2.12.2011

Long Overdue Photo Update

Christmas Eve morning at our house. Way to start our little family's tradition of Sticky Bun and presents, huh? Levi was pretty tired but he did enjoy opening his stocking and getting his wooden blocks. We found them on etsy.com.



We put Levi down for a nap then Dave opened his Saint headlight from me. And he had already gotten his Bosch reciprocating saw a few days before.

It was an awesome Christmas for me. I got a new Bosch mixer, blender, food processor, sausage stuffer and meat grinder from pleasanthillgrain.com. One of our fave websites :) We've been enjoying making all kinds of baked goods with our new tools.

Dave looks like the sticky bun has placed him in  a carb/sugar coma. But he really just blinked...

We drove to Ohio on Christmas Eve and arrived at mom and dad's house in time for the Crabtree Christmas. Here Aunt Sharon and Aunt Connie are saying their goodbyes to Baby Levi.

On Christmas Day we opened presents with my family (mom, dad, Emily, Brian). Levi was pretty good at opening presents.

Here he is with his teething toy. A fawn. We call her Lafawnda (Napoleon Dynamite reference everyone...)

Emily opening her Christmas dishes from us.

Mom & Dad opening their new Garmin from all of us.

Mom & Emily fussing over baby Levi. Pretty typical. He is spoiled...that's for sure.

A family portrait from Christmas day.

Levi opening up some clothes from Gamma & Pappy.

Levi once we got back home playing in his exercauser with his favorite toys from Grandpa & Granny. He loves these things!

See...

And of course this is where I would insert photos from Christmas with Dave's family. We attended 3 different get togethers with them. But apparently neither of us thought to take photos at those gatherings. Actually, I thought of it once but was feeding Levi and then it slipped my mind after wards.

And here are some remodeling photos. Our kitchen with plastic wrap over all the cabinets during the mudding/sanding/painting process. They were like this for a week or so. That's the week when we ate fast food all the time and felt sick.

The sink counter was also covered up with tarps. This is the week I did not wash any breakfast dishes. They were disgusting. We still did not have the dishwasher when we finally got the sink back. Not fun...

The laundry room still looks about like this one month later. But hey, doesn't it look so bright with those doors painted white? Soon...the walls will be grayish blue. Can't wait to do that.

Levi hanging out in his sleeper from Gamma and Pappy on Mommy & Daddy's bed. So cute...he has changed so much since this was taken though.

Levi hanging with his dear friend Aiden while their dads were at a deacon meeting. :)

Dave working on the tile floor in the kitchen. He had a lot of help from Ceo and Jason and a bit from me. It went pretty fast that way.

The great room after a weekend of Jack staining cabinets, Nick mudding drywall, & Dave, me and Ceo laying tile. And to think that I'm supposed to teach piano lessons in this room too. Wow. See the end of the piano there in the bottom right of the photo...hhhhh....constant source of frustration in this household let me tell ya.

Another shot of the great room.

Also that weekend, the appliances were moved out of the kitchen so we could tile. The stove went in the great room (see above) and the fridge went in the front room. Spent many evenings attempting to cook in the front room. Not fun. Gave up. Bought food and brought in from restaurants till Mom brought us food :) Thank you again, Mom!

Also in the midst of the kitchen remodel I decided to try to reorganize our master bedroom and bathroom. My first step was switching dressers with Dave one night while he was at a church meeting. You see, since I've gained weight I actually have fewer clothes than him (and I actually prefer it that way). It makes laundry and choosing what to wear easier, etc. And it fits better in our room/closet. And Dave has somehow acquired a million and a half t-shirts, etc. over the years and will not part with any of them even though he rarely wears civilian clothes (usually wears uniforms or dresses up for church). So that night I switched dressers with him. He had 3 junk drawers and now he can have 8 junk drawers in the other dresser. Great for him. But the problem was that there was an entire drawer leftover from his old dresser of misc. junk that I had no idea what to do with. So it sat there on top of his new dresser for 3 weeks till I gave up on him putting it away and I stashed the stuff in his dresser so I could put my socks away in my new dresser and now...he has no clue where any of his misc. junk is. Hhhhh....

We are realizing that we have somehow traded places. After 8 years of him wishing I were more neat and organized and me wishing he were less neat and organized, we have switched. Now he's the slob and I'm mad at him for making messes all over the house. The great room and the top of his dresser are just 2 examples. It is terrible. Now I know what it's like to live with me! Ahhh! So, anyways, we're working on cleaning up these days.

I also re-organized the medicine cabinets in our bathroom. Here are the before shots.


And here are the afters. I found some containers at HomeGoods and JoAnn Fabrics. I was able to contain and categorize a lot of stuff. I love it! 


I was also very tired of the way our bedroom looked. My night stand was like 6 inches square and I was constantly knocking stuff off ot it and even though I liked our bedding (Dave's ancient threadbare blue blanket and the quilt Margy and Jenny made us for our wedding), I was ready for a change. Dave & I discussed it. We decided that it was not a big deal for us to quit using the quilt for our bed. We have used it almost non-stop since our wedding 8.5 years ago. And we hope to someday use it in a guest room or something. But we were ready for some new bedding.

So I began shopping around online and then one night ran out to HomeGoods. I ended up finding this comforter set and pillows marked down to $50 because the bag was ripped open. I also found the lamp. Then I shopped my own house as recommended by thenester.com and found our game table buried in the great room. I had planned to decorate with it in there but realized it would work fantastically as a night stand. And it matches our bed perfectly. It is a bit more crowded in our room than I want, but for now it works. I've since taken the tag off the lamps, added 2 more pillows and cleaned some more but you get the idea.


Levi likes to turn his bib around. We call it his cape. He's super baby. 
Dave, Steve & Ceo at the FCO bird hunt. Dave was so pleased to have his brother Steve come visit that weekend. They had a great time together.

Jason at the bird hunt.

Steve at the bird hunt shooting clays.

Levi showing up his sitting up skills on the new kitchen floor.

The new kitchen. All the stuff from the drawers is on the counter. New appliances. Love them.

Dave's homemade cinnamon rolls that he made on his snow day from work.

Dave had to go to Chicago in the ice storm/blizzard last week for work. I worried about him on his drive up like crazy. But he made it. Check out the piles of snow there.

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