Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend we managed a nice mix of fun and work. Saturday morning I was playing around the house with Lil and she wanted to play dress up in her Sleeping Beauty dress and Dorothy shoes. We went outside to show her Daddy and he had found a snail for this bug-loving girlie.

He was working on the patio walkway extension next to the neighbors, finishing up last year's little project and cleaning up that side alleyway. Of course Lilli aka Sleeping Beauty wanted to help with some measurements.Here's a pic of that little landing beside the big old hackberry tree in progress. That area was always so viney and overgrown it just needed to be set up where vines and things can't grow. All of those bricks are really old bricks Mark gave us, many of them are from historic old buildings torn down in downtown, circa 1920.

That afternoon after nap time we hit up the fun side of Memorial Day weekend. We headed out to Maryland Farms YMCA for our favorite local kids pool. It's seriously the best kiddie pool in town, our pitiful East Nashville Y has nothing on it (both in clientele and amenities). We think we're narrowing in on a part of town we want to live in and it would put this Y as our closest one. Yeah!!
It was so funny to see her in this pool this summer. She could stand throughout pretty much all the kiddie pool areas. So much nicer than chasing her out of the areas over her head!
Splashed in the face by the big crab!She and I went back to the East pool near our house for an hour Sunday afternoon, so we got a lot of pool time over Memorial Day weekend. Up next, Memorial Day cookout!

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Video Time

Enjoy our little mischief maker....

Gardening with Lilli

A few pics from the last week....

We've let Lilli start playing Wii. We've got a Diego game she absolutely loves. It's for the younger preschool age and it's movements are fairly simple and she can do most of it by herself. It's great for coordination building and also has some questions and things she has to answer correctly to move on.Gum - still the best reward she can get.
She loves to help me water the garden. And by watering the garden I mean pretty much drenching me. Repeatedly. And laughing hysterically about it. The garden actually gets little to no water, except what drips off of me.
Lilli has peas - lots and lots of peas are growing on her vines!!
Seriously. I get drenched. And she's basically watering the sidewalk.
We did some swimming over at Zach and Audrey's pool a week ago. We did some swimming at the Y a few times this past Memorial Day weekend!
I'll have a bonus video later - it's been ages since I've put a video on here but we've got one Brent keeps watching over and over and over so I guess it's worth this horribly slow YouTube download going on!!

Friday, May 25, 2012

Brent's Birthday

Last Saturday was Brent's birthday. We let him sleep in a bit and Lilli and I hung out watching cartoons. Once he got up she was dying for him to open his presents. She decorated a card for him....

She picked out some squeakers at the store. They have since mysteriously disappeared...
She also picked out this pink flamingo for him. She's VERY proud of it. And of that horrible shiny swimsuit she got at Family Dollar.Since this was a big "milestone" birthday I had gotten quotes on everything from renting out the General Jackson, hiring video game buses, hiring a surprise flash mob and then even just general party rentals. Once I looked at the costs of all those things - which in the end are just a fun memory and entertain other people sometimes more than yourself - I decided to get him something I KNEW he would enjoy for more than one evening:

The look of surprise for a new Ipad! The latest and great toy on the market. And he was SURPRISED!!
I asked Lilli if we wanted to go buy a cake or make one and she loves to bake so we ended up making one and having cake for breakfast.
The flamingo along with butterflies she got for Brent and a bird she got me for either Mother's Day last year or my birthday. Our deck is so very decorated!!Since she already had her swimsuit on we headed out for some free water play. There's a brand new waterpark downtown we haven't tried yet. Of course once we got through all the cars down there for a car show, figured out how to get around the car show, and then got down to the park - it was broken. The police guard said it's been broken pretty much since it opened. It's a fantastic park down on the River, so if they ever get it sorted it it's going to be a lot of fun.

We ended up going just across the River to Public Square. She got to run around in the wading pools...And then play around in the fountains. We pass the fountains every day on our way to and from school and Lilli was so excited to play in them. It was a hot Saturday and it was a refreshing and free way to cool down.Happy Friday!

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Bathrooms and Band-Aids

So here's a little bathroom before and after:

The before - ugly outdated pedestal sink and horrible wire shelving:

After - Pretty cabinet sink with lots and lots of drawers - it perfectly holds everything we had in there before in a lot less space!
It's hard to see in here, but we didn't buy anything cheap or ugly. It's a nice piece of wood with a solid top. We didn't go cheap because if we don't end up moving then I want something nice that I would enjoy. I think that's the main difference in us and the common house flipper.
It really opens up the space beside the cabinet. And the floors are super clean now! Now Brent is working on the inside of the shower. It needs all new caulk around the edges and cleaning as well. The shower head leaks so we'll be replacing that with a new one and frosting the window. That was never an issue until the idiot painters cut back the tree outside that window way too much.The Band-Aid - Lilli bumped her head on a shelf at Home Depot and needed a Band-Aid - the only thing that could help her feel better. There was no bruise or cut or any damage done to her head. She wore the Band-Aid from Friday evening to Thursday morning. All kinds of people asked her what had happened to her and she would never tell them - because NOTHING had happened!! Finally she decided she could take it off. I'm telling you - that thing held on during multiple baths and some hot and sweaty days.

Being silly one morning at school.
Last Saturday was Brent's birthday. I'll post a lot more about that later. I had gone through a million different surprises for him and quoted out a ton of different parties, but in the end I decided to keep it simple. Surprise #1 was dinner out at Cantina Laredo on Friday night - an upscale Mexican restaurant downtown in the Gulch. Brent had never been there before, but I've been on some business lunches. It's really nice and I knew he would enjoy that. What I didn't tell him was that I had invited some of our friends to join us and make it even more fun. Our food was great, the service was terrible - our waiter was a total MIA - but we had a blast and laughed and laughed and laughed. And of course the kids crowded around Wendy's Ipad and had a ton of fun together.
Lilli was completely enamored with the receipt for all my late fines at the Library. Once you hit $20 in overdue fines they cut you off so I had to go and pony up last week to pick up my latest requests. I never once had a fine before Lilli was born. It's literally taken me 3 years to get up to this many fines!! It takes quite a while for 10 cents a day to add up!
Happy Friday!

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Bathrooms, Hot Dogs and Mother's Day

If we do end up selling our house, one of the main "ick" points was our master bathroom. Compared to most East Nashville historic homes it's a great size (seriously), but that white tile just always looked SO nasty, and in a home with little to no storage/closets that horrible pedestal sink has ALWAYS been something I hated. But, we've never had a major vision for the bathroom or wanted to tackle busting it all out so besides painting and completely changing out the lights we've left it alone. Finally, to help get max value, we're making some potty upgrades.

Here's the before:
We always had to have a little shelving system to hold my makeup, hair dryer, all our toiletries, etc because there's no linen closet or storage in there. Always an eye sore! And see how "dirty" the grout look? It's always looked horrible and I've tried a million products on it.

Pulling the old sink out was really easy (besides some old pipes that wanted to crack). A guy at Home Depot recommended a product a home renovator in the neighborhood had recommended - see the difference in the top right section - um yeah - MIRACLE stuff.
Here's what the spray bottle looks like - and you can see in close up detail the difference between the clean tile and dirty tile. It's really AMAZING. A world of difference!
That evening we met some friends for dinner at Cori's Dog House. Just casual hot dogs and deep conversation between Lilli and Audrey. Lilli is about 9 months older than Audrey but they're right about the same height and hair!
Me and the Kiddos....Audrey wanted to watch Lilli play games...

The next day was Mother's Day. Lilli made me this card - it's pretty amazing. She completely wrote "Momy" by herself with zero help. She loves spelling my name and "writing my letters". And that's a picture of a monster.
On the inside, Brent only told her what letters to write but did not help her write them at all, just spelled it out verbally for her. "I Love You Lilli". She is really a genius. We have a parent-teacher conference in about a week and getting her into an advanced program is one thing we're going to discuss. I already talked about it with her school's director and she agreed Lilli is a good candidate for it. Yeah for future scholarships!On Mother's Day it rained buckets but us girlie's in our polka dots were prepared. And yes, my umbrella has Boston Terriers on it. An amazing Zulily find.
She wanted to take me to Shoney's, her favorite place. It was terrible. So packed and the service was bad and the food even worse. Crazy because our previous experience had been so good. So I think it's back to waiting 10 more years before we eat there.This is what Lilli got me for Mother's Day. She picked it out herself.

Look at that proud face! How could you not love it? It's the current centerpiece on our dining room table.

She was sleeping deeeeep that afternoon. We couldn't help ourselves. She saw it later and thought it was pretty hilarious.
Did I mention we wore polka dots for Mother's Day?
Yeah, Blogger is a pain tonight and throwing things out of order.

And that was our Mother's Day! Stay tuned for the big potty reveal!!!

Monday, May 21, 2012

Around the House

Hello internets! All is well here, we've just been busy and haven't had a chance to even download pictures at all lately. And a post without pictures is pretty much pointless.

We've done some house shopping and looked at five houses so far. Nothing has really jumped out at us yet. We're going to look at some more tomorrow night, too. The first two times we took Lilli with us, tomorrow night we have a sitter!

Her peas are growing like crazy.Our potatoes are too!
I can not wait for the day she can actually mow the yard for us! When it happens we will probably celebrate by buying her something like this!
And lastly, when I asked Brent to buy me some large tabs to pack some junk away, he most certainly came through. They're so big you could just pack us and leave the junk.

Monday, May 14, 2012

Randoms...

This is really just an Iphone dump of last week....

Things that scare me when I come across them:If we do move (which there isn't anything on the market we like right now) then living next door to our own private playground will be a top thing we miss!!! Since few people know the "secret code" to getting in back behind the elementary school it's so nice and private.
And so easy for one of us to walk over with her before dinner while the other is cooking.
Just a cute outfit (babyGap) I had to share. I love all things babyGap! It's beyond crazy how many dog themed clothes she has but she loves them all.
She chose Rapunzel to take for Show n Tell day last week.
Just us being cute one night on the porch swing.
That gets us all the way up to last Thursday when our house hunting adventures began!