House

O looks around the bare living room yesterday. We still have concrete floors and insulation for walls. "Mommy, are the workers going to be back to finish?"

It has been two weeks since demolition day. The girls and the cat, I'm sure, think this will be how our house will now look. When you are working on fixing a leak, instead of just remodeling it seems to take longer. There is the insurance to deal with, not just getting all the estimates. What a pain. The most important thing is to get the leaks fixed correctly so I don't have to revisit this again next year. It's been a fight with  the insurance. Patients is a virtue. I just keep telling myself it will all be so beautiful when it's done.

I'll let you know when something else happens. Since the water testing it has just been estimates on repair.

A Morning Walk with My Beloved

After the bills were paid and the cat let out there was still 45 minutes before I needed to pick up O. C and I decided to take a morning walk. It was wonderful. Just the two of us on the bike/walking trail behind our house. We even saw several turkeys and many squirrels.

Just what we both needed. We really need to make this a weekly event.

"Meow"

The house is quiet. The girls are both at school. C is in bed with a bad back and I'm in the office doing email and paying bills. Then I hear the cat meowing downstairs. Every few minutes "meow."

If it's not "mommy?" it's "meow." I can't catch a break.

A Special Post...

for our friends who are sailing around the world. The A family, G, K and their two daughters (One in middle school and one in high school-I think.) left the San Francisco Bay in September 2006. They will be gone for 3 years. What an experience.

G and K's girls, C and A, have a teddy bear, they have named Adventure Bear. Adventure Bear is traveling with them and is pictured doing and seeing so many wonderful things on their trip. CK and O love seeing what Adventure Bear has been doing. We all look forward to update emails and pictures and stories on the website.

Adventure Bear has a sailor outfit on and O decided one day, looking at all the pictures, that she wanted an outfit for her bear (Doga). Many of you may know Doga. She is a very loved bear!

After looking around I found an outfit for Doga at the Dollar Store, of all places. Great price! Pictured here, just for C and A (who are leaving Spain right now) is a picture of O with Doga in her new princess outfit. I couldn't leave CK out, so she is pictured with her doll, which she has named Miley.

We wish the A family all the best in their travels and look forward to seeing them when they return from their trip.

A Funny Tell

My husband found this joke on the web. My father would have loved it--totally his kind of humor.

A passenger in a taxi leaned over to ask the driver a question and tapped him on the shoulder.

The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb, and stopped just inches from a large plateglass window.

For a few moments everything was silent in the cab, and then the still shaking driver said, 'I'm sorry, but you scared the daylights out of me.'

The frightened passenger apologized to the driver and said he didn't realize a mere tap on the shoulder could frighten him so much.

The driver replied, 'No, no, I'm sorry, it's entirely my fault. Today is my first day driving a cab -- I've been driving a hearse for the last 25 years.

Water Testing

Yesterday was water testing day. Sorry, no pics for this post. I totally forgot. Go figure.

Our contractor came over and spent the day water testing the front window and the roof (front and back of the house). He was able to find all the leaks. Which, I guess, is a good thing. Although, every time he started explaining something to me I heard "cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching."

It will  be nice to get everything fixed the right way the first time. All the leaks fixed and water damage repaired. I just hope it's done soon. It's only been four days and I'm already tired of concrete floors, no front and back wall, and no furniture. It's very hard to relax watching TV in the evening with a cup of tea after, the girls go to bed, with no furniture and concrete floors. We're spending a lot of time in the bedroom. That probably doesn't sound how I meant it.

Demolition Day

8am our wonderful contractor was at our door with his worker guy ready to demolish some walls. Plastic went up to cover the kitchen, carpet was removed, and walls were torn up. By 1pm our contractor had the flooring guy here measuring. At 2:30pm the painter was here to get measurements for his quote. Amazing. 

Last night I started thinking about what might be inside our walls. You hear those stories of weird things people find when their walls are opened up. Guess what they found in our walls?
SNAILS! Snails inside our living room wall. Can you believe that? Now we will need to remove the bush outside the front window so the contractor can patch where the snails were getting in. Crazy, but could have been worse things inside our wall.

They cleaned up everything and took down the plastic. Everything is ready for the next step. It's weird to have concrete floors, no walls, and no furniture.

CK has to practice her piano smooshed in the dinning room. She doesn't seem to mind. The girls and the cat are all doing pretty good with all this, of course, it's only been two days.

Next thing is the water testing of the roof on Wednesday. We are very anxious to see how that goes. Hopefully the leaks have been fixed.

Our Busy Weekend

Saturday - Making a New Friend

My brother M, sister-in-law, Ang, their son and my sister's daughter all came down from Sacramento this weekend to meet a new friend. It's a little complicated, but A is the daughter of Ang's sister's friend. Got it? Anyway, A is new to the area (a first year teacher).

We BBQ'd at S and G's house. All the cousins played we visited and got to know our new friend (and her friend).  It was very nice. I look forward to seeing A again. I hope her and her friend had as as much fun meeting all of us.

CK and E taking the dog (Jessie) for a ride. I can't believe the dog puts up with all this:

Crazy cousins have a great time:

I couldn't leave out M:

Sunday - Getting Ready for Demolition

Tomorrow is the big day. Demolition starts! We're so excited.

Thank goodness M and Ang spent the night at our house! C has a bad back strain and can't move furniture. It's been a very long week. Everything happens at once.

As you may remember from my previous post, the entire living room and family room needs to be emptied. There is no way I could do that all on my own. Talk about stressed. M and Ang to the rescue! They ROCK! They are truly the BEST. I owe them BIG!

THANK YOU SO MUCH M AND ANG!

Without a second of hesitation they jumped right in this morning (after I made them a pancake breakfast) and got the job done. As I hoped Ang helped me find a place for everything; my plants in the kitchen and we still have the dinning room table for meals. By 1pm everything was cleared out and they were on their way home. Amazing! My brother even started vacuuming for me.

Here are some images after our day of moving two rooms into the garage. I'll post another update tomorrow, after demolition of the walls.

Living Room - with Genie checking it all out.

Dinning Room - We can still play the piano and eat, all at the same time.

Family Room:

Kitchen with plants under the window:

Early Wake Up Call

Last week, when it was near 100˚, the girls room was way too hot for them to sleep in. We had them sleep on the office floor on their roll up trundle beds. With the window open, it was nice and cool. They loved it.

O came and woke me up at 6am one of those mornings (CK was still asleep). "Mommy, come and take a picture of me and Genie."

Are you kidding me?! It's 6am! "In a minute" I told her.

Well, about 30 minutes later O came crying to me that the cat was gone and I missed it. Oh, boy, I was in big trouble now. I told O that the cat would go back and I would get the picture. I promised.

I kept my promise. Here is O and Genie at 7am that morning.

Fabulous and Functional Recipe Friday

Two friends (MM and HC) have started posting recipes on their blogs on Fridays. I thought I would join in, however, I will be posting mine on my BMCC blog. Check it out.

A Tribute

...to Tim Johnson. Please read.

Water Damage

Most of you know, we have water damage from all the bad storms this past winter. It has taken me until now to get a contractor (spoke to three different guys-lost one because of the insurance company), get money from the insurance and get things started. It's been a nightmare! This is the very short version.

My patients and persistence has paid off. I have a wonderful contractor and after being in our home for 11 years we will finally get some work done. This water damage is truly a blessing in disguise.

The leak - the water came from the roof so we have water damage to the front of the house and the back of the house. Damage - the bottom of our front living room wall. The carpet is also damaged, so we have to replace that. We also have damage at our back family room wall. Now, keep in mind, that is only what we can see from the outside. Once the walls are opened up-who knows what kind of damage is in there.

Demolition starts on Monday. (YEAH-finally!) I will post pictures to my blog throughout this wonderful project to keep you all updated. Once the walls are all opened up my contractor will do a water test to the roof to make sure the leak has been fixed. I don't want to go through all this again!

We are thinking of upgrading to a hard surface flooring instead of carpet for the first floor. I can't wait to paint. I'm excited to get some color on the walls.

In the mean time, between now and Monday morning at 8am, we will need to completely pack up the family room. The entire room needs to be empty. The entire living room also needs to be empty, but the dinning room is okay. We will be rearranging the furniture, putting things in the garage. Thank goodness we cleaned that out 1-1/2 years ago! We'll probably put the piano in the dinning room. CK and C need to be able to practice.

It will be a mess for three or four weeks, but will be beautiful when it's finished. The leak fixed, the damage fixed, new flooring, painted walls. I'm so excited!

Each Daughter So Different

This is how our morning drop off went today at school:

O: running toward her Kinder line-up. Every other parent standing in line with their little 5 year old waiting for the teacher to arrive.

Mommy: "O, are you going to stand in line by yourself? I'm going to bring CK to her line?"

O: "Oh yeah, okay, bye!"

Mommy: "Well, why don't you come and say good-bye and give me a hug in case you go in before I get back."

O: "Oh, (hug) bye mommy, don't forget to pick me up." (like I'm going to ever forget her.)

Mommy: "I'll come back after bringing CK to her line."

CK: "You're going to come back to my line after O, right?"

I get back to O's class and the teacher had already let the class in. O could care less if I was there or not. 

Yes, CK is my clingy one. I'm waiting for O to want me to do drive-up drop off. She'll need to bring CK to her line, however, because CK gets turned around like her Nonna.

My Crochet and Embroidery Projects

I thought I would share what I've been doing. I have been crocheting and doing hand embroidery since I was about 7 years old. (NO machine embroidery for this family) I got away from it for a long time. I learned how to cross stitch when I was about 26 or so and have been doing that instead of embroidery.

I got back into embroidery in the spring when I did an embroidery project with the Brownie troop. It's so pretty and no one does it anymore. My mom and I want to bring it back. She does beautiful embroidery!

In March I pulled this old denim jacket out of my closet. I hadn't worn it in years. I thought I would try sprucing it up before tossing it out. Now, I can't wait to wear it. It's a pretty detailed embroidery project, so it will take me a while. The flower pattern will be on both sides of the front zipper and in each bottom front corner. I'll post an image when I'm all finished.

I've always crocheted baby blankets, doll blankets, granny square doilies, that kind of thing. I've never been able to follow a pattern and make something I could wear. Until now!

My mom found this cell phone bag pattern online. It is so easy and fast. I love it. I made one each for the girls and two for me. I even made 10 for each of the Brownies in our troop. They are "Dues Bags." The girls will keep their dues money in there until it's time to collect it. The Brownie uniform doesn't have any pockets, it's driving me nuts. Anyway...they go really fast. I can make one in about 2 hours.

I needed a break from the cell phone bags. Since I just finished making 14 in the past few weeks. I have the Klutz Crochet book and thought I would try this Bath Bag. It was even faster than the cell phone bag. I made this last night in about 45 minutes! It's so cute. You put your favorite bar of soap inside and use it in the bath or shower. Hang to dry. When the soap is finished wash the bag and let dry before adding a new bar of soap. They would make great gifts!

My goal is to work my way up to make a sweater. I found some beautiful crocheted sweater patterns. Guess I can now follow a pattern! Yeah!