Helpful?

Miles has really been coming into his own recently. He has been very clingy and whiny but he is growing up! He will see us doing things and he wants to mimic them. If I am working with a tool he can hardly contain himself until I finish or set it down, then he will pick it up and try to do what I was doing too. He has always been interested in how things work. When he sees a toy he will almost always turn it over to inspect the bottom within the first 3 minutes. He likes cars and anything with wheels.

The other day I was in the kitchen making breakfast and unloading the dishwasher. The box of pancake mix dropped from the cabinet and I left it there (yeah, I'm a good housekeeper). Miles saw it and started to look in it and pull out the bag of mix that was inside. I took that away from him, but as he was already a little powdery I let him play with the box and the bit of powder mix left in the bottom. Well, it's not in the bottom of the box anymore.






We have been wanting to do some gardening this year. Well, with all that we are doing to the house and moving in and organizing and raising a one year old, we didn't have time to prep the ground for the garden. I had already told Jared that I wanted to start small this year. I really am not good at growing things, so I really didn't want to be overwhelmed by trying to grow everything under the sun. Then I would have to keep track of when to harvest everything, weeding some huge garden etc. We decided that this year we would start in pots. While I was filling the pots with dirt Miles was there to help. At first he would just touch the dirt, but after a bit he really got into it and ended up taking handfuls of dirt and putting them into the pots like I was doing. He was however offended that I would not let him play with the plants and try to pull off their leaves. He only tried to eat the dirt once too!

Here he is helping by mixing up the labels so that I will have no idea which plants are where.







Here are my little plants all reaching up to grab some sun (well, today all they are getting is rain, but that's good too).

First Haircut & Valentine's Dinner

We finally did it today. I have been wanting to get Miles' hair cut for well over a month now, and today we did it!

Before:


After:


As you can tell, it really needed to be done and now it looks cute!

Jared and I went out for Valentine's Day dinner tonight too (yeah we are behind on all things). Actually it wasn't for Valentine's Day so much as it was out. The moving company just didn't show up one of the packing days and to make it up to us they said they would buy us dinner. Jared's parents told us that they would watch Miles for us if we wanted to go out (the offer started as going out the weekend after Valentine's Day). Well between the move and Miles being sick last month, we just did it today. It was great. We had a very nice time. It was strange to miss our boy, he is usually so close! We called before we went into the restaurant, and he was doing fine. We also called on the way back before a stop we had planned to make and we was still great! What more can you ask for. We are so grateful to have parents that want to spend time with our son and want us to be able to spend time on our own too!

Look at me, I'm still here!

Yay, I'm still here and have even found most of my stuff. I put some of it away too (he he)!

Yikes! That was day one. When our stuff first got here. It no longer looks like that. In fact, we have even gotten rid of the boxes that everything was packed in. I consider this quite an accomplishment because after our move out to San Francisco, we kept all the boxes. That is right, collapsed them and stored them in the garage. We knew we wanted to come back home, and didn't know if the company would pay for it. I don't currently have an "after" picture of that room because it isn't quite finished. It is unpacked but not organized. We are also putting in flooring in there. You can't see in the picture for all of the boxes but that room just has a painted concrete floor.

Anyway, Miles had his first birthday!

We had the party at Jared's parent's house. They were great to host it and I didn't have to do much at all except get the food.

We have been doing LOTS of cleaning!

But of course there is much more to do too!

This was amazing, here is my backyard one day (yes I know the grass needs to be mowed).

And here is the front two days later...

Now I know any of you from somewhere that actually gets snow won't recognize that stuff on the grass, I mean weeds, but it was snow! And just two days before that we were wearing shorts and t-shirts! In fact, that afternoon we were back to shorts. Thats Texas for ya!

Anyway, that's all for now!

Quick update

We are in our home, and our boxes came yesterday. We are busy unpacking. I think I have found all of the kitchen boxes...now to get the things in them put away! :)

We have the flooring in the master bedroom, but found that we had to repaint. That is almost done too. I have to cut in by the ceiling. Next up (this weekend) will be the other two floors and setting up our bed. Actually Jared hopes to have our bed up by Friday night. We will see!

Lots to unpack! Bye!

More work done, more to come

Jared and his dad are getting close. They think they will be back late tonight. I'm looking forward to it. It's been rough, but it's almost over. Tonight we will stay with my parents, and tomorrow....our own home. I really can't wait. We are going to be able to start installing the flooring right away. Miles and I went back over today and removed the baseboards from all three bedrooms. All we need to do is clear out the carpet and padding and begin instilation!

They will be ariving at his parents first, so I'll go over there and wait. He said that because the car is still loaded he doesn't want to leave it in a driveway, so we'll go over to our home and put the car in the garage. We'll bring his stuff, and the cats over to my parents for the night and in the morning we'll get started.

Jared said that he is expecting our stuff to arive mid-week next week. I'm hoping for Tuesday, but expecting Thursday. Anyway, that is about it. Glad to be getting a move on the work I guess.

No more carpets!

My mother-in-law and I ripped out all of the carpet and tack strips in my house today while my sister-in-law watched Miles! Yay! No more carpets! We bought this house just before we were married in 2001. At that time the whole house was carpet or laminate. We removed all of the carpeting except in the 3 bedrooms and tiled, and tiled, and tiled. Jared got tired of laying tile so I painted the floor in what was supposed to be the formal dining room. So then we had tiled living areas and kitchen, painted front room (which we used as a game room) and carpeted bedrooms. We had to replace the carpeting in the master and knew at that time that we eventually wanted to remove the bedroom carpets and do something else. The time is now! We are going to put wood floors in the bedrooms and the formal dining room/game room which will now be a "family activity room." Woot!

Sorry I have no pictures for you. I left the digital camera with Jared in San Francisco because it was too much to have to juggle on the plane. My parents said that I could use theirs, but I forgot to ask until they were at work already. Hopefully I'll get it tonight.

Jared is having a rough day. The packers were supposed to show up this morning at 9. I called him at 10.30 and he hadn't heard from them. He was going to call in another half an hour. I encouraged him to go ahead and call, and I'm glad I did. Another half an hour later and I got a call from one of the three coordinators saying that she had tried Jared and left a message. She said that our packers were rescheduled. They just didn't bother to, you know, CALL US!!!!! Grrrr! So, they will do all of the packing tomorrow instead of today and tomorrow and will still load on Wednesday. The really bad thing about it is that they were going to begin loading on Tuesday so that it didn't take all day on Wednesday. Now it will be all day on Wednesday and they won't get started driving this way until Thursday. Blah! I hoped that he would be back earlier on Friday than it now looks like.

Hope to have some good news to talk about tomorrow!

Here we are!

We have arrived in Texas, and it is 80 degrees. In February. Why are we here again? Miles has been super fussy and not sleeping too well. When I get him to sleep, the only way I can keep him asleep is to co-sleep. So, I have been going to bed early and just dealing with it. If I leave him he kinda crawls around in his sleep and if I put him in the crib he wakes up and cries. I may try the crib thing again tonight. I brought his bedding with us from home so it should smell and feel more or less the same.

My parents are in the middle of remodeling, so this place is anything but baby proof. I really don't feel like I can leave Miles alone at all. I'm used to being able to engage him in something and at least go to the bathroom by myself. Not here! Oh well.

I went to our house yesterday! Yay! I got the key from my father-in-law on Saturday, and went over there a little before noon to take a look around and get started cleaning. I tried the key in the door and.....nothing. Grr! Then I walked across the front to one side and smelled cigarette smoke. Outside. I looked down and the front of the house had a lot of cigarette butts. Oh, I was not happy. If the outside smelled like that, what was the indise going to be? I walked to the other side, and what greets me? My renter's dogs! Hi! What are you doing here? You were supposed to be gone yesterday! So, I called the renter and had to leave a message. I called my father-in-law to be sure that I had the right key, but he was still at church. Well, that was a wasted trip. But before I got too far the renter called and said that they left at 4 am and someone needed to take the dogs back to Waco but it was too late then. She also metioned that a truck was in the garage because it had some of her stuff in the bed and they didn't want to park it in the lot at the hotel. She met me at the house, and gave me the key and a garage door remote. I told her the stuff was no problem. I would go eat lunch, and she could get what she needed out. I wandered around the house for a second and was overwhelmed by what needed to be done! I left for some lunch and when I returned she was removing the last of her stuff, and I felt better about the place. I didn't get much done yesterday, but she had dome a pretty good job of just cleaning. There is a lot to do, and speaking of, I should get over there and get started!