Where Did May Go?!

I can't believe we're on the last day of May already. Our kids only have 2 more weeks of school and then it's summer break! We're already using the pool a lot, well mostly the girls but I can't help but be so happy that it's finally our turn to have pool to enjoy in our own back yard after having neighbors with pools (smaller above ground pools) that they could only swim in occasionally. There's going to be lots of swimming this summer....and lots of sunscreen!

Well, here's a few highlights from the last few weeks. Alice and Charlotte have been enjoying t-ball and softball. I'm still helping with coaching Alice's team when I can. I'm so glad that Charlotte's practices moved to Tuesdays so that Mondays I could just worry about Alice. This week is a little different because of the holiday. Tonight is a game for Alice and nothing for Charlotte. Tomorrow Charlotte will have a game. I had to miss Charlotte's last game because I was with Alice at her game but I heard from another parent that she played really well. Their whole team did. 

Alice played really well on 1st base during one of her games. If they would have counted it, she would have gotten two people out. They don't worry about score and outs in t-ball. They are just learning how to play.

One game Charlotte had to sit out because she hurt her hand pretty bad on the monkey bars and tore off about a quarter size of skin on her palm. One of the coaches had her come stand by him and help give team mates high fives and pick up bats. She loved that! She's the one wearing the blue helmet.

She would come over and see me when she came in from coaching. Such a cutie!

I didn't get any pictures taken on Mother's Day as half the day was a bit of a downer for me. I just wanted to do something as a whole family but Garrett wouldn't join us on anything. At least he helped Curtis and the other kids make breakfast. We're so worried about Garrett. He seems to be doing less and less of the things he used to like to do and becoming more reclusive. He's also been depressed and feeling lonely and wants to quit band. I do feel we were so blessed to be able to get him an earlier appointment with therapy through the church family services and his first appointment is this afternoon. I sure hope it helps and that we can figure out what he needs.

I may not have gotten pictures on Mother's Day but I did get some pictures of the cards and drawings my girls made and the card that Charlotte picked out at the store that everyone signed.

Charlotte made this at school for me.

This is what Alice made for me at school.

The back. She loves rainbows and unicorns.

Garrett and I did make a quick overnight trip to Nampa on the 18th and 19th because he had an orthodontist appointment. We tried to see what it would take to just transfer him here but we would basically be starting over with him and it wouldn't be worth it. We'll just continue to travel for him. I also had to get my oil changed on the van at the dealership in Boise while we were there, so we went shopping with Dad and Laverne at the mall while waiting. I found some pants on sale and Garrett found some Zelda and Dungeons and Dragons stuff. He was pretty happy.

We did go ahead and get Jack started on braces again over here. He had braces before but that didn't mean he was finished when they removed them. They had to wait for his baby teeth to come out. They did come out last summer but because we were pretty sure we were moving to Washington I told them we'll wait to get braces on again until after we move. Garrett is happy that he's not the only one with braces again. Jack is projected to have them on for 12-18 months but could be earlier. We'll see how it goes.

He got purple, his favorite color.

Curtis purchased a new pool cover for daily use. It's solar so it helps trap the heat in and helps with evaporation and chemicals, etc. as well as keeping the pool cleaner from tree debris. We still need to cut it to the shape of the pool but for now we just fold over the corners.

The girls got to try out our new solar powered floating pool lights. They thought they were so cool and named each one. I can't remember what they named them though, ha ha.

We finally got to the point where we could move our stuff out of our bedroom and into Garrett's room, so we can go to town on remodeling the master.

All moved out and cutting up the carpet.

Curtis put some strips of carpet around the bed in the new room so that we wouldn't have to walk on the bare floor.

Goodbye closet!

The Sunday before last most of us took a drive (Garrett stayed home) after church to just explore the area some more. We drove over one of the bridges and couple of times and decided to go over where the boats were all parked. Little did we know that Kennewick has their own little light house. I looked it up online and it was built in 2010, the first one to be built in the US since the 1960's. Unfortunately, it was locked and we couldn't go inside but it is a nice looking lighthouse. We also drove by a dam. It's a 100 year dam that's only there for emergencies. Basically it means that it's only likely to flood in that area every 100 years. Although we did see that they made two marks on the wall from where the water level was in the last 10-20 years.

There's a lookout platform near the lighthouse. It's such a pretty view!

There's the bridge we crossed over.

Here's the dam. All dry on both sides right now.

This last Thursday, they turned on all of the splash pads in Kennewick. There was one at the park right next to the library so after Jack, Charlotte, Alice and I went to check out books, I dropped Jack off and the girls got their suits on and we headed back for them to have some fun. We saw a lady there with her two young girls and a golden retriever dog. Charlotte was in heaven because the lady first let her pet the dog and then she let her walk to the dog around on a leash. She was so happy!

It was at the end of the day so the splash pad was covered by shade but they still had fun.

Well, I'm going to end this post and continue in another. And it's time for me to get ready for Garrett's appointment.

More Work and Charlotte's 1st Game

The weather can't quite decide what it's going to do here. Some days it's cool and even  a bit rainy. Then there's days where it already feels like summer. Last week it has been in the 80's and even low 90's. The good news with that is that our pool temperature is also rising. I think it got up to 70 degrees just from the heat of the sun. Yay!

Well, on one of the cooler wetter days I had decided to go do some clean up around the house in the back yard. I especially wanted to get it cleaned out around the A/C unit. I also cleaned up another area under the deck. It rained a little bit while I was working but it wasn't bad.

This is on one side, plus there were a bunch of leaves and garbage underneath the unit.

View from the other side.

Ah, much better now!

Nice and clean

I had already started cleaning up before I thought to take a before picture. I raked a bunch of leaves out of there and threw away a couple of cracked flower pots.

Here's some of the junk I pulled out from under there.

And my can full of leaves and trash.

After clean up. I needed to ask Curtis on whether to keep those bricks and boards leaning against the house, so I kept them for now.

All cleaned up. The black pipe is an extension the previous owner added to the rain gutter. It was really long and Curtis had to disconnect part of it because it was in the way of other things.

Back to our house project inside. Curtis added the texture to the ceiling in the extra bedroom upstairs. I have since painted primer on it. After working a couple of days on prepping the room for painting (filling holes, removing things, etc.) I did finally get it painted last Saturday. The previous weekend and throughout the week Curtis has begun demolition in our house to connect the two rooms for our master. It's getting exciting!

Spraying on the texture.

Freshly painted ceiling and walls.

Tearing down the walls in the other room.

Little by little. This is the end of the hallway.

Doorway, wall and closet are gone in that room. Our clothes are still in the other closet so we can't take that part down yet.

I moved all of our stuff out of the master bathroom and into the hall bath so that Curtis could start demolition in here. At this point, the toilet was taken out and the mirror. He was in the process of removing the cabinet doors.

Had to open the wall to see what's in there. We'll be turning this into our pantry and cutting in a door anyway.

Old shower is removed and we can see the pipes going into the tub in the hall bath.

Cutting up the floor now to see how things are set up underneath.

We're moving right along on our projects. It's been fun to see what it looks like inside the walls and floors and see how things are done. I'm learning lots of new things.

Alice was supposed to have her first t-ball game last Monday but we had a storm roll through and it got canceled. Charlotte had team pictures and then her first game on Wednesday in Pasco. The pictures were taken right before the game. Their whole team did well. Charlotte got to bat twice. The first time, she hit it but didn't make it to first base in time and got out. The 2nd time, she made it and she proceeded to go to each base after the next hitter went and she made it all the way to home! I even got it on video! It's so fun to watch her and I hope she continues to enjoy playing. The fields they are playing on are nice because they have shades built above the bleachers. It made it so much more enjoyable to watch her game since it was kind of warm that day. Since Charlotte had to be there way early for pictures, I was the one who took her to her game that day. Curtis took Alice to her practice, except he went to the wrong park and by the time he got her to the correct park, it was halfway over. Oops! The frustrations of having practices and games at multiple locations.

It's hard to get a good picture when she's playing in the outfield.

They don't technically keep score but according to the boy who was sitting in front of us in the bleachers, he was keeping track and their team would have won, 13-9 I think. Charlotte saw a friend from school who was playing the pitcher position when she was up to bat the 2nd time. They had talked about it at school beforehand and wondered if they would get to play each other, and sure enough they did! 

Spring Surprises and Making Progress

Spring is bringing surprises! We've seen lots of tulips pop up in our back yard along with some daffodils and hyacinths. There's also 3 bleeding hearts bushes and trees are blossoming.

These are toward the very rear of the backyard.

They were so pretty I made it my cover photo on Facebook.

These are another bunch over closer to the pool. I love the colors!

Our red/pink tree has blossomed too and is looking very pretty. It has a bunch of shoots stemming up on the ground though that I'll have to get rid of some how. I don't want that many trees!

This tree is on the side of our house. I don't see it often and then one day I look out and it's covered with pink. So pretty!

This is an older picture but here's our bleeding hearts bushes.

There are lots of plants that I love that we have but there are a few I may consider removing, like the cactus's in the pots and the rose bush by the pool fence. Because of the wind, a couple of inflatables have blown over by that rose bush and got stuck with thorns. Anyway, I'm so glad that I got pictures of the tulips when I did because not long after that it got hot for a few days and then very windy. They are all pretty much gone now. We also finally got started on mowing the lawn a couple of weeks ago and mowed again yesterday. I do the trimming and it takes longer because I'm trimming the area in our front yard that has mostly dirt with small areas of grass, where our trench was. Last weekend we also finally got our sprinklers fixed and turned on. We've got a little work to do with adjusting some of the front ones that are hitting the house and cleaning out the pipe for the one by the driveway. We couldn't hardly get anything to come out of it. I don't know if putting a new head there would make a difference. Curtis didn't really have time to figure that out yet so we've been doing very little sprinkling. With the hot days we've been having, our lawn is looking a little brown. I hate that!

The boys re-dug the trench where the sprinkler pipes got ripped out from the excavator. At least they didn't have to dig as deep.

The girls helped me pick up rocks out of the yard and we dumped them on the side of the house over by the truck for now. 

This section was in the middle of the yard and we didn't even know we had ripped through it with the excavator until we were testing water lines and I saw a small area of dirt become wet. But we got it all fixed up.

There are two pipes here and we can't figure out what the smaller pipe is for because no water came out of it when we tested before fixing and the new head we attached to it doesn't turn on with the other sprinklers. There are some other weird looking what I think are sprinkler heads in some areas of the landscaping rocks but we can't figure out how to turn them on. We figure they are related to the smaller pipe but it's still a mystery on how to turn it on.

The yard does look a lot better now that we have picked up the rocks and raked up the dirt. We decided that we're just going to grow the grass back and worry about regrading the slope another year. There are just too many other things we need to focus on this year. It was hot that day (last Saturday) so after the kids did their work, they did some swimming. Jack even invited 5 friends over to swim. He is having no problems finding friends and I'm glad that half of them are members of the church. 

Curtis and I finally went on a date again last Friday. It had been awhile. We're usually both too tired on Fridays and just want to rest and watch a movie. Then Saturday do some more work. But Curtis pulled out another date challenge card and it said to take a road trip and drive to a near by town and just randomly pick somewhere to eat. We ended up in West Richland where we stopped at a Kabob house that served Mediterranean food. I ordered a Gyro sandwich and Greek rice. Curtis got a lamb kabob that came with rice and veggies. They were both good! We don't normally order dessert because we're too full but we decided to share a Baklava. I forgot to take a picture before we ate it. It's a pastry layered with nuts, honey and cinnamon. It was fun just driving around randomly and not using are GPS to get us anywhere. We were able to drive back home without it. After getting home, we knew we were going to watch a movie but it took awhile to pick one. I finally made the decision to watch The Mask of Zorro because it's been years since we've seen that one. Jack wasn't so sure about that one but he did end up liking it. Garrett loved it. The girls watched something else downstairs.

In the last couple of weeks we have also been working on the two bedrooms upstairs. I prepped the rooms with plastic during the day and then Curtis removed the popcorn ceiling after work. Prepping takes a lot longer than actually scraping it. The carpet smelled so I wanted it out as soon as possible. It was a strong smell after tearing out the carpets. I don't understand people who let their pets go potty in the house and don't even bother to clean it up. Nasty! I had to sweep up and vacuum the floors and either remove nails or hammer them in. There were also a lot of staples sticking up enough to bug me that I pulled them out also. Then I painted a coat of Kilz primer on the ceilings and two coats of primer on the floors. Some parts of the rooms may need a third coat because I still see a brown line coming through.

This corner was the worst and is where the brown line keeps coming through.

This was in the same room under the window. The room in the corner.

All prepped and ready for ceiling removal (well, after Curtis takes the ceiling fan down also). This is Garrett's room/guest room.

This is the room in the corner which will become part of the master bedroom.

Curtis as he was cleaning up after the ceiling removal. He's wearing the suit and mask to keep the dust off of him.

Ah, no more popcorn ceiling!

Carpet was removed but at this point still had the old padding.

This is what they looked like after carpet and padding were removed. It smelled so bad!

Floors and ceilings both covered with primer now.

Ready for texturing the ceiling next and then painting!