Merry Merry!

Ah, Christmas.... as I mentioned earlier, we took a much lower key approach to decor, events, etc. since we knew the place would be a wreck with kitchen madness. But we still had a happy weekend in our makeshift dining/kitchen/storage room and with our miniature Christmas tree.

Miles, Beebe and I escaped some of the early demolition and sought refuge at some friends' home to bake cookies. Miles took right to cutting the shapes - although he did decapitate a few men with the candy cane cutter. But his favorite part was the sprinkles!! He was a true artist, using color with abandon and sampling his materials as he went. In fact, we had to tell him not to lick the sprinkle-tops, so he poured some in his hand and started licking. SUGAR!!

We hadn't really been talking up Santa, but Miles for sure knew who he is. Christmas Eve before bed, I asked him what he wanted Santa to bring him (I know, great timing, right?). He said "more trains." (Whew!) We listened to a Mrs. Claus bear recite "The Night Before Christmas" a few times. She reminded us of the old Teddy Ruxpin, but instead of just moving her mouth she opened her coat to reveal.... a Christmas tree with Santa leaving presents. I think he fell asleep listening to the tale again.


Miles had been waking us early for weeks by now, so we fully expected to be up before the rooster on Christmas morning. But he gave us all a Christmas present and slept until 8 am!! Amazing. We all went into the living room and guess what... "he brought you trains!" exclaimed Miles!! He was very excited to open presents, and was giddy with the surprise of the tree surrounded by presents. Even more so since until the night before, the tree had been sitting on a table in the window.

But even with the wish for the trains, his most treasured gift so far is a set of John Deere construction vehicles that were in his stocking. He has carried them everywhere, even been sleeping with them. Another popular gift (especially with PopPop and mommy) was a set of Wedgits from Aunt Elizabeth.

Kitchen set-up is coming along nicely. Click ::here:: to see more pictures from the construction process, including proof of Wayne's drill and drywall mastery.

We were saddened to learn Sunday evening that PawPaw Don's mom passed away at 86. She and the family are in our prayers. Mimi and PawPaw will come celebrate Christmas with Miles around New Years, so we really will be celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas this year!

GO!!!.... um, I mean DONE!!!

Whew! I'm sure some of you are worried that we've fallen off a ladder and can't get up. I'm sorry the intermediate updates weren't there, but when I moved the computer away from construction, the modem went on the fritz!! Anyway, we've all survived and even had a very nice (tho messy) Christmas. If I posted it a million and one times it wouldn't be enough to thank my dad for all his hard work this week, and to Wayne, Brenda, Neil and Keith for adding their sweat to the effort. Yes, for those of you who knew Wayne as Mr. I'm-not-hanging-that-picture, he handled the drill, table saw and even wired some electrical outlets, among other things.

It wasn't as quick as we'd hoped, but still to accomplish what we did in one week is incredible. We ran into issues day 2 when we uncovered the electrical work from 1959. Nothing done wrong, just not as renovation-friendly as current methods. So dad reworked everything and more. Since we ran long, dad stayed a couple extra days to wrap up while BeeBe returned to Christmas with the family. I know dad missed out on the big party, but he got some good extra time with Miles too! I'm putting together a slide show of the process, but here are the before & afters:



Here's where we stand... we left off the cabinet molding since we still have to paint and don't want to mess that up. Also opted to wait on the floor since we're having some carpentry work done in the next room. Don't want sawdust ground into the new floors! So besides that and the counter the corner is done.














On the sink wall we're missing the sink and counter as expected. Oh yeah, that big hole on the right? That's where our new oven/microwave should be. It's sitting to the left in the photo because several of the panels shorted out! So we're without an oven while parts are on order and I'm in talks to try to get a new one. Fingers crossed that it gets resolved quickly, in the meantime I'll become an expert stir fry chef!

Now I'm deep in wiping down and filling up all these beauties. Can't wait to post more when the rest of the work is done!!

Merry Christmas to all. Don't worry, I'll follow up with lots of fun pictures of that too.

On your mark... get set....

So it took me a week to follow up that video. But we've been a little crazy around here. I don't think I've photographed Miles since that show, but I've taken plenty of pictures of cabinet hardware, faucets, counter tops, floors etc. It's all coming together nicely... the cabinets were delivered this morning; the flooring is in, waiting for pickup; appliances all get delivered on Friday. The only hiccup is the sink won't be in until 1st week of January, and they won't template the counter tops until the sink is installed. Then the counters can take 2-4 weeks. So we'll live with some plywood counters for a few weeks, I think I can handle it. Everything else will be so much nicer, it will be an okay trade-off!

Here's what the garage looks like now:
Dad gets here tonight and starts tearing out cabinets tomorrow, so it will be even more packed. He's got an aggressive Habitat-blitz schedule planned, so we'll be done by Sunday. For real. Minus any hiccups, and the already mentioned counter/sink. I'll document and post photos of the process as I can. The real fun this week has been emptying the kitchen while setting up temporary work space in the laundry room. Miles has loved flinging the empty cabinets open and shrieking "It's EMPTY!!!" into the echoing metal box. He also got a big thrill watching the BIIIIG boxes as they unloaded the truck. We already brought one big empty box inside, Miles' new "house". I think I may try to recycle all that cardboard into this cool kitchen I found online. You know, in my spare time after the real kitchen is done!

Back to Miles (here he is cheering on his schoolmates' performances)... I've been trying so hard to get video of him singing, but he clams up when the camera comes out. He sings the 1st verse of Frosty the Snowman on repeat, and has adapted the E-I-E-I-O portion of Old MacDonald into "Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho-Ho!" Pretty funny. I'll work on that one.

More soon, hopefully with some exciting progress photos!

as promised...

Miles's 2nd big performance on this stage... 2 songs!! so stay tuned through the rough patch in the middle.

And on a very sad note, we discovered this evening that our favorite - Miles's FAVORITE - restaurant has closed. No more Calypso Cafe sweet potatoes for us.

Zzzzzzz....

Miles seems to be regressing in the sleep department. I hope this is just some growth spurt and not a rebellion in light of the new baby (a little early for that?). He usually goes to bed at 7, but the last few nights was completely wiped out by that time. He fussed over getting into pjs, what lullaby we sang, what animals got to sleep with him, which layer of blanket covered him... on and on. AND in the morning the usual 6:45 wake up is moving earlier and earlier. At 5 a.m.... we hear "DA-DEEE! DA-DEEE! Cover you up!!" or "Sing Rock-a-bye!" or "I pooptied!" (my favorite, especially when preceded by the call for daddy.)

And it doesn't help me that baby girl decides to practice for the decathlon from 1 to 3am! I guess I should get used to it, I won't be getting more sleep any time soon.

So the big question lately has been "do you have a name yet?" Considering that we were almost checking out of the hospital when we decided on "Miles", we may have a ways to go before we know her name. But in the meantime, I found an awesome site chock full of ideas that we won't be using. So far nothing on our (long) list of possibilities has been listed! We'll hunker down on that task after the kitchen is done.

Speaking of the kitchen, things are progressing nicely. Almost everything is in, just sitting in the warehouse waiting on scheduled deliveries next week. PopPop has graciously offered his skill & expertise and is coming mid-week to begin the work. He promises some speedy work, so fingers crossed! The skills he's learned from leading Habitat builds - fast work, managing klutzes non-skilled labor - should pay off. I guess I should back up that statement since this klutz will not be doing any work, and our unskilled-laboring friends who are helping are most certainly not klutzes! My role will be supervisor/caterer, and to that end I've been tabbing some good stuff in my slow cooker cookbook and making the grocery list. The temporary kitchen in the laundry room will be a fun experience!!

Stay tuned later this week... Wednesday evening is Miles's Preschool Christmas program. I have no idea what they're doing, but I'll be sure to post some video.

Happy 49th, old man!

No Wayne did not just age more than a decade overnight. It's our big boy, Apollo, who celebrated the big 7th birthday (in people years) yesterday. We celebrated with banana-nut muffins and Miles got to blow out the candle. Apollo got some extra treats too - like steak trimmings from mommy's dinner - since this birthday officially bumps him into the geriatric category.

Miles enjoyed celebrating but did add, "I miss my birthday." And Chelsea kept giving us the look that said, "I'll remember this when my birthday comes around."

Miles did his best cheering "Go Big Orange" this weekend, but to no avail. He did let it slip that his favorite color is purple, so maybe that had something to do with it?

I've been doing some Christmas decorating to get us in the spirit, but with the pending kitchen demolition it's a limited endeavor. I've got the stockings and some other goodies on the mantle and put up a 4' tree on the tabletop, rather than pull out the whole shebang. Miles is into the decor - he was in the other room when I put up the little pre-lit tree, and when he came out he said, "Ooh mommy, it's kissmas!"
And when he turned the corner and saw the lit wreath above the stockings he started shouting, "Look, mommy, look at it!" Okay, so this year should be pretty fun. If I can only keep him from opening the presents I've already wrapped!