Awesome Easter

The family reunion, random drive to the beach, visit from the Easter bunny, great Easter Mass, and yummy Easter dinner made for one great weekend. Hope everyone else enjoyed a relaxing weekend, too!

Why I’m not favorite

Back when we were  dating, Joe & I took my grandma (the crazy one, not the one on the farm) out for the day. Before we left, she asked us to fix her broken frame. While I was in the middle of the thing, jamming the pieces back together, we somehow got into a conversation about how I’m not her favorite grandchild. This would be bad enough normally, but seeing as I’m her only grandkid, well, it’s extra awesome. I’m almost her favorite, and she does love me a ton, just not as much as Joe. 😉

Well, he decided to further cement his place as favorite over the weekend by fixing her leaking sink & won’t-stop-running hose. Dad started the sink project before Joe arrived, then the two of them tinkered away until the thing stopped dripping. Apparently this faucet has the mixing valve held together by springs and the water flowers when the springs…. Oh, hell, I have no idea. I was baby wrangling and in the midst of a tea party. Anyway, something was not lining up right. They tinkered it into working properly. Then Joe made his “Zelda pose” complete worth sound effect to celebrate.

I have even less of an idea about the hose issue. He voodoo-ed it into working, too. So here is a picture of success. A non dripping faucet. I’m off to sleep (hear that baby? Sleep. Sleeeeep. Mommy will sound less nutso if we sleep. Ok, probably not, but lets sleep anyway.)

Happy House-iversary!

Dear time,

You move too fast.

Love,

Me

We closed on this house on 2/28/11. We’ve only lived here for 4.5 months, but the crazy work has been going on for an entire year. Things that happened in the last year:

Got estimate for first round of work we wanted to do: $50,000+! Yikes. YIKES! We proceeded DIY style.

Kitchen wall came down!

Fire sprinkler system was ripped out (It was installed incorrectly, was uuuugly, and irony of ironies, my cousin who is a firefighter helped us rip it out)

Plaster and drywall on the exterior walls was knocked down.

Insulation installed in the walls!

Drywall… and sanding…. and more sanding.

A dumpster took up residence in our driveway for a month and a half.

Priming and paint. And pizza/beer to feed our lovely primers and painters.

Holes knocked through closet walls to make a hallway.

Removed window a/c units from the walls and patched the holes.

Kitchen vinyl floor/subfloor removed.

All wood floors sanded and refinished.

Some minor electrical and plumbing.

Some major electrical and plumbing (the only thing we hired pro’s for).

A kitchen island built.

Closets revamped to not be useless.

Lots of yard work. Lots. We inherited some ugly, dead stuff.

Oh, and this was pretty important. And cute. Really cute. These, too.

Made new friends.

Had lots of fun.

A year into turning this house into our home, we are super-duper-giddy-jump up and down-happy. Since I spent most of the last year in the pregnancy/recovery/newborn stage we relied even more heavily on help. Thank you to everyone who has helped. Thank you thank you thank you. Y’all are awesome. And welcome anytime. Especially if you want to paint. Or build stuff. 😉

Lets Rodeo San Antonio!

It’s stockshow and rodeo time! We took the girls last week and had awesome fun. We’re going again over the weekend since we didn’t get to ride ponies, get Go Texan samples or see a number of fun looking exhibits. We also have to hit up the petting zoo next time. The kids (all 3 of them) love petting zoos. 😉

Patsy Lou was so excited she could hardly sit still!

Patsy Lou insisted on getting her photo at every one of these we saw.

Lily was checking out the other baby competition. The chicks were cute, but no match for Lily’s adorableness. I may be biased, but only slightly.

I don’t know what part of this picture I love most. My baby eating fun squeeze food, the awesome fajitas, or Joe and the pig ears.
Waiting for the pig races. Joe insisted on wearing those pig ears the rest of the night. Patsy Lou was our section’s cheerleader, and since our pig won his race, she got a pig nose and cookies!
She and Joe loved trading the pig nose back and forth, and we all loved those cookies.
The Texas tent is really great this year. Highly recommend it. Bug LOVED milking the fake cow. So did Joe. Again, I have 3 kids.

Planting “seeds” in rocks was fun until bug realized it was a total sham and the fake coins perpetration themselves as seeds and the rocks instead of soil wouldn’t grow. She’s still convinced her silk roses she planted in Aunt MarMar’s parking lot at the flower shop are growing though.

So that’s the fun from our first rodeo trip of the year. Thanks to groupon and the season pass, we’ll be back a few more times. So much fun, such tired kids, such good sleep for me since they crash for many hours after a trip to the stock show. 🙂

Lucky girls

My kids are lucky. Last week, they got to spend time with 2 of their great grandmothers at the same time. We took my dad’s mom out to my mom’s mom’s farm for a visit. It was great. 🙂

A slow, boring weekend

was not in the cards for us! We successfully moved into the new house! It’s wonderful, & we are all so super happy it’s crazy! Not only that, we threw a house warming party & THIRTY FIVE guests showed up… 1 day after we moved in. Yes  we are crazy. It was awesome though. Thank you to everyone who helped us start our lives in this house with great memories. Like:
Yummy cookies.
Patsy throwing dirty on the porch then insisting on sweeping it up in the middle of the party.
Patsy telling my grandma, uncle, & a family friend that they had to cone inside to the party, since apparently the backyard wasn’t part of it.
All of the kids playing in the playroom, especially when Patsy wanted the fireman’s hat another little kid was wearing.
Patsy chasing some older kids around, calling all of them “that boy” & screeching in delight when they would chase her, too.
My parents & aunt furiously helping set up all morning/early afternoon
Laying in bed that night happy as could be, feeling right at home in this house.

After our first night here, Joe said that although the new bed was smaller & harder than our old one, all 4 of us were crammed in together, we didnt have blankets or even a real fitted sheet, it read absolutely perfect. I couldn’t have agreed more!

One other thing we snuck into this weekend was a trip to our favorite pumpkin patch!

We used them to decorate along with a wreath my aunt fixed up using the old gross one we inherited. My parents & my aunt added to our flower collection, making the outside much nicer. My dad also mower our yard over 2 days. Thanks!

‘It was the busiest weekend EVER, but it literally could not have been better. And now I feel all sappy again. 😉

Rumor has it

that tomorrow will be the day primer, and dare I say it…. PAINT might start to appear somewhere other than in buckets in the coat closet or holding up a window a/c unit. I think Patricia’s room is going to be the lucky one that gets to look like a real room again. Two of my aunts called and announced they wanted to paint this week…. so why turn down free labor? 🙂 Aunt Marcy has already been a huge help, lending both Big Bertha and her own blood and sweat (but no tears!) to us on a few occasions. Aunt Annie has yet to see our little project of a house.

Patsy Lou had a grand time showing off her new house to her Aunt Allie last night. She’s in town for a conference, and the unexpected visit is a nice treat. Patsy ran laps like a crazy toddler, I chased (well, waddle-walk chased being I’m nearly 35 weeks pregnant), and Joe gave the official tour.

In already in progress news: my parents have been going gang busters on the trim, and it looks great! Paint remover followed by a pass with a belt sander seems to be the ideal method for preping the old trim for new paint. The top layer of paint on everything peels away in huge chunks. It’s fun to sit around and pull at it…. which means it’d be even more fun for a toddler to sit around and pull it off, and then probably eat it. So, it all must be re-done. Oh, wait, I forgot. Not all of the paint peels easily off the paint below. Sometimes, they just painted over painter’s tape. Not even kidding. Definitely another “Who  does that?” moment. We have lots of those in this house.

Anyway, hopefully photos to follow after tomorrows priming/painting fun.