A Beautiful Sunday!

This past weekend we were blessed with amazing weather - YES, here in the Puget Sound!! On Sunday after church we headed up to Kirkland to see a friend of mine and her new baby (along with her 2 year old and her mom). Simone and I lived/studied together in Venezuela during our Jr. year of high school as exchange students. She moved here with her husband about 2 years ago and I think we've seen each other 3 times since then. So when I heard she was moving to Miami, I knew we had to go see her!

Simone holding Alina, Me holding Baby Julia and Baby Ashley,
Katelynn and Daddy (so bummed we didn't get Peggy in there!)

 She just had a baby 4 weeks ago (and looks AMAZING!), had her house (and car!) packed up by the movers, and has been living at a friend's house with her 2 girls and her mom who's been visiting for a few weeks and will travel with her and the girls to Miami in 2 days. Whew!
Thank God for Grandmas!!! I don't envy Simone at all for all that she's going through (and will go through over the next few days!) but she's amazing and I know she'll go GREAT!! It was so good to see her and her mom, and of course her little kiddos! I even got to hold the baby! :)

ANYWAY....all that to say, we had great time at a park so the bigger girls could play and the mommas could chat. (And thanks to my wonderful hubby who took care of our littlest one most of the time!)

After our visit we decided to take a ferry across the sound for a long, scenic drive home. (and a yummy dinner in Poulsbo!!) It was Katelynn's first ride on a ferry so it was a big adventure!! And it just so happened that our ferry was named the "Spokane" (where I'm from)! We had someone take a photo of us with the sign but he didn't quite get all of us. Oh well. The 2nd photo he took was much better! Katelynn had so much fun out on the boat deck. It was such a beautiful day!

just a bit windy!!

my pretty little flower girl!

Mini Me's

I love comparing photos of me and the girls. Like the one I did last fall with a photo of Katelynn and I close to the same age.

Well, I have a set of music boxes that (I think) belonged to my grandma. I have no idea how old they are or even where they came from. And I have a photo of me as a baby listening to one of them. (They have pull strings to make the music and one sings "rain drops keep falling on my head" and one sings "the hills are alive".) As Ashley was playing with one of them today I realized I needed to get my camera for another "one of those photos". :) It's not a perfect match, but it was pretty close!! At least we both have the messy hair look!!

Piggy Tails

Katelynn didn't really get hair until about 18 months so I've been having a lot of fun with Ashley's! We started with her bangs in a pony a few months back and this weekend I decided to try "real" ponytails. I always see babies with their hair pulled back and wonder how their moms did it with wiggly babies. I'm still wondering! I was luck to barely get a photo of them!!
I know I'm biased, but I gotta say that's one cute baby!!!
Oh, and the outfit was a baby gift last year from our friends the Huff's. It's a 6 month outfit and I wasn't sure if she'd ever get to wear it last summer. (which she didn't because we never really even had summer!) Thankfully I hung onto it and she fits it great now! :)

SUMMER!! (finally!)

We are ultra-blessed with amazing neighbors who are like surrogate grandparents to our girls and good friends to us. They have a pool that is a dream come true on a summer day. (Judy won't swim in cold water so she keeps it between 87 and 92 degrees!!) Last summer Ashley was still a little too young and vulnerable to go swimming (then again, did we ever really even have a summer!!??). So last week we took Ashley over for her first swim!! She wasn't too sure about it and much preferred sitting atop the floating chaise lounge instead of being in the water! Katelynn did awesome and it's fun to mark the passing of each year with how deep she can go and still touch!

Braids!!

I've never been very good at "doing hair". But when Katelynn asked for ponytail braids (I give her two pony tails then do a basic braid) I thought I might try doing a french braid. For my first time I think they came out pretty well!! Granted, I had a beautiful canvas to work with! :) We have issues with her bangs always dropping in her face and all but have to force her to wear a clip to keep them back. With her hair growing out, I'm looking forward to her wearing her hair like this to school in the fall and not looking like a ragga-muffin when she comes home! :)

Just a quick trip to the store

Over the weekend we bought $100 of gift cards at Albertson's during their Gift Card promo (buy $100 of GC's and get a $20 Albertson's GC!). We were planning on spending money at Home Depot and knew we'd be eating out at some point in the near future anyway, so it was a no brainer. We got our $100 in gift cards and came away with $20 to spend at Albertson's.
Then this morning I needed to go get milk and thought I'd check the blogs before I headed out. Saw that a catalina was printing sooner than expected so I scored a double catalina promo, with coupons and my $20 gift card - making for a super cheap trip!!
8 boxes of cereal, 6 boxes of granola bars, 4 boxes of fruit snacks, 2 bags of chex mix all triggered the free milk (should have been 5 but only got 4, redeeming 2 this trip), a $3 cat off my next trip, 20 box tops, then I bought the extras on the right (found out Ashley loves fried fish and Albertson's has all their single portions for $1 each).

So, $21 for all that AND 2 more free milks and $3 off my next trip! Essentially $.61 for each item in the photo. (doesn't count the 2 additional free milks and $3 off my next trip) 

This would have cost me $120 if I paid full price!!

Before & After

I've always loved before and after photos of things. I have a bunch that I need to get posted but the latest to our collection is our entertainment center. It was given to me when my grandma passed away a few years ago. It was beautiful, had lots of storage, yet, it was massive!! Our neighbors had a very similar one that they "modified" a couple of years ago and we had considered doing the same thing. It was hard to think we'd be taking apart something that was in such nice condition. I knew my grandparents had paid a lot of money for it and it's hard to find furniture these days that are made to this kind of quality. But as we were moving furniture around this weekend we started talking about it....again. We couldn't make more than $50 or so (at best!) on Craigslist if we tried to sell it. Even if we did sell it, we'd still need to come up with considerably more to buy an entertainment center that we could use as well as this one. But if we cut it down to size (like our neighbors had done to theirs) we'd be losing the quality of the piece and how we saw it, the "value" of the item would be lost. BUT, it would serve our purpose and it would be what we needed. So after weighing all our options, we decided to do it. Ultimately, it hadn't cost us anything, it would still be useful to us when we were done, and it wasn't going to cost us a thing to convert it.

As the photos show, it came our beautifully!!! I love being married to a Handy Man!! Once we put it back in our living room we were SOOO happy we did it. And of course started asking ourselves, "why didn't we do this sooner!?" And if you're familiar with our living room before, you can tell the amazing difference it makes!!
(Granted the "before" photo is the photo I took before we redid the living room back in March, but it gives you an idea of how different that wall looks with the entertainment center cut down. LOVE IT!!)

Day 2 & 3 of the Bathroom Remodel

Work continues on the bathroom!! Yesterday they did quite a bit of "infrastructure" done with doing some plumbing and getting the tub ready for tile. Then this morning they started tiling and finished the plumbing for the new sink and new hot water heater, then laid the flooring and covered up the holes in the walls. Tomorrow should be grout and the new vanity and counters go in!! It's getting closer!!

The one things we're so thankful for is that nothing "odd" has popped up creating difficulties for the contractor. That was one of the reasons why we hired him instead of doing it ourselves. We have done enough smaller jobs in this house to know that things aren't always as simple as they seem and small jobs turn into real headaches. So far, to my knowledge, there haven't been any headaches! :)

The New Bathroom - Day 1 ... DEMO!!!

We are finally taking on our 1964 bathroom and remodeling it this week. We've been saving our dollars and pinching our pennies and it's finally time!!  We have a contractor we're working with so we can help do some of the work - but we're leaving the "big stuff" up to him!!
Here's a few photos from Kevin's demo day!

BEFORE DEMO:
AFTER DEMO:



The previous owners used one of the tilt-out cabinets as a hamper....Kevin found a few interesting things to say the least! This training bra is probably from the late '60s!!!

Katelynn got to help Daddy with some of the demo. We didn't have safety glasses for her so she got to wear her sunglasses!

The Last Toothless Grin

I took 303 photos tonight in about 15 minutes trying to get my last photo of Ashley's toothless grin. I saw this morning that her first tooth is just starting to peek through her bottom gums. Although I'm looking forward to her being able to eat more food with more teeth, I sure do love my little toothless baby!!!
The photo isn't the clearest, but just looking at it make me smile!