Snow day #2

Just thought I would share some of our snowy beauty.....

Columbia officially got ten inches.

  

 

 Our four-wheel drive truck has been very handy to Steven and Sarah who don't have cars high enough to get over the snow piles.  Here are the Steves after we picked up Steven from KMIZ this morning to deliver him (and a Hardees breakfast) to Tamara.

Steven is going to have a lot of shoveling to do today. He had enough shoveling to do yesterday when he had to help Steve get the truck out of a ditch near his house on Mexico Gravel Road.  Steve had just dropped him off and was trying to get out of the way of an oncoming truck pulling a trailer and, before he knew it, he was off the road.  He hiked back to Steven's house and they returned with a shovel, etc, and thanks to helpful neighbors and a fellow in a big Tundra with a tow rope, Davy, the Nissan Frontier was freed.  We were one of the lucky ones.  Even today, there are stalled, buried cars everywhere. 

School was cancelled today

SNOW DAY!  Huzzah!  And, I just heard some thunder so we are having what is called “thunder snow”.  Cool.  Here is a photo update of the doors.

 

 You can see the one door that has not been replaced and how dark it is.  Multiply that by the other four doors in that hallway and you can see how much brighter they make the hallways.

 Here is the downstairs looking at the sports room.  Beautiful!

 Just two more to go.   

Trissy does NOT like all the banging and hammering.  We found out just how stressful it is for her when she tore into the basket I use to hold all my teaching bags.

 

Good thing she didn’t destroy my teaching bags while she was at it!

SO, now she gets a doggie tranquilizer and a benedryl every morning while the workman is here.

 

Here is what my garage looks like - it is our workman's shop/storage area.  It will be nice to have that all cleared out.  He thinks he will be all finished by tomorrow (Friday).  Then, the REAL fun comes with painting.  And, it looks like I will be painting pretty much everything, not just the doors.  

We went to St. Louis last Saturday and did some sealings in the temple before going to Emily and Joe’s. 

 

 

See the little tear on Lucy's cheek?  She was mostly happy but tears still come a little more frequently as she continues to adjust to her new baby brother. Speaking of, see how much he is growing!

We had a short little visit with everyone before returning to Columbia with Noah who got to have a sleepover with grandma and grandpa.  The Civic Orchestra had a concert last Saturday night and we played a concert with an Italian theme.  All the music was pretty fun to listen to but I particularly wanted Noah to hear the Pines of Rome by Respighi.  (this is the music you hear with the whale segment of Fantasia 2000).  It features tons of brass and the ending is just awesome.  So, the concert was a primary reason to have Noah here.  And, with the help of Grandpa Steve and Aunt Sarah and a backpack of stickers and other activities, he did pretty well in his attendance.  At least I didn’t hear a little voice wafting down from the balcony from where I was on stage.

He went to church with us on Sunday – the Highlands Ward where Steve was speaking – and was great there, too.  His primary teacher said he was very knowledgeable.  Good for you, Noah!

 Here he is at dinner with chocolate mousse all over his face.  He wanted to have his picture taken like that.  He and I drove back as far as Jonesburg Sunday night where we met Joe and Lucy.  It was a great visit for all, I think. 

More facelifting for the house on Parker

 

Take a look at a sampling of our interior doors.  Almost every one has a hole of some kind.  It is kind of embarrassing when music students ask “what happened to your door?”  I simply answer “teenagers”.  I might also add cheap hollow-core construction.  So, take a look at what we have in our garage….

 

 new doors!  The first one was installed today - it is the door that leads from our dining room out to the garage.  It still needs the trim. 

 

  It didn’t have a hole but it was the heaviest door ever invented and it didn’t fit well (thanks to foundation settling) and Steve cursed it (well, he didn’t actually curse) every time he had to take it off its hinges to move something in or out.  He is SO HAPPY now.

But, before the rest of the doors can be installed, the workman needed to do some ceiling repair on our two bathrooms.  The downstairs one was the worst (black mold due to leaking – yuck!) 

  

 

and the upstairs one was peeling over the shower.  

 

 

 So, why did I take the time to dust the entire upstairs on Monday when a fine layer of dry-wall dust was going to cover everything on Wednesday?????

Next week, I should have lots of lovely “after” photos

Some assembly required

In addition to our new floors, we have acquired some new items requiring Steve’s and my poor old brains to think – in reading assembly and/or operating instructions.  Sigh. 

 

Here is our “coffee” table (what does an LDS household call such a piece of furniture???) that came via Walmart.com in a big square box.  Steve got to put it together last Friday.  Aren’t the flowers lovely?  They were my anniversary gift from Steve.  We actually DID celebrate our anniversary with more than moving furniture. We went out to dinner Friday evening.  Guess where we went?  I will give you a hint:  no reservations needed (because Friday nights at eateries are so busy), it has a great selection of gluten-free foods, and it rhymes with Bolden Borral. 

 

Here are some doggie stairs for poor little Sadie who just slips and slides all over our wood floors.  Beckie suggested non-skid booties for her paws – not a bad idea.  Notice the new area rug under the “coffee” table that now enables Sadie to jump on and off the couch.  She is very happy about this.  She’s not so happy with our bedroom/bed setup so I bought these little doggie stairs and put them together tonight.  Now, will she have courage to use them?  Who knows?  I do have to say that the paw print motif is pretty tacky.  I might paint and re-cover them to blend in more with our bedroom decor......someday…

 

This is our new CD/radio alarm clock.  The buttons on our old one were failing so we started looking for a new machine with a CD player that we could actually program to awaken us playing tracks other than #1.  After extensive on-line searches and a visit to Best Buy and Walmart, we determined that what we wished for was just not available.  So, when we were in Target the other day, we just bought this Memorex and determined to be happy with waking up to track #1 every morning.  Well, when we brought it home, lo and behold – it IS programmable!  Now, can we figure out the instructions to make this happen?  Not yet!

Since we are talking of bedroom items, those cute beds shown in the previous blog were surprisingly complicated to assemble.  Lucky Steve got to put those together, too.  I helped.

 Finally, lookie at what I got!!!

 

A smart phone.  It is the next generation of the Galaxy Note that Sarah has and I absolutely LOVE it.  But, I still have a long way to go before I know all the things it can do.  Like, how do I get rid of photos that inexplicably transferred from my Picasa file on the desktop computer into my picture files on the phone????  Yes – Picasa is a Google product and I do use Google calendar (my omnipresent planner is eventually going to be a thing of the past, if you can believe that!) so maybe when I sync-ed, the phone thought I wanted everything??? I don’t know.   I will have to do some investigating (in my spare time – (laughing maniacally))

And, the assemblies are not done.  We still have a big box holding a Cracker Barrel rocking chair sitting down in the sports room that Steve and I will tackle someday – when we have LOTS of time and patience (and maybe chocolate)

Before and After week

Look what our house was like last week! 

 We FINALLY dealt with the little dog pee-stained  carpets in all three upstairs bedrooms by purchasing wood laminate flooring.  It was installed this past Thursday.  That meant Tuesday night, instead of attending Civic Orchestra, I packed up books from shelves and knic-knacks from all three rooms.  Steve took the day off on Wednesday to move all the furniture out of the rooms (I helped with the big and/or heavy items before I left for teaching) and then he ripped up all the carpet and padding and molding.  THAT was a HUGE job that took him all day.  Steve and I worked until late that night – he prying up the evil carpet tack strips that line the edges of the floor and I pulling up the staples that were left in the floor from the padding.  

 Here are the rooms all ready for the flooring guys.  They said they thought it would be a two-day job but they were finished by 5:00 on Thursday.  So, Steve and I spent our 38^th wedding anniversary moving furniture back into bedrooms.  And I spent all Friday afternoon returning books and knic-knacks.  On Saturday, Steve loaded up all the old carpet and molding and carpet tack strips into the truck and hauled them to the landfull.  It has been a physically exhausting week!  But, look at the results!  

Yes, those are new beds in our bedroom.  I just LOVE their old-fashioned look.  And, our 10-inch memory foam mattresses are divine.

We also recently purchased a new refrigerator.   

Now our stove and fridge match.  And, lookie what it can do…. Steve is sooooo happy.