Family Weekend 2009

Every year our church has a weekend long celebration called Family Weekend Connection.   It is a fun venue where you bring the dogs and kids and camp in a tent.  We have never done the tent thing before at Family Weekend until this year.  For two years Vivian cried when we left.  She had the mistaken impression that WE were going to sleep in a tent.  HAHAHA…..  Well, I guess I was laughing right up until Steven decided to go ahead and get a tent to put up to see if we could do it for one night.  Well, I did do it for ONE night.   As a child, I was always confused about the story of Jacob, where he propped his head on a rock to sleep.  I did not fully understand until Friday night and that was when the answer to this two decade long puzzle became crystal clear in my brain.  I would have welcomed a rock to put my head on.   Anything!

We borrowed a pop up tent from a friend and I dug out a full size air mattress.  Well, it wasn’t until Steven wrestled the air mattress into the small tent and blew it up, that he realized he put the pillow part at the bottom of the tent where our feet go.  So, we slept slanted with our feet on the pillow! HA!  Everytime Steven got out of the tent, my rear-end hit the ground, and every time he got back into the tent, I see-sawed back up into the ceiling (it was only 2-3 feet above the mattress for movement).  Lots of fun.  After waking up almost paralyzed from the cold and pinched nerves, I declared that I was NOT going to spend another night outside at Family Weekend.  Not that I dislike camping.  Camping is great…..in the summer, or when you are at least comfortable and can sleep.  I did my mommy duty by staying out there one night to appease my five year old.  She had a blast….of course…..

Here are a few pictures from our weekend.  Hope everyone else enjoyed their weekend!

Andrea

Pumpkin Paint

pumpkin painting fwc

Hello Kitty!

Steven helping me with pumpkin painting booth

Angie and Rebecca

Yup, all six pictures of me look like this! I always blink.

Our campfire

Tasha and her dog

Rebecca and Kaylie

Jamie and Caleb

Vivian in her princess costume for the parade. She is not happy about the attention she was getting.

Vivian in the parade

What we’ve been up to this week…

No, not an exciting post.  More reflective than anything.  I felt sick today, so I left Steven over at our rent property putting in the final touches in each bathroom, installing baseboards and finishing up the plumbing….yay for him!  I did help him caulk the baseboards and liquid nailed finishing pieces onto the cabinets in the kitchen.  I am convinced that paintable caulk and paint can fix a multitude of ugly!  I started to feel ill, so I came back over here.  Hopefully he won’t read this post and realize how much of a slacker I am being this evening while he is over there slaving!

These beautiful flowers have been blooming in the backyard of 94 Bungalow (the rent house we are currently fixing up).  They are gorgeous and almost look like roses.  They come from a ten foot tall bush.  I cannot identify them.  They do not have a scent and their constitution is very weak, they did not last one day in a vase.  So, if anyone knows what they are, please drop me a line.

Yesterday, I had the day off.  I realized two things: 1) I seem to never get anything done on my TO DO list, even if I take the day off; 2) that my dog shares my affinity for people watching.

And believe me, there are some interstin’ people to watch on my street!  Viv and I packed up the boxes of Christmas presents that we send to Handumanan Village, Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, Philippines.  We send gifts to the children and a box of supplies for their school every year.  This year, when I emailed our contact over there to ask what they need, she said: the presents are nice, but send school supplies and books.  LOL….it is funny to me that the adults find the presents frivolous.  They just want basic needs met.  But, the kids LOVE the gifts we send.  Some of them do not even take them out of their packaging.  When some people from our church visited this Spring, they noticed that several of our gifts were on shelves unopened.  They did not want to get them dirty.  It was more like a trophy not to be touched than a toy to play with.  Very interesting.  I hope they get around to playing with them.

Vivian had a great time helping me.  She kept asking me, “Are we sending these to the kids?”  Too cute. Speaking of cute, Vivian and Taavi are getting along better now.  She has completely gotten over being jealous and is actually enjoying him now.  I catch her singing to him sometimes.

Taavi has a little blue and green turtle that we call Louis.  It is his teddy bear.  He loves the dumb, stinky, smelly thing.  He picked it out himself from PetSmart.  Since he would not part with it in the store, I bought it for him.

Taavi is looking more and more like his dad everyday.  Would you listen to me?  You would think I was talking about my son or something.    Fortunately, I am not.  I do not think Steven would appreciate me comparing Taavi’s looks to his.  Here is Taavi’s dad.

When posting these pictures, I saw that Steven snapped this picture of Vivian Thursday.  I wonder if she got a whooping right after it was taken.  She is positively staring daggers!  If looks could kill…

Well, besides a lot of other boring details, I have had a very busy week.  Soon to come will be pictures of the finished 94 bungalow.  We are finishing up, affixing the details and next week we will refinish the floors and clean up.  At that time I will take good after pictures and post the whole album online.

Happy Saturday!

Andrea

Happy Fall!

Vivian has a funny sense of humor.  She begged me to allow her to eat this apple and then she bit patterns into it.  This one has a goatee, a grin and two eyeballs.

The other side of the apple has a more comedic quality….  Not exactly a Jack-O-Lantern, but, just as cute.

Happy Fall everyone!

Andrea

Shoes

Ok, it is official, everything I said about our sweet dog is taken back!  Especially when the taking back in question involves shoes!  The first time I found Taavi gnawing on this shoe, I popped him with it and fussed at him pretty good.  I saw him yesterday running around the house with it in his mouth and then today, he got in my closet, AGAIN, and chewed it up.  Thems be fighting grounds.  And yes, I did use incorrect grammar and say “thems”.  No, these shoes were not very expensive, but they were my VERY favorite pair of shoes!

My favorite flat, silver, pointy toe, faux snake skin shoe!

Since this is a post about shoes, here are a couple pics of Vivian two nights ago trying on my new boots.  After Vivian got her bath, Steven found her in our room zipping up my boots.  She was happy to model them for him!

Andrea

Happy Sunday!

Children's Letters to God, Coughlin-Saunders, Sept 13, 2009

Our friends' son, Carson, was in it. He is the one in red on the table.

We had a great time at the musical with our friends

Steven and me

Leah and her sons

Brad and his son

Kayley...at Cane's before the play

We took Vivian to see the musical Childrens Letters To God.  It was very cute.  After we arrived home, Vivian spent an hour dancing and singing!  I knew she would like this!  She watches a lot of the old musicals on Netflix.

Yesterday, before we went to work on our rent house, she had to dress up and have a fashion show.  She dug out her play microphone from Cracker Barrel and made me introduce her.  She also had a solution for world peace and some other things I couldn’t quite understand.

Vivian's entry

Exit

Coming back for a curtsy

Even though I was still in my nightgown, she insisted I participate in the fashion show too.  So, I strutted my stuff, complete with magic wand and all.  NO THERE ARE NO PICTURES OF THAT!  Thank God!

countertops and sink in...need to install pulls

The paint it took to make this house look decent again

I also posted the after bathroom pic here.  I put it with the before pics so you would have something to compare it too.  It is far from done, but, progress nevertheless.

Anyway, we had a good weekend. We hope you did too.  Back to work tomorrow.

Andrea

Our Sweet Dog

Taavi…our sweet Australian terrier. He is so precious and cute. I didn’t always think that, but, now that we are hitting the five month mark and he is almost perfectly potty trained, I have decided to like him.

Taavi is a mess and a half.

You think he is trying to tell me something?

Who wouldn't like coming home to this face?

Vivian and Taavi

I don't think I could have extended my neck any farther!

I have to put him in his kennel when Vivian takes a bath, otherwise, he jumps right in! He loves baths!

Happy 5th Birthday Vivian!

Vivian's Birthday

I can’t believe you are five today!  Time has gone by fast!  We love you and hope you enjoyed your surprise party with mommy and daddy tonight!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

Found some pictures

I found a roll of film in my purse.  I didn’t know what it was from.  I got them developed, then I remembered that my digi cam was going haywire around Easter time, so I drug out my faithful minolta camera.  Here are a couple pictures from that roll. 

Steven and Vivian...Easter 2009

In front of the Magnolia

Andrea

Welcome Skyler!

Skyler was born yesterday evening.  8lbs 4 oz.  Congratulations Melanie!  Welcome new little nephew!

Sklyer

Sklyer...a few minutes old

Andrea

Puzzles Anyone?

Recently, my brother came in town, from New Orleans, for a conference.  He was putting something in the microwave and jokingly asked me if I liked to play puzzles.  I had no idea what he was talking about until I looked over and saw him pushing around my floor tiles with his foot.  “Ha..ha..ha..” I said, rather dryly.  It seems that whomever it was that put these ugly .50 cents industrial tiles down, they did not glue them very well, or at all for that matter.  When we first moved in, we pulled up carpet in the kitchen to find these tiles.  I was glad that the tiles looked better than the carpet.  But these tiles are cracked, chipped and not glued down.  If you pull up any given tile on the floor, you will find a pile of dirt under it.  Gross!  I hate, Hate, HATE this floor!  Lol…  My husband hears about it all the time.  I have scrubbed it, scoured it, scraped it, stripped it, mop n glo’d it, all to no avail.  It still looks horriffic!  It would not take a whole lot of effort, or money, on our part to fix it.  But, the problem is, Steven wants to finish the attic and put in a staircase that you would access from the kitchen.  So, until we have that all worked out, we are stuck with the ugly floor.  Sigh…  I guess this is my grumble for the week.  If I get really bored this summer, I might line all the black tiles up one side and the white on the other.  I was always good at tanagrams.

On another note, our puppy is adjusting well.  Vivian is less jealous and actually playing with the dog now.  Thank goodness!  He is a sweet little thing.  I don’t remember if I mentioned it before, but we named the puppy Taavi.  He is an Australian Terrier and according to a listing of Australian based names, Taavi means “Beloved”.

Vivian and Taavi taking a nap on the sofa

Happy Saturday!

Andrea

PS: I don’t know what to be more horrified about — the ugly floor, my ugly feet or the fact that I showed you both!