Babies

You may have gathered from Facebook and Twitter, but I know a lot of people who just had babies. My cousin had a baby about 6 weeks ago, and then this past week the deluge: Kelly and Luke had a girl early Tuesday morning, Rachel and Shawn had a boy on Thursday night, and other Kelly's brother and sister-in-law had a son on Friday morning. What a week! I have never been so glued to my cell phone. And these people all know each other! Luke works for Kelly's brother Jim, so they both became daddy's (Jim for the second time) within 5 days of each other. I am definitely envisioning triple birthday parties in coming years.

On Saturday, Kelly, Reed, and I headed down to Gettysburg to meet the first PREP baby, Ella Jo. She was born at 4:35 AM Tuesday morning August 18th, so she was 4 days old on Saturday. She weighed 6'5" when she was born, but on Saturday was a little below 6', making her the most amazingly tiny person I have ever met. She slept for almost the entire two hours we were there, and barely even stirred when we'd pick her up and pass her around. She was so comfy and cozy in anyone's arms, why should she wake up? It was amazing.

The last time I held an infant was at my high school graduation party. That was awesome, but this was transcendant. I could have stared at Ella all day. This is the first baby that I will watch grow up, and I'll be there and know her for her entire life. I'm so overwhelmed by this, so I can hardly imagine what her mommy and daddy, my good friends, must be feeling! I'm tearing up again, as usual, just from writing this down.

I haven't seen any pictures of Rachel and Shawn's son yet, so I'm excitedly waiting for that! Next Saturday I'll finally get to meet Miles, my cousin's son, and the following Saturday we'll have our first all-PREP gathering with Ella. I am positive that I haven't experienced anything this amazing before in my life, and nothing will top it until I'm holding my own baby in my arms. What an amazing week. I am so happy and thankful.

Miles at 5 weeks old:


Ella Jo on Saturday, with her mom plus 2 out of 3 PREP aunties:

Dining Room Before & After

I can't believe it's taken me four days to post this, since I'm so excited about it!

Dining room in March before we moved in:


Dining room during wallpaper peeling, shortly after moving in at the end of May:



Dining room during painting in early and mid June:



Taking up the carpet after painting all trim but the baseboard, early August:



All finished!



Still to do in the dining room: Install the new white switch plate and outlet covers; put stuff into the curio cabinet (starting with the nice china I got from my Gommy); get a new chandelier; and hang some art on those walls! Today I got stuff at Michael's to help me do two out of four: the outlet covers are Paul's job, but I got some stands for the plates (instead of just stacking them all - I want to see them they're very simple and pretty!) and some poster mounting glue to fix the big Van Gogh that's all wrinkly in its cheapo frame--I think this will let me use the same cheapo frame but get the picture to stay all flat and nice permanently. Still haven't decided where to hang it, but I'm hoping once I can hold it up to a few places, there will be something obvious. Best guess right now is the wall between the kitchen entry and the pantry door, so I'll still need ideas for the wall to the left of the curio! Maybe some of my many unused landscape and nature photos. And no budget right now for a chandelier, but I think I know about what I want.

Also, thankfully you can't tell in the picture how badly the curtains need to be ironed. I'll do that soon...

We're planning to take up the carpet in the living room this Sunday!! Once that's done and I paint the trim in there, we'll officially be finished with the really big, necessary stuff. OMG.

I didn't continue cleaning the fridge tonight, and I'm OK with that.

More Progress! Plus gushing.

While I was jet-setting down to Raleigh, NC to visit Rachel & Kelly, leaving Paul at home by himself, look at everything he did:

- Sold the little tree in our back yard that we want to replace with a veggie and herb garden for next year; the guy is supposed to come dig it up on Wednesday morning.

- 100% finished re-installing everything to do with the fridge: My dad came over and re-installed the cabinet above the fridge, Paul re-applied the laminate front of the counter, and attached some quarter-round to clean up the edge of the cabinet beside the fridge. It looks so awesome! Now I have to fulfill my promise to clean the fridge, which was filthy inside when we got it and has not yet been cleaned.

- Purchased and installed heavy curtains across one end of the front unfinished half of the basement where he now has his table saw, so that the dust is contained and doesn't interfere with the laundry area

- Discovered that our attic fan has been disabled because it's a bit broken and therefore very loud, and so our attic has been getting extremely hot every day (well over 100 degrees) thus making our air conditioning much less efficient. I don't even know why he was thinking about this or going up into the attic to begin with, but it's a good thing he found out, because running the fan during the day while we're not home to be bothered by the noise will save us a lot of energy cost.

- Installed a brand-new digital programmable thermostat to better regulate the air conditioning (i.e. program it to raise the temp during the day while we're at work and lower it in time to be comfortable when we get home.)

- Bought me a sweater drying rack because he saw one for uber-cheap at Ollie's, even though we haven't discussed my wanting one for ages

- Bought a wireless digital indoor/outdoor thermometer, the outdoor portion of which is being used to monitor the attic temperature for the time being (what a good idea!)

- Brought upstairs and shelved a few boxes of books from the basement

- Did all the dishes so that I arrived home to a clear, clean kitchen counter

He told me about most of this stuff while I was sitting at the Raleigh airport waiting to board, and I exclaimed, "Wow, I'm going to go on vacation with my girlfriends more often!" And he said, "OK, you can." But really, I definitely need to thoroughly clean the fridge and paint the baseboard trim in the dining room this week, and hang the blinds in the dining room, and maybe get the curtains hung in the bedrooms and office, if I'm going to live up to all the work Paul did this weekend.

Speaking of going on vacation with my girlfriends, I flew in to Raleigh, NC late Friday night, where Rachel picked me up and we headed home to bed (but not before she fed me the peach-and-berry crostada she made while waiting to pick me up - so delicious!!) so we'd be ready to get up bright and early to meet Kelly on her way home from the beach and kidnap her from Reed (not really - this was all planned). It was too overcast to go to the beach for the afternoon, so instead we went back to Rachel's beautiful apartment and spent the day making and eating The Dip and chatting. It was wonderful.

Saturday evening we got a little dolled up and went out for sushi, and then decided to come home and do more talking, since it was obvious that's all we wanted to do and it would be better if we weren't in a loud bar. We changed into our jammies and talked into the night.

Sunday we rolled out of bed at 10:00, made blueberry pancakes and fruit salad, and added peach slices to glasses of sparkling wine for a refreshing morning drink. While we ate, we watched Mamma Mia, which must have been made with us in mind, because it was so awesome and fun to watch. Then in the early afternoon we braved the still-cloudy-but-not-too-rainy skies to sit by the pool for a while.

Around 3:00 on Sunday afternoon we headed in from the pool to get ready for dinner, where we met two of Rachel's friends at a Czech restaurant for a delicious experience(I had pork goulash with dumplings, and fried brie with cranberry sauce). Then they dropped me off at the airport before heading to the theater to see The Sound of Music live. I wish I could have stayed until Tuesday with Kelly, but alas, I couldn't afford to take the time off work.

I'm glad Kel and Rach finally got some sun today, so they're out by the pool again. I have to finish an FPA for an investigator's RFI, then start on two write-ups of providers I want to refer to investigations at the next INDC meeting. Oh, and finish the Extract Spike model results for June data, and look up some stuff for Wednesday's Infusion Code meeting. And go home and clean the fridge. It will be nice to stay around the house next weekend for once!

Progress!

Saturday evening I cleaned up the second bedroom to ready it for its second-ever overnight guest, and Paul vacuumed the entire house. The second bedroom now looks rather austere, with one empty bookshelf, one little chest at the foot of the bed, one bedside table with one lamp, the bed, and no other furniture or decorations.

I did stick the narrow CD shelf in there (my Dad made it years ago) and stuck a bunch of old framed photos on it, so that was a slight improvement. It definitely needs a plant or two, a dresser, and some pictures on the walls, though. And a mirror.

Oh, and while I was cleaning? I put an old wash basket full of currently-dormant back packs, bags, and purses, and our aero bed and drying rack, IN THE CLOSET. Neatly. And now you can't see them when you walk into the room, but they're still there, in easy reach, beneath a shelf full of neatly-folded blankets, comforters, and sheets. I HAVE CLOSETS IN MY HOUSE.

Sunday afternoon and evening I cleaned up the carport: I tidied up all the gardening paraphernalia (and put it in our shed! I heart storage space SO MUCH), re-potted and/or cleaned off all the plants and brought most of them inside, and FINALLY did something with the 8 little herb seedlings that have been struggling along in their teensy little containers that should have been re-planted six weeks ago. I finally pitched the dead pepper plant from last year, and used its rather huge pot to hold all of the surviving baby herbs. They've all perked up a bit already, so I'm hoping now they'll finally start growing in earnest, and maybe by the end of Summer I'll at least have a handful of parsley and cilantro to supplement all my basil, chives, and rosemary. I also finally stopped by Highland Gardens and got some liquid plant food that's SO much easier to use than fertilizer sticks or pellets. Hopefully that will get everything looking perky and healthy, especially the aloe plants, which still look pretty pathetic almost a year after being separated from the monster mother plant.

Sunday night we also went to see the movie Up, and if you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it. It was so fun and whimsical, and totally sad and thoughtful and deep in some very adult ways, but still very happy and uplifting, especially the ending. The little vignette you hear about is the first 5 minutes of the movie, so you're crying 5 minutes in, but then only one other time might make you tear up.

Monday Paul finished converting the little coat closet in our dining room into a rather large, deep pantry closet complete with five adjustable shelves. I stopped at JoAnn Fabrics on the way home and got some thin, clear vinyl to use as over-sized shelf liner (cheaper than official shelf liner, which wouldn't even have been big enough to cover the two-foot-deep shelves), and then spent all evening stocking the shelves! There is room to spare with all of our food put away, and we now have only one remaining box full of spices, as they're the only thing we haven't decided where to put yet.

Tonight (Tuesday), we are going to move the dining room table into the living room and RIP UP THE CARPET in the dining room. It is going to be glorious. We will see the entire expanse of wood floor for the first time, and I can't wait! Hopefully that will go very smoothly and thus motivate us to get the living room carpet removed soon too! Maybe on Wednesday or Thursday I will be able to finish painting the baseboard & door trim in the dining room!! And/or I might haul some boxes up from the basement and fill the bookshelves in the office and bedroom with appropriate books. Actually, painting will probably wait until next week at this point, since I also have a bunch of clothing to re-organize and put away in the master bedroom.

Then Friday after work I hop on a plane and land in Raleigh, NC to meet Kelly M and visit Rachel! Maybe knowing I'm spending another unexpected weekend having fun with friends instead of working on our house is what's motivating me to get so much done this week so far. I hope it continues!

Yummiest CSA food thus far

Yesterday we got a HUGE head of incredibly beautiful red leaf lettuce from Shared Earth Farm. It was delicious, just by itself.

I chopped up two entire cucumbers and two tiny onions, also from the CSA, sauteed two frozen tilapia filets with Gazebo Room Balsamic dressing, and plopped a filet each on top of the huge mountain of salad on our two plates. Add some crumbles of the raw-milk sharp cheddar we lucked out and got for free because someone didn't pick up their cheese share, and you have one incredibly delicious meal.

And just for fun, here's the not-really-a-tart I made for the 4th of July. I just slapped down some graham crackers, covered it with creamcheese mixed with sugar and vanilla extract, and topped it with blueberries, pitted and halved sweet cherries, and a few raspberries. I got tons of compliments, even though the graham crackers got all soggy - I guess you can't go wrong with creamcheese, sugar, and fresh fruit!

Can't help posting one more house pic, of the blinds I installed all by myself. Five windows total thus far, in all three bedrooms (i.e. two bedrooms and the office). Hopefully we'll get enough trim painted in the dining room tonight that I'll be able to hang blinds on that window next, and then I just need to decide what to do with the huge window in the living room...hmm...

I still haven't put up the curtains, as you can see. Soon.....