Did Someone Say Chocolate?

Gearing up

Getting ready to do some more painting when Mom arrives. Poor her. Poor me. Curious...I know people paint over wall paper all the time...have any of you done that? Has it peeled up on you before? Do you have to get some sort of sealer first? I have fuzzy, green shitty wall paper in my hallway and I want to paint over it. It's really really old paper, so I don't want to try removing it first. Any ideas?

Tons of pictures

Well don't get too excited, just a bunch of pictures to post tonight! I've got some from the other night when my computer was jacking off, showing off in mommy's office and got some from today at his first day of school in the 1's class.

We moved things around in the computer room the other day, so now Daniel (and Dexter) has a very clear view of outside. He LOVES looking out the window. Please excuse the nasty chair. It's a dog chair LOL!

Just being cute!

Taking a little break from all the hard walking.

"What is that you have there Justin?"

I swear I didn't set him up like that. He was walking, fell down and got back up to that position. It was funny!

Proud boy walking! See how he holds his little arms upwards for balance. It's so cute!

Daddy took this shot. "Excuse my dirty face, just look at the eyes ladies!"

This was my tired boy after his portrait session on Saturday! I think it's darn near time to turn his seat around! I keep forgetting!

Our girl V. came back to school/work last week. She's my student assistant. Daniel and I love her. She started work here just before I got back from maternity leave last September. Daniel was only 8 weeks old! He sees her 3-4 times a week for about an hour, sometimes more, per day. She went home for the summer, so Daniel hasn't seen her all summer. He was pretty happy to see her today for the first time since May! I was surprised he seemed to remember her.

And of course as soon as I let him down, he did nothing but show off for V. It was really funny. I have tried for a week to get him walking around the office. He wanted nothing to do with that, yet today...for V? He was all over the freaking place being a crazy fool! He even did his crab crawl for her! She was giving it a try too!

You can just see how happy he is to have her back! She's chasing him just out of site of the desk and he's beside himself with excitement!

He's showing his closing the door skills here! Keep in mind when she left for home back in May, this child was not even crawling yet!!

"Yes? Do you need something?"

You can see Daniel sporting his new shoes in his new class today! He's eyeing a little girl playing in a blow up pool just off to the left.

"Yup okay, the pool is GREAT!"

"Okay see you later Mom. You can just leave me here to play with all these little girls!"

And just because I'm on a roll, here's the garden the other day. It's in need badly for some TLC and weeding!

Please

Can someone convince me that house cleaning is a good thing to do when you know the mother is coming in four days? Sitting on the computer after working all morning and running errands all afternoon is NOT a good thing to do with only four days left. Gah.

We bought Daniel his first pair of shoes today at Stride Rite. Fifty dollars later, can you say he was NOT a happy camper. Poor little thing won't even walk now. He acts like he's got lead weights on his feet. He's a size 5.5 Wide. When I took his shoes off for his nap, the tops of his feet had little indents in them from the shoes. The girl said he wasn't measuring extra wide, but he was back in July when we had him in there. I'm concerned the tops of these shoes are too snug. The shoes on your babies feet leave indents? Maybe they'll do that until he breaks them in. For the cost of these things, I want them to FIT RIGHT damn it.

I finally broke down yesterday and made a hair appointment on Thursday. It's a new hairdresser from the place I first found my old hair dresser at. This girl has been there for 19 years, so I'm hoping that's a good thing. Geesh I hate having someone new cut my hair. I told her so too. Heh. I'll have to dig out some pictures of styles I've had so I can get all your opinions on it. I just can't make up my mind (oh what a shocker there) whether to get it cut shorter like it has been (low maintenance) or just get a trim to balance out my over grown layers and try to get my hair all one length again. Oh the agony! lol.

Another sitting under our belt

Today was no picnic. I woke up sick. Very nauseous. I actually did get sick once, then went back to bed until noon. Brought back memories of morning sickness. Ick. I got Daniel's clothes ironed and got him dressed to go. When we arrived at Sears, there was no waiting or anything, we went right in. The girl was removing one of the back drops and it rolled back up out of sight very loudly. Scared Daniel pretty badly. From that point forward he stayed pretty upset about the whole ordeal. This was the worse I'd seen him and the only thing I can guess is the white back drop that she was using for him not only made a loud noise that scared him, but it may have reminded him of the doctor's office.

I wish you could have seen my little doll. He didn't really even cry out loud, he kept his bottom lip sticking out with this big pout, he had tears all welled up in his eyes and he whimpered the whole time. Each time I'd get him settled, we get a half decent shot, we'd move him and it'd all start again. Each time I was ready to throw in the towel and come back another day, he'd settle down for a bit. I just hope the pictures aren't all red and blotchy. I told her if they were, I'd be bringing these ones back too. Sigh. It's okay though, really he was fine. He looked cute as pie with his pout. Even the photographer thought so too. She took one shot of him with one of his smaller little pouts (mind you I didn't order any of the shot, but it was cute).

Okay here's what we got. See if you all like these ones better. Just remember the quality is bad because they are downloaded from the website. She kept a total of ten shots, I only ordered from five of them.

(1 - 3x5 sheet)


(2 - 5x7 sheet)


(1 - 8x10, 2 - 5x7, 1 - wallet)


(2 - 5x7, 1 - wallet)


(1 - 3x5)


Sad face =(. None ordered.


Similar pose to the one above. None ordered.


She used soft focus on this shot and I wasn't too fussy about it fearing it would just end up looking blurry. None ordered.


Not smiling. None ordered.


Chewing a cheerio. None ordered.


I am happier with this session. I think the baseball pose was much cuter on just the blue, no green and this time with the little chair. We also used props from home. The little teddy bear is the same one he had with him at three months and the little book he's holding is his current favorite! It was hard to pick what I wanted to order. I had three real favorites this time so it was tough!

I just don't wanna clean up

My computer made me pretty mad last night. It's been acting up lately and I just don’t know enough about hardware (??) to figure out what the problem is. I do have a LOT of pictures stored on my computer and Doug thinks I'm just running out of space and because I keep a lot of programs open and running, it eats up my RAM causing me to freeze up. Well that wouldn't be so bad, but when it freezes up and I re-boot, I lose all of my freaking preferences for everything. All of my shortcuts disappear, my auto-form fill in, passwords, log ins...all of it gone. Nothing pisses me off more then to have to re-enter shit that I rely on my computer to remember for me. What's worse is this is the fourth or fifth time it's happened this month.

Last night when it happened, it didn’t freeze up, it just wouldn't let me save my edited pictures that I was working on to post, so I closed everything up and re-booted hoping that would fix the problem. When I got back in, everything was freaking gone again. All those preferences gone. GAH. I was so mad, I left the house for awhile. I just didn't want to look at the stupid computer. My OSX email program hasn't even been working right in a couple of months. It won't even accept my password/log in now, so I'm using the OS9 Outlook. BAH.

Anyway, I had some cute pictures to post of the little guy, but they'll have to wait. I'm going to have to do a complete overhaul of all my photos this weekend. I'm dreading that job! I just need to do better maintenance on my pictures and stop keeping shit photos! Speaking of photos...remember I re-ordered Daniel's pictures a few weeks ago because one of the shots was blurry? Well that's where I went last night with Daniel when I was pissed at the computer. When I get there, I'm told the picture still wasn't very good, but that I have options and they'll do whatever I want to make it right. Okay I'm glad they'll fix me up, but shit couldn't they have told me this over the phone instead of making me drive all the way out there just to look at the same blurry pictures?

So they would have refunded my money or do re-takes. I chose the re-takes because well...that was the best shot we got and I wasn't that thrilled with that whole package anyway, so it's a hidden blessing that the photo was blurry because now hopefully I'll end up with better shots all the way around. I'll get the re-takes done tomorrow. They'll honor my no sitting fee/4.99/sheet coupon and I'll get 5 sheets for free. I can choose one of each shot they take, I can choose the same sheets that were messed up and if I want to buy more of additional photos, I can. So that just rocks! It sucks however to have to go through that whole beating of a photo shoot again. Pray for me tomorrow around 1:30 pm. (central) ha ha. By 2:00 I'll be sweating like a hog chasing down my NOW walking toddler. At least last time he was done, he was still on hands and knees. =)

We noticed tonight that one of Daniel's front teeth FINALLY popped through. It actually looks like it may have popped through a couple of days ago because it's a pretty good size already. Cody and Sarah have always had problem teeth. I really hope Daniel doesn't have that same sort of problem. He kind of freaked us out tonight while we were watching "Third Watch"...Doug was sitting on the couch with the foot rest to the recliner extended and the little bugger climbed right up it. He was pretty damn proud of himself. We just looked at each other and said "shit". heh.

The kids all have had a pretty good couple of weeks at school. I'll post about that in another post. This one is too long as it is. *grins*

Okay

So the boy child won't eat table food, but cries because we won't let him have the dog food. *scratches head*

Cody's Ten Predictions

Got some school papers home with Cody on Friday and I got a kick out of one of them, so I thought I'd share.

Cody's 10 predictions for the upcoming school year:

1. I might get straight A's.
2. I might get bullied.
3. I might make some new friends.
4. I might not get recess a lot.
5. I might get a broken arm.
6. Texas Rangers might win the world series.
7. I might fail the TAKS tests.
8. I might pass the TAKS tests.
9. I might get my name changed officially.
10. I might accidentally say a bad word.

*laughs*

From the perspective of a ten year old. How funny.

All grown up

Just a couple of days ago, Daniel was taking between 4-6 steps at a time before falling back on his bum. Yesterday we noticed he was trying to walk further and further and sometimes would make it to 10 steps or so. Today the child is walking all over the house. I've been just tickled pink watching him go. This has GOT to be the cutest baby thing ever. I told Doug we just have to rent a video camera, I'm so bummed that we don't have one and he does all this cute stuff that some day we'll forget about!

Doug's parents came today to visit and to see Sarah's newly painted room. It was fun for Daniel to show off for his Papa and Nana! It was just so amazing to see Daniel all over the freaking place. He can walk to the side, backwards and turns corners at a steady pace. He's do damn proud of himself too. His screaming has almost totally stopped. He just trots around now happy as a clam! He can even carry things around when he's walking. I just cant' believe how quickly that all happened in just a couple of days. It's almost sad to know his baby days of crawling are about to come to an end. He crawled for just two months. Sigh. I WANT ANOTHER BABY!!

We bought a couple of baby sign language books the other day. Doug got Daniel to pant like a dog tonight. It was pretty funny! We bought the books because we thought maybe he screamed a lot out of frustration of not being able to communicate. Now I see it's because he wanted to walk. I got my happy-go-lucky baby back! Now if we could just get all those teeth that look about ready to pop, we'd be doing good!

Oh something else that happened tonight that was head shaking...as you all know, Daniel won't eat people food. He eats cheerios and baby fruit puffs, other than that, all of the stage two and some stage three baby foods. That's it. We've tried introducing all sorts of table foods to him. NOT interested. It gets the "hook" or he gags it out. Now he won't even take things from us unless it comes out of a jar with his spoons. Tonight at the supper table, Doug tore off a small piece of bread for Daniel to try. Nope. A minute later, Cody picked it up, sat on the floor with Daniel and handed it to him. Daniel took it from him and popped it into his mouth and ate it. My mouth hit the floor! We'll be testing that some more let me tell you! Cody was pretty proud of himself!

Must go get a snack...

Advice

How to get your husband to the store without complaint:...

Advise him it'll cost him at least fifty dollars more if you go. =)



Actually Doug's always been good about going to the store. He does almost all of our errands. He and I both know that I take hours to do something it would take him thirty minutes to do. I like to look at everything and think about what I'm buying, what I can make etc. He runs through the stores like a mad man. Just today while we were at Target, he drops me off at the baby food to stock up and while I'm there, he runs all over the place getting the rest of the stuff on our list. Had that been me, I would have went up and down all the aisles looking...looking...deciding...choosing...Heh. I suck. However, all that racing around just ended up with another trip to the store tonight for stuff overlooked...poor guy.

I did get my corn chowder from Mimi's today and I didn't even have to talk dirty to get it either! =) I'm making my own corn chowder right now for the kiddos for supper. It's nothing like Mimi's chowder though. That stuff just got dropped on this earth from heaven. YUM. I guess I'll do some house cleaning tomorrow considering I've done nothing for two days now. Joy.

Day 1

Day 1 of my vacation, Doug and I took a drive into Dallas to eat at the Cheesecake Factory and to visit the Farmer's Market. My whacko husband ordered the "Giant Brownie Ice-Cream Sandwich" for dessert instead of getting cheesecake. I don't think I've ever seen something so freaking huge! Unbelievable. Of course most of it came home with us even though in the beginning he convinced himself he could eat it because the STEAK he ordered was only little. LOL. Anyway, it was a good meal. We managed to keep Daniel pretty amused in his stroller with his own lunch, some books and snacks. We darn near pushed our luck though. Heh.

All of the kids are having a pretty good first week of school. Sarah's mentioned four or five different boys who she's been told "like" her. She's met a few new friends and so far seems to be fitting in okay. I hope that continues. Justin's been working out pretty heavily with the cross-country team. He ran the bleacher stairs today with the team, then after practice was walking back to the field house by the stairs and misjudged the distance he had for his legs and whacked his knee into the metal stairs, cutting it in 2-3 places. He said it hurt pretty bad. He came home all bandaged up. Poor kid.

I'll be off work until next Tuesday! It's nice being home in a quiet house with Doug. We've got Daniel home of course, but it's not the same as being a referee to the three other rugrats all day. I guess tomorrow we'll run some errands and finish getting things we need for the kids. Hopefully we can get some paint colors picked out too. I don't want to waste precious time while Mom's here dealing with color choices. I also want to get the kid's dressers organized (ha ha) this week, plus I have a TON of baby clothes to decide what to do with. I'm pretty sure we're keeping them all for awhile until we make sure we're not having any more babies, but I need a better place to store them. Right now they are taking up our precious closet space.

I guess I'll be starting up my low carb diet again this weekend. I told Doug the only thing I haven't gotten yet that I'd really like to have is corn chowder from Mimi's Cafe. Shit that stuff is GOOD! Carbs are truly my body's enemy. It's a sin because carbs are so yummy. I'll probably even have to switch my Mike's to the low carb version if I still want to drink it. Have I told you lately how sweet my husband is? Have I mentioned that he's kept me in total supply of Mike's all summer long? He is a god! Me'sa luv him! Mmmmm I foresee Mimi's tomorrow for a light lunch! Might have to butter him up tonight with some dirty talk. That always gets me what I want. I'm so pathetically spoiled rotten!

While I think of it, anyone have any recommendations for a back massager? I'm thinking of something that can sit in my chair or something. Not just a heating pad, I'd like something that is going to roll up and down my back. I hurt a lot, so I'm thinking I may need something so I don't wear out dear hubby with much needed back rubs.

Back to school!

Well I'm still going with the notion that "back to school" is a good thing in our house. After Sarah's little tantrum today over a tiny little bit of math homework, I admit I wondered for a bit. a) she was tired and b) she was so damn mad because apparently Justin (Mr. Know-it-all 9th grader already been there done that middle school thing) has been teasing Sarah for a few weeks that she'd have homework the very first day. She didn't believe him, but he turned out to be right. Heaven freakin' forbid! After a little chat and a loss of tv time for her mouth, she calmed down thankfully.

Justin didn't get home until after 5:30 pm. His normal time for getting home will be about 4:45-5:00 which is still a really long day for a kid. His bus and Sarah's today had "issues", so it made them both late. He starts cross country training tomorrow morning. They'll have to leave the house by 6:30 am.!! They all came home with a million forms to sign. I swear to god if I have to fill out my name and address and our million telephone numbers again I'm going to scream! I told Doug it's his turn next year. Heh.

Speaking of forms... check this out:
Art - $20
Math - $2
Band - $12 uniform $25/month rental N/A for Justin anyway, but still!
biology - $3
Choir - $20 uniform N/A for Justin either
Parking tags - $40 N/A for Justin
PE - $6 rental fee for lock
Technology - $5
Plus a bunch of replacement cost fees for things they actually do supply (once).

Total fees for our 9th grader this year: $36.00. That's on top of PE uniforms that we'll need to re-order for him and anything else they'll throw at us before the end of the week! I'm really looking forward to all of Sarah's fees because she is in band this year. Ugh.

Here's the 5th grader:


Here's the 7th grader:


Here's the 9th grader:


yes he has issues with gel that we need to work on. ;)

Here's the little man watching out the door as his brothers and sister leave for the day!


Earlier tonight Doug starting chasing Daniel while he was in his walker. Well as if it wasn’t already loud enough in here, it was comical because Daniel took the screaming and screeching, Doug took the yelling, both of them raised their arms up in the air and ran like hell! I tried about five times to get a "good" shot of it and only came up with this one.



It just looked so funny to see them both doing that. Daniel was having the time of his life! After that noise settled down, I could only shake my head and pity my mother! LOL

Tell me I'm not crazy

That child of ours...whoa baby. He's a screamer these days. What's worse is he's not screaming because he's hurt or anything like that, he's just screaming to hear himself scream. Did any of your toddlers just take the screaming one day and not stop for a week? I remember him doing something similar around 8 months or so, but he eventually did stop. He's been soooo good, but lately, holy lord, give me some ear plugs. All. Day. Long. Whine and scream. It goes from bad to worse. Poor Doug. I at least get a break from it while I'm at work!

I read up on some baby milestones. I know I shouldn’t' do that, but I can't help it. The area he seems "slow" in now is speech, but really...what is slow at 12 months ya know? Were any of your babies "talking" at 12 months? Daniel can say "daddy" when Doug plays their little speech game of "Daniel - Daddy". A few months ago, he mumbled some and it was thought to be the beginnings of "mama", but nope. He still doesn’t' call me mama yet. We speak a LOT to Daniel. He's been read to and talked to since he was first born. Maybe it's too much?

Oh well I'm probably just concerned for nothing. Truth of it is, I'm obsessed with something being wrong with Daniel's development because of all the problems we have with my oldest two. Now that he's all caught up with moving around (he's now walking 5-6 steps at a time), I guess I'm just worried because he's not trying to talk with us more. Tonight was funny though, he got into his plastic container cupboard and dug out a small bowl (the kind his snacks usually go in). He walked the bowl over to me while I was eating supper and handed me the bowl. I thanked him and put the bowl on my head. It fell off onto the floor. He screeched. We laughed. He got the bowl again, walked around to the other side of me and handed me the bowl again screaming at me. I put it on my head again. He was getting pretty mad then. Doug said "hey maybe he's trying to tell you he wants snacks". I asked Daniel if he wanted some snacks. I got the container of snacks and he settled right down, sat on the floor and waited for his snacks. 1. it's great that he tried to communicate in his own way what he wanted, but 2. it sucks that he felt he had to scream it.

Here's some pictures. I finally re-downloaded Gif. You'll see a couple of pictures in the extended entry (which I normally don't do). I don't want eyes in the house to see the pictures and get all MAD. You'll understand once you see the pictures. *snickers*

Random cuteness playing up to the camera:


I love watching him sit on the floor with his books. He always looks so grown up!


This is just hilarious. Cody taught him how to "sniff and snort" awhile ago and I finally caught it on camera. We use it as our "bunny" sound in 'Old MacDonald had a Farm':

This is a shot that Doug took today of Cody. We were on our way to Meet the Teacher night. When I got home from work today, Cody was in the middle of a huge tantrum in his room. Doug told him he was acting like a baby and you'd think that was the end of the world for Cody. Geesh. It was really just the end of the summer blahs. Everyone got on everyone's nerves today! So while we were outside getting Daniel ready to go, Doug came around the corner and discreetly took a picture of the crank look on Cody's face. I basically made him go meet his teacher because I thought it was important to do. He was such a crankbox, he didn't want no part of meeting his teacher! Five minutes after getting there, Cody was back to his old self and even apologized later to his dad for being such a shit. Mission accomplished heh.



Here's another shot my sneaky husband took of Sarah's calendar that we bought her for her wall. Doug thought it was pretty funny what Sarah had written on her calendar...
The "No Dog Touch" is a result of her getting into trouble for mauling them, so Doug punished her last week by not allowing her to touch the dogs for two days. LOL We thought it was pretty funny. We'll try often to get shots of her calendar just for entertainment purposes of course!

Oh bah

I think I'll be going to bed early tonight. I've been so tired since about noon today. Regardless of having tired head, I did manage to scrub all my floors, vacuum the computer room, put all our clothes away, cook supper (KD Shit Casserole ™, whipped up Rice Krispie squares which I haven't had in forever, laundry (again) and generally just picked shit up today. I had thoroughly cleaned the living room and computer rooms yesterday, so that made less to do today.

Other than cleaning the house, not much has been going on. The kids are definitely ready to go back to school. They may not think they are, but we sure as hell are ready. Cody found out today that his teacher has the same last name as he does. That's twice so far in his 5 years of school that that's happened to him and he doesn't like it. Says kids always tease him. I told him it'll get old after the first week of school and anyway all the kids know him this year, so why would they even think he's related to the teacher.

Now that things are starting to get back to normal, we decided to have Mom down to visit again. We bought her ticket the other night and she'll be arriving Sept. 2nd. We'll do some painting while she's here too. I'm betting it'll be a lot easier with an extra set of hands in there, so I'm pretty anxious to get going on it. We're also going to take advantage of her for some babysitting this time. Doug and I are overdue some serious alone time, so I'm really looking forward to that too.

I've ate like shit these past few weeks and I'm really feeling it. I've basically gained fifteen of my twenty pounds loss back and it's pretty depressing. Carbs are seriously my enemy. I really need to get back to eating right. I feel so much better when I lower my carb intake. It's actually pretty amazing how fast a person can gain weight when eating pasta, bread, potatoes, sugar etc.

Daniel has been little Mr. High Maintenance for the past few days too. You can't walk by a door in the house now without having him freak out because you didn't take him out. He loves going outside and looking out the window and you better look out if you don't take him. He's also still working on those front teeth which have made him pretty darn cranky! He is walking 4-6 steps at a time now though. That's really cool to watch! He's taken a few falls, luckily none too serious.

Doug went to pick up our portraits today and I'm so pissed. The ONE portrait that I actually liked turned out blurry. I am sooo marching those pictures back. It's the one that I ordered the most of for family too. The rocking horse one I don't like either. It says 100% satisfaction or your money back, so I'm taking those suckers back. I guess I'll go tomorrow seeing as I still have some clothes to get for the boys.

Here's a couple of shots from today to leave you with:
Oh well never mind. I hate this stupid piece of shit of a computer. My GifConverter is gone and I'm not in the mood to f**k with it. I'll post the pics later.

So now what

Got all that painting crap put away for now. I went to Home Depot the other night though and grabbed a whole pile of color samples so we could try to pick something for Justin's room and the computer room. As much as I dread painting, I really think it makes all the difference in the world. We sit in this computer room every day and it's the first room people see when they come in. It desperately needs a face lift! Tonight at Costco we saw some pretty nice furniture that would look great in here, but yikes, we just don't have the cash right now.

We took the kids out to eat tonight for an "end of summer" treat. They don’t start back to school until the 17th, but hey we're excited too! I'm going to take 2-3 vacation days next week and that rocks. Just Doug and I. Oh and little Daniel, but even so I foresee peace and quiet and a bit of running around ahead! Speaking of running around...I have such a sneaky little husband. He surprised me today with two new books he bought on Family things to do in our area and weekend getaways. MEOW! It'll be nice to flip through and see some places we could go. I think he's trying for more brownie points. I tease him every time he surprises me because he's so damn sneaky about it. He's always getting things for me that I have no clue about and it's literally just under my nose and I miss all the clues and hints. I tell him he's too damn sneaky for his own good! I do love the surprises though so I guess I should shut up about it! =)

I love watching Daniel when he's watching his videos. It's just so damn cute! He's FINALLY liking another one besides Beethoven. Now he likes Van Gogh, A LOT. I actually think it's a really cute one myself. I'm also just happy he's finally accepting something else as not being scary. Heh.



I mentioned recently that we only give Daniel his soothers in his crib now which he's adjusted to pretty well. Mind you as soon as we give it to him, he gets really excited like he's just seen his long lost best friend. It's comical. Well I also mentioned recently how often he throws the damn thing out of his crib to make me pick it up. Well as of lately, he hasn't been doing that too often when we put him to bed. He's been tired enough to go straight to sleep. But we've also been putting him to bed with two or three soothers. It's a bit discouraging for him to try throwing them all out. Well I checked on him the other night. It was funny...sucking on one, clinging on the other.



"Don't touch my soothers!" Crazy kiddo!

Before and After - Sarah's Room

I finished the last coat on the trim late last night. We put everything back in her room 'tis morning before lunch. Needing a few extra touches still, Doug went out after lunch and picked up some odds and ends I wanted for her room. I wish I had before shots of her room from like a month ago. All she had in there was a bed, dresser, plastic drawers, book shelf and a night stand. Oh and a big pile of a mess everywhere!

Okay, enough chat, here's an assload of pictures for you.







Ewwwww! dirty ick!


You can actually see here around the edges where the people before had obviously at some point began to cut in to paint, but then didn't finish the job. It's a different color than the walls. Also, the dark spots all over the wall is where I crack filled all the scuffs and holes.


Ooo La la!










Yes she loves stuffed animals. We can't get rid of them no matter what. Actually she still asks for them for gifts and will buy them with her own money. Nana has at least convinced (some how) to store many of her animals on shelves around her room. They all used to be ON her bed WITH her. lol.


Not a fair shot of color here. Her curtains are purple and her bedding is dark green, wine and blue plaid.



Yup pikachu has GOT to go (probably to the shelf INSIDE her closet!). I was thinking about painting that new shelf to match the dark wall. I kind of dreaded it, so I didn't bother, but maybe I should!






Phew!! If you made it this far, at least tell me what you think! Personally, I now don't like the doors in her room, but I really would rather NOT paint them. Different curtains some day perhaps, but other than that, anything is better than what it did look like a week ago! Oh and the desk chair is temporary. She thinks Nana has one for her. We'll see!

Hot Damn!

I'm DONE!! It's late, I'm tired...stay tuned for pictures tomorrow!!!

Yawn

Yikes I'm tired. We got a TON of painting done tonight. One more coat on our other three walls and the trim to do and we'll be finished. I can't believe I see an end to this mess! It'll be nice to have it all cleaned up and everything put back in it's place. I'll be sure to post pictures then! I'm tired and achy again, so I'm going to nab my hubby before he falls asleep on me! Midnight is REALLY late for us old folks. More tomorrow, night!

First wall coat

We got a lot done today. I'm very happy. It's nice to see progress. Here's our accent wall with it's first coat of real color on. I'll do it's last coat tonight.



I finished the ceiling today. We also got the first coat of primer on all of the other walls. Wooot! I think we will put two coats of primer on those walls just to give us a nice even base to start with. We are very happy with the primer. Thanks for all the great advice everyone! My back is hurting pretty badly, must go find hubby!

Cola Chicken

Recipe offered up by Louise as a comment in the below entry. The kids gobbled it up and once I told them what was in it, they seemed to like it even more. I thought it was pretty good, hubby isn't a huge fan of tomatoey/ketchupy flavored stuff, but he ate seconds, so it couldn't have been all that bad!



One cup of Coke, one and a half cups of ketchup, small onion diced, salt/pepper to taste. Bake. Pretty good! Thanks Louise!

Some cuteness

Here's a shot of some cuteness just because it's been awhile!


Today is my brother's 29th birthday. I wonder what he's doing today. I finished the second coat on Sarah's ceiling so far. Hubby is running a few errands in between class and his meeting, so he's going to bring me a few more supplies that I need to get some more work done today.

I need some new supper ideas too. I currently have chicken pieces and hamburger in the freezer. I sooooo don't feel like spaghetti tonight, but it looks like that's what we might be having. I saw a neat recipe on MSN the other day for meatballs and now I can't find it again. They looked so yummy. I want to say they had risotto cheese on them? Is that even spelled right? I've never had any kind of cheese other than the bare basics. Heh. Oh well, I'll search around later hopefully to get some new ideas. If you had hamburger or chicken tonight, what would you be making with it?

Banging off those summer days

Daniel is a going concern these days moving from one "no no" to another! I won't complain though because he's such a good baby. It's just funny to watch him touch things that he shouldn't because he soooo knows he shouldn't. He gets this sneaky little smile and giggle going as he's doing it and what's worse is he picks up speed when I get up to get him. He thinks it's hilarious!

He's fully on whole milk now. Bye bye to formula! We're only giving him his soother in his crib for nap times and bed time. He still naps twice a day, but I'm guessing that when school goes back in for him, he'll nap only once a day which will be fine. Soothers are a bugger these days because he constantly throws them out of his crib, then whines for them back. At 4 am. last night, he woke up, threw his soothers out (that's how he wakes me up, he never cries), waited for me to get them and when I bent down to get them, PHEW! Diaper explosion. So I ended up totally waking him up by changing him and it was two hours later before he finally stayed down to go to sleep. I was so freaking tired and poor Doug had to get up thirty minutes later to take Justin running with his cross country team mates. I don't want to even think about how many times I bent down to pick those c-sucking soothers up in that two hour period. Sometimes I'd get tough and say "I'm not picking them up again". Five minutes later, I'm bending down to get them because I KNOW he won't go to sleep without them. Not yet. Doug says he did his part by staying under the covers to provide me some body heat because I was so cold getting in and out of bed so many times. Thoughtful husband I have. *gives "the look"* ha ha

By the way...I did hear back from the Child Study place about Sarah's testing and evaluation appointment. Unfortunately, it's going to be January before she even gets in. Our health insurance covers the testing, but only with one of the doctors and he's booked. Of course she said if I want to pay out of pocket, they could get me in much sooner. Sigh, no I don't want to pay out of pocket. We'll wait. Lets just hope for Sarah that her first term in middle school goes okay for her and lets hope she makes at least one friend this year to help her through. Both older kids start brand new schools this year. I think they are getting anxious! (so are WE!) Thirteen more days, but who's counting!?

Oooo Third Watch is screaming my name...or wait, maybe that was the ice-cream screaming! night.

Primer coat #2

The second coat of primer seemed to even up the color some so it doesn't look so bad. We can really start to picture what it may look like. Here's a shot of the wall as is.



Obviously the true paint will be much darker than this. The primer has been tinted using a quarter of the formula for the paint, so I'm expecting a slightly different shade. It's been slow for us, only doing one coat at a time, but I guess I shouldn't expect miracles considering I started this project in the middle of a work week. It probably would have been better to begin on the weekend so I would have had at least a few hours blocked off just for painting.
I have the day off tomorrow due to a meeting Doug has to attend, so hopefully Daniel will cooperate and let mommy get some painting done.

Coat #1

Spent almost 2 hours at Home Depot getting the paint changed. What a beating. I went with completely different colors. I got more of a deep wine color as opposed to the purple I had in mind. The wine color will match better with her bedding and pillow, to hell with the purple curtains I bought. I also got a shade of cream that is more whitish then the yellowish/peachy tone I had picked out first. It actually came on a card that was already pre-matched with the wine, so I went with it.

We got the first coat of primer on. It looks uneven in the strokes. The paint is darker in spots, so I'm a bit worried at my actual skill. Maybe I won't be able to pull this whole thing off in the end. Won't that suck! Our cutting in looks way too dark. We tried to use little paint, but paint brushes on so much darker than it rolls on. Sigh.

Cleaning up sucks big time. It took me almost as long to clean those rollers as it did to paint the stupid wall. There HAS to be a better way to clean up. I'm tempted to just buy all new rollers every time, geesh. I probably waste the same amount of money just in water down the drain. Oh well. Too tired for pictures tonight and anyway, it looks crappy so I'd rather not show that off. Heh.

And again

Well I'm going back to Home Depot to exchange the paint. I'm getting the primer to be on the safe side and getting my darker purple that I wanted. I'm also not going with the creamy color, I'm getting a color called beeswax. It's more of a whitish base. I didn't like the cream color next to the purple because it gave it a peachy tone. Do any of you see anything wrong with using white for the trim? Someone at work was not very excited about it, so now I'm questioning all of my choices. Also...I thought I should paint the trim first, then the walls...a few co-workers said they always paint the walls first, then the trim. Did anyone ever think I was this dumb when it comes to painting? I sure didn't.

Here we go...

Okay, so we started the bedroom tonight. As I sit here at almost 11:00 pm., tired and achy, some things about painting come to mind...

* Tape, plastic and carpet suck. We used painter's tape and masking tape all along the edge of the plastic. We left some room in the plastic for some give when we walk on it, but it didn't matter, every time I turned around tonight, I was re-taping.

* Showers feel really freaking good after painting.

* The ceiling took a gallon of paint to cover. That is about double what I thought it would. We rolled and rolled and rolled to cover that shit. Notice in the picture the difference in the colors? What we are covering is supposed to be white too. That's how old the paint is in this place!

* Whoever designed stucco (sp?) ceilings should die a slow and painful death!

* Mike's goes down really fast after painting! Gulp!

* After a closer look at our walls, I'm reconsidering the whole primer thing. I'm no longer one hundred percent convinced that it's semi-gloss on our walls. It may be one step glossier which will mean our paint may have trouble sticking.

* The walls we have are stucco type walls as well. I foresee lots of rolling in our future.

* Did I mention the slow and painful death thing for the stucco designer yet? Oh I did? Well it's worth mentioning again.

* Doug helped paint tonight even though he's been sick today. He's trying to bank brownie points because he's running out of coupons!

* I'm betting I'd still be painting that damn ceiling right now had he not helped. Gah!

* If I decide to get primer, I'm taking the lighter purple back and I'm getting my darker stuff.

* Painting is not easy.

* People who paint suck because they make it look easy. Yes that includes you mother.

* Cleaning rollers and brushes suck ass too!

* If the ceiling took one gallon, how many gallons will I need for three walls? The guy said one gallon would be plenty. I'm thinking not now.

* I also see more tape in our future. Quotes conversation between myself and Mr. Home Depot man : Moi: "gee maybe I should get two rolls of tape just to make sure I have enough. Mr. Home Depot Man: "You'll never use all of that for one room. A roll lasts a contractor a week or more". Oh boy for Mr. Contractor Man.

* Do I sound bitter?

Ha!

By the way...pieces of our ceiling around the vent started breaking away. One other spot by the door, I hit with the roller and a big chunk fell right off. Slow...painful....death...

Speak now

If anyone has any painting tips, now would be the time to share, not next week! =) I got some paint today for Sarah's room at Home Depot. It's not exactly the color I had in mind, but apparently the color I wanted would have such a dark base that I would have needed to prime it and possibly put two coats on. I had never really heard of needing two coats for a dark color, but oh well, I went with the slightly lighter color which may not match anything in her room. Sigh. I'm looking at the bright side though, anything at this point will look better than some of these before shots:
just after I crackfilled:


nasty ceiling crap from the vent:


Trim is peeling away


Hopefully tomorrow I can get started. Her stuff is sitting in Justin's room right now, so that should motivate me to do it! I had initially chosen a dark plum purplish color for one wall, but went with a slightly lighter which I am worried about. I'm not really sure it'll match anything. It's darn near the same color as Sarah's new curtains, but not the same purple that is on her comforter. We'll see, I'm hoping it'll look okay. I also got a peachy cream color for the other three walls. White for the ceiling and trim. I hope it matchs good. I've never really painted color before. It's always been white. Wish me luck!

Quick Garden update

Well for those of you who have been following my garden updates, I decided to take a few pictures today for fun.

I can definitely see where I need some big bushy type flowers in the back. I kind of expected the bleeding heart to fill in better, but I guess it'll grow more next year. My Jasmine on the back fence is definitely growing all along the fence, but it only flowers in the spring, so I'm going to get some bright, bushy plants next year for some color near the back.

Here are three shots of the garden at different stages.
April:


June:


August:


A distant shot:


Remember this potted coleus?


Take a look at the bad boy now!


It's way overgrown. I need to get off my ass and split it up to transplant. Shit man, it grows like a weed though!

Oh here's something else that I planted awhile back that finally bloomed.

Remember this little Texas Star plant that I got from Doug's mom?



It's been blooming one flower per day most of this week. The flowers only live one day though, so that sucks.


A closer shot of the bloom from the other day:


I suspect at some point within the next month, most of this stuff will stop blooming and get burnt with all the heat, but for now, it's lasting pretty well. I will start taking notes as to what I like and what I don't like and hopefully next year it'll look even better!