The Gameroom

So, just like all of my home improvement projects, there's always something that makes finishing it take longer than expected.

For the decorating of the gameroom, that has turned out to be the couch.  I'm ordering a couch from IKEA and it is on backorder.  They say they hope to have a few available next week.  I have been waiting now for about two weeks.  I can get some pictures put up while I wait.  And I still have a shelf I need to install.

And while I've been waiting for the couch, I've put in a couple of cabinets in our very open hallway to be the office.  I'm very happy to have a place for all of my papers and office stuff.

This house will come together one day.  :)

The First Week

The first week of school went pretty well.  Reid and Zach seem to be adjusting to their new schools and routines.  They are both playing football.  Zach has made some friends at school who live near us and he's gone out to hang out with them a few times.  One of them happens to be the boy who used to live in our house.  Kind of funny that they are now friends.  He told Zach that he was sorry for the black marks on the wall in his room.  :)

Our daily routine is about to change, though, because Reid starts seminary this week.  He will need to be at the church at 7am each morning for the 50 minute class.  Fortunately, that coincides with Zach's 6:45 bus pick up.  So we'll get up at 6, Zach will get on the bus at 6:45, I'll drive Reid to church.  I may hang out at the church during his class, or I may come back home, or go to the grocery store.  Hopefully I'll get that routine figured out.  But, Reid will be home by around 8 and he gets on the bus at 8:30.  Whew.

The afternoon works out alright because Zach needs to be picked up at 5pm and Reid gets picked up at 5:15.  Game days will be a little tricky, but we'll get that worked out when the time comes.

Jacob and Cole are staying home this year.  The first week went well.  We'll be working the kinks out of that routine for a while.

And Kira wasn't so sure about the changes going on in the house.  She's been sleeping pretty poorly the past several nights.  Which hasn't made things terribly easy on me.

But overall I think things are going well.  The first few weeks are always the hardest.

Reid's Scrimmage

Football practice started August 10th.  At this point, I'm pretty sure that Reid is playing on the 9th grade B team.  He plays running back on offense and free safety on defense.

On Friday, Aug 21st, they had a scrimmage practice against a team from Greenville, TX.  I took lots of video of Reid playing, but only got one good clip of him making a play.  And even then, he made the play on the opposite side of the field, so you kind of have to follow helmets to figure out that he made the tackle (or at least assisted with the tackle... it's hard to tell).

So... he's in the yellow jersey and playing furthest back.  He has black bands on his arms if it helps you find him faster...  (and click the full screen button on the video box to see it more clearly)

The Trampoline

We got the kids a trampoline a couple of weeks ago.  They have been enjoying it quite a bit.  Since there's not really any kids in the neighborhood, and we don't have a neighborhood pool, they were in desperate need of something to do.  We talked about an above ground pool, but opted for a trampoline instead.  I think it was a good choice.  If for no other reason than I don't have to go out there and clean it and keep it clorinated.  It can just sit there happily waiting for children to bounce on it.

Look at those big kids!  It scares me most days as I watch the boys get bigger and bigger and bigger!

I LOVE this picture!  I was a bit lucky on the timing.  It is perfect.  And I can't believe how easily he does these back layouts!

It's nice to see the boys interacting in a (mostly) positive way out there.

And here's a little video we got the night we were putting the trampoline together.  Mike put Kira on it before all the springs were in and the boys were all out helping to get the springs on, and this is what ended up happening.

I love that this video shows so clearly how rich Kira's life is.  I think of how wonderful it is to be able to provide a home for her that is filled with people who adore her.  What a special person she is.

Picnik Part 2

I appears that you can create a free online account and then upload your photos to touch them up a bit.  Most of their fancy features require paying for their service.  Like... I would have liked to add some color to Cole's eyes, but that required paying, so I left them as is.  I was able to work with the contrast a bit, but nothing above what I can do with iPhoto, so the only feature that's really nice is being able to write text on the picture.

He does, indeed, rock!

And speaking of iPhoto, I was able to do some fancier stuff with their editing software.  Check this out:

I like the fuzzy on the outside and the changes in color.  His eyes are a little more prominent this way.  I suppose if I want to do this stuff for real, I need to buy Photoshop.

Maybe someday.

Picnik

So Reid told me about Picnik.com.  It's a photo editing site.  I don' t know all the details, but it looks like you pay a fee to have full access.  I just took one of Kira's photos and touched it up a bit and put some words on it.  Pretty fun.  I think I'll mess around a tad bit more to see how much they let you do for free.

The New Sink

In a post long ago in a land far, far away, I said something like, "Mike and I don't feel normal if we don't have a major project going on." Something like that, anyway... I think it was during the "tile every floor in the house time" or the "replace the freaking countertops" or "HEY, I KNOW, Let's tile the backsplash" days. Ahhhh, good times.

Anyway... so we've moved into a house that is basically perfect. Two years old, nice walls, nice countertops, nice tile, nice floors... there's not a whole lot to do in this house.

But one thing that stuck out to me was the kitchen sink... do you remember the kitchen sink we put in the house in Cary??? My beautiful.  My PRECIOUS?

Okay... not really my PRECIOUS, but still.  I really, really liked that sink.  So I bought it here and put it in.  Along with an upgraded garbage disposal.  The one here was a whopping 1/4 HP.  So I put in the nice sink rather than the very, very plain one they had here and put in a 3/4 HP disposal that is very very quiet.  So nice.

Here's a picture of the sink in use:

And now that the sink is in... there's no real need for home improvement projects, so I'm trying my hand at decorating.  I'm part way through the game room re-do.  I'll send an update on that room soon.  Hopefully it will be super awesome when I'm done!

The Girl Who Ate

First:  Tragedy Update:  We're still waiting for the truck to come back from the commercial renter.  Mike said he's sure he put the stick in there, so I didn't bother the people in our rental house in Austin.  We haven't called the place where we dropped the truck off... I guess I'm figuring that if they found it, they wouldn't have saved it... I should call...

Okay.  Back to our regularly scheduled programming:

Kira is a eating fool.  She has three meals a day and a few little cracker snacks in between.  The other day I made her a grilled cheese sandwich.  Oh yes.  A grilled cheese sandwich.  She refuses to eat baby food unless the circumstances are perfect and all the planets have lined up just right.  I got her to eat a jar of food at church the other day, and all the moons must have been lined up right, too, because she didn't make a mess of it.  Usually the baby food feedings are also a huge mess because she insists on grabbing the spoon and feeding herself.

So... back to the grilled cheese.  This was lunch and I made her the grilled cheese.  I started cutting it up and she started eating it.  I also had some canned pears in the fridge (she loves those), so I cut up one of the pear halves.  She ended up eating the pear half (not uncommon) and a quarter of a grilled cheese sandwich.  Does that seem like a lot to you?  It did to me.  Or maybe it's that I was feeding my 9 month old a grilled cheese.  I don't think I've ever done that before.  I think all the boys were still happily eating jarred baby food by this age.  But not her.  She wants all finger food, all the time.

Actually... I think Reid's diet at 9 months consisted mostly of animal crackers...  I hated that time with him.  Animal crackers haven't been introduced to Kira.  No Goldfish either.  She gets the little Gerber puffs.  They're expensive, but aren't too sweet or too salty.

So I guess it's not entirely odd to feed her a grilled cheese.  I'm mostly trying to keep her diet interesting and (mostly) healthy.

And did I tell you that she weighed just over 18lb at her 9 month check up?  They say she's about 40th percentile for weight and height.  I say she's perfect and extremely cute.  :)

Tragedy.

No to be too melodramatic, but it really is a tragedy.

I think we've lost the measuring stick that I transferred all of the growth measurements from the door jam in Cary on to.  I thought about it last night because I want to measure Kira on it since she's walking.  To show her one day how tiny she was when she started walking.  And I realized that I don't remember seeing it here at this house.

So you can imagine how well I slept.  We looked all over this morning and can't find it.  Mike thinks he remembers putting it in the Budget truck.  He thinks he put it between the wall of the truck and the wood slats that run along the wall.  Maybe it fell down to the floor and is still in the truck.

So we called Budget.  The truck is being rented by a commercial renter and has been out since July 19th.  They don't know when it will come back and said they couldn't contact the people.  Maybe we'll call the place where we turned the truck in to to make sure they didn't take out the stick (which, if it's where Mike thinks, is probably hard to see, so maybe it's still there).

We're waiting now.

I'm going down to Austin on Sunday maybe to pick Zach up, so maybe I'll knock on the door of the people who are living there now and ask if I can look in the garage.  Maybe it's there and not on the Budget truck.

But maybe we'll never see it again.  I had a good cry this morning at that thought.  I cried and cried over leaving that door jam in our house in Cary.  But the stick consoled me.  I was okay because I could bring that record of my little boys with me.  And now that I'm ready to start adding my little girl, it's gone.

So think lots of positive, miracle producing thoughts that my stick will return to me.  I hate the idea of going the rest of my life without being able to just stop and look at how big (or little) my boys were.

A Fine Group of People

A few weeks ago we had Mike's sister from Florida and her family visiting.  Mike's brother and his family came over several times (they live about 15 minutes away).  Mike snapped this picture of several of us hanging out in the living room.