house we’re currently renting isn’t perfect – in fact, it is really way too small for us, plus the neighborhood is not great. But, we just couldn’t deal with the idea of moving yet again, so we’re going to make due here for another year. It’s official even – we sent the lease renewal off today. What a relief…now maybe I should finish unpacking here! %-)

  

May

I have to say, I never thought I would see the day that I would pick another human being’s nose. Much less did I ever think I would see the day that I would do it, and then say something like “Wow, that was a good one!”. I guess it’s one of those things that goes on a “You know you’re a Mom when…” lists.

As you might’ve guessed from what I just wrote, Sami has a cold. Since babies can’t blow there noses (something that never really occured to me until recently), we have to “irrigate her” (Craig’s way of describing using the plastic bulb to suction mucous out of her nose). But now that she’s starting to get over the cold, the mucous is drying up, so the bulb doesn’t get them as effectively. We can use the medicine dropper to put water in her nose and then irrigate her, but she *really* hates that. So, sometimes we have to just pull them out. This job usually falls to me, since I have long fingernails. Lucky me! I’ve discovered that all the things people tell you about how it’s different when it’s your kid (which, by the way, I used to think was b.s.) are actually true. I really don’t find it disgusting to pick her nose, since I am very glad to do anything I can to make her able to breathe more easily.

In other news, we’re slowly settling into our new house. We are *very* excited to be back in Nashville. But we’re not too excited about unpacking, which would explain why we’ve been here a week for two weeks as of tomorrow and there are still boxes *everywhere*. In our defense, we both have *a lot* of work to do this month, before we get to slow down a little for the rest of the summer. Still, it is a little pathetic that today is the first day we were able to take a shower in our own bathroom, because I finally got around to buying a shower curtain yesterday – before, we had been using the guest room, which has those sliding shower doors and doesn’t need a curtain.

Speaking of work, I should probably go do some more. Just thought I would share the story about the boogers. Aren’t you glad?!! %-)