For Julie but feel free to browse!

OKay Julie here are the pictures of the rooms. You can click on them to get a bigger picture. The first is the hallway just to show the trim, then the family room, next kitchen and then our front room! Ignore the mess, the stairs are still under construction and so is Jake's puzzle.

Is Chandler heavy enough to drive the lawnmower?

Geoff thought it would be fun for Chandler to try and drive the lawnmower, he left him a small patch of grass in the front yard. After full safety and driving instructions he let him go. He was doing fine, I was a bit surprised at how well he seemed to be handling it. Then "bang" what the heck was that. He tries again!Again he is driving smooth and then the mower starts to stutter and "bang" again. What the heck is going on? This never happens when Geoff or I drive the mower, and then we realize...a safety factor has been built in to the mower, if you get off the seat it shuts down the mower. Well Chandler is so light that the mower wants to shut down but he is pressing on the gas! Lucky kid it will be awhile before we can make him mow the lawn!

More on the Stairs

Well I know this isn't the most exciting thing to read on my blog, but since this is a mini diary for me and these stairs are taking up most of my life...that is what you will get.

Although I might add that I am having a very difficult time finding jeans that will fit me now. A big problem...it is starting to get cold and I donated all my clothes from last year, cause of course they don't fit and I don't ever want to fit into them again.

Well back on the real reason I am blogging. We are now on a new phase of the stairs, all of the trim is painted white, and the banister is sanded, and we are finally rid of the green walls that I have very much disliked for the past 2 and some years. YEAH! Now Geoff is a bit tired of his time off spending on this project, and their is so much more to be done. Home Depot is not done with us yet! Stay tuned for the final reveal, or maybe something else exciting will happen first. One never knows!

The Stairs

One of the bigger projects that we have taken on in this house. When I did the molding it was a lot of tedious work. I wish that I would have taken pictures of the stages but I didn't. This time we are working on the steps. The carpet on the stairs looked awful, and we have wanted wood steps ever since we moved in....Geoff did his research and we had a few options, one we could have hired someone, but what fun would that be and what would we be teaching our children...lol, another was to do them ourselves and again more options. When we pulled up the carpet we had nice pine planks, so we are attempting to use them. At this point Geoff has removed all the carpet, staples, etc. and has sanded out all the watermaks, stain drips and any of the other major flaws. We taped them off and begin priming the baseboards and the backs of the stairs so that we can paint them white. That is where it is now...lots of blue painter tape, white primer and very pretty raw pine. The boys want to keep the blue tape, they think it looks cool. Oh I forgot to say this was Geoffs first day of his vacation....you should see his list!

Picking Fruit

One of the greatest things about living in upstate New York is all of the fresh veggies, and more importantly the rasberries and apples. Preston and I went with Mary Jane and Jade to pick some rasberries and then we grabbed some apples. Preston didn't really like the rasberries but I really did and I so I picked and picked. I brought them home, half were put into a sealed container and the other half I left in the cardboard box...2 days later I pull them out to chow down and they were on their way to being antibiotics. I was able to salvage the rest but without hesitation threw them into the freezer. Good news is the 15lbs of apples are just fine and I will be making apple crisp Sunday night.

My Baby is off to Kindergarten

I can hardly believe that Preston is off to kindergarten. It really feels like just yesterday I was taking Chandler. Preston was very excited. Last night I said it was time for bed, that he needed sleep for his first day off school and Preston took off like a lighting bolt up to his bed. It took him awhile to fall asleep, he was so excited. The first thing he asked when I woke him up this morning was if we were going to a store today. Then he remembered it was school and he quickly got ready. And off to the bus it was. He has a good day, unfortunately due to his surgery has to sit out at recess and PE for 2 weeks.

Preston gets his ear fixed....we hope!

On Prestons first birthday he got tubes put in his ears. When he was four he was at the Dr. and he noticed he still had tubes so he referred us to a ENT, and we had them surgically removed, Sept. 07. At a later Dr. appt the doctor noticed he had a hole in his ear, so back to the ENT. He said he wanted to watch it for a few months, but it was obvious to me that it wasn't healing, anytime he got any water, even a splash in his ear he cried. So off to surgery again. This time they took cartilage from his ear and stiched it in. It took longer this time, the surgery and for Preston to wake up. The first thing he did was stare at his hand which had an IV in it and monitos. Then he asked me if he got his shot yet? He was in a lot of pain. He is doing better now, very protective of his ear.

Note the firt two pictures, (the ones with the yellow arm band and the sports blanket) are from last year. I can't really tell a big difference!

Back to School

Well that time is finally here...back to school. I must admit I really miss the Arizona schedule. The boys were all ready to go back to school themselves. This year Chandler is moving on to Middle School. I can't believe that I am old enough, and that time has flown that I have a child that age. He was a bit nervous but loved the first day of school. He has a lot of his friends on his team so that is a plus. We hope that he can stay organized this year. Jake is in 4th grade this year, he has the same teacher that Chandler had so I know what to expect. He is also excited to be back in school. Hayden is in 2nd grade and has Mr. Parker the first male teacher that we have had. He thinks it is funny because one of his closest friend is named Parker. Preston will start on Monday, he did get to go to Kindergarten Orientation where he met his teacher. She was suprised to see that he can write and color equally as well with both hands. It depends on what side of the paper he is working on. When he wrote his name he wrote the PRE with his left hand and then changed the pen to his right hand and finished the STON! We will see how he does the first day of school, after an hour he wanted to go home.

I got a new Car!

Well after much thought and hesitation...we went ahead and bought a new van. We used a car buying service through the credit union and when I gave him what I was looking for I said I did not want a black car. Well if you can tell it is black. And I know you can't see much of the car because we didn't think about that, but black is nice looking, a bit sporty. The Sedona is gone and I must say I am not that sad, after the alternator, breaks and AC went out all at about the same time we were a bit done. Not to mention the amount of times it froze up last winter and I was unable to turn the steering wheel.