Dec 22

We’ve been making progress since I have last posted though, we’ve had to take a little break of a few days to finally do some Christmas shopping, which, thankfully, we were able to do almost entirely online. It’s been awhile since I have posted, but I’ll just publish a few photos in non-chronological order.

Mom has been working on the trim at least a little bit each day and on Monday we got the bookcases moved into the living room.  The miter saw is still in the living room, but it’ll only be a few hours more of work before we’re finished with the trim and can start decorating in preparation for our party on Saturday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glenn had to totally redo the electrical in the kitchen and hallway, but not we have light and we also replaced the fixture in the kitchen with one that was brushed-nickel to match the other hardware in the house.  Wow, the photos I took of the light turned out pretty cool!

The venetian plaster in the back bathroom has been sealed and is now finished.  Venetian plaster takes a lot of extra work and time because it requires a lot of different coats and you have to wait for each coat to dry. However, thanks to the extra effort venetian plaster looks fantastic and we may end up using it in a couple of other rooms.

 

 

One of our biggest priorities now is to get the hallway bathroom semi-functional for our guests. We’ll paint the walls in the bathroom with the same paint we used in the laundry room, you can see a sample of the color in the above picture.

 

 

 

 

 

Today we got the water/ice system for the refrigerator hooked up!

 

The original water line had rotted and we also had to replace the water filter. The fridge had been delivered exactly 363 days ago, so at least we can say that we got the water system hooked up in less than a year!

 

 

 

Our growing collection of Christmas cards

 

Well, now I’ve (reluctantly) have to get ready for a ballet performance of the Nutcracker that we’ll be attending tonight…should be interesting…

Dec 16

  The roads were still just a little bit icy today after our freezing-rain yesterday.








Some two handsome chaps…Noah & Aaron.

This afternoon we had an appointment at the Millennium hotel in downtown St. Louis.  My Grandpa was going to be fitted for some custom tailored dress shirts.

We were a little bit early so we went to the 28th floor of the hotel where the riverfront restaurant is located. While eating dinner you can get a great view of St. Louis, not only because it’s so high (like their menu prices) but the dining area actually turns around in a complete circle! It takes an hour to go around in a full circle, during which you can get a fantastic view of the Gateway Arch, the Mississippi river, the downtown area and also a look down into the Busch stadium where the Cardinals play.

The room’s view has already changed between this picture and the picture above.
We also visited our Grandpa this evening before we drove back home.
Every time we go to a friends house I always gasp when I see their Christmas tree…we’ve never even thought about setting up a tree until now; there are a few other things that are a priority such as making room for the kitchen table, so that we can have a place to eat!



Just a few random shots of Noah:


Trying not to smile                                  Look out!  He’s about to throw that knife!! (He must not have really thrown it because at that range there’s no way he would miss the photographer who is posting these pictures.)

Dec 15

This week we’ve been doing some mostly online Christmas shopping, but Glenn has been tackling a few things and trim has continued to be laid.  We’ve also “found” our kitchen counters and have tried picking up a little bit and doing laundry.

  The snow is still snow on the ground and we got some freezing rain tonight…but that’s not a problem when you’ve got some warm hot chocolate (I suppose that is oxy-moronic) or a warm hot-cappuccino whichever the case may be.

  Just a quick plug for Cabela’s…

  Lydia’s also been able to survive the cold despite the fact that she can have neither lick up a warm hot chocolate or a hot cappuccino…yup, she’s cuddled in an electric blanket…

 

Carpentry       &        Electrical

Yesterday, the chandelier in our kitchen suddenly went out after Benjamin hit his head against it.  We’ve tried replacing light bulbs, etc, but it still won’t come on.  We’ve also had a bad light switch that requires some wiggling and babying for the light to come one, so we replaced that light switch.  It ends up that we needed to put in a different kind of switch than the one we installed and the light won’t come on at all now.

  So pretty much yesterday we just sat around in the dark and wondered why none of our fixes were fixing.

 

As this year draws to a close (gasp! time flies!) I’ve been working on a time lime of stuff that happened in 2010; certainly a year like no other I’ve ever had. However, I think that being able to see what we have been through this year in a visual way helps us understand why we feel tired, strained and busy.  When Mom saw what I had gotten done so far she said, “That’s what my brain looks like.”  If any of you have seen the scene in “Bubble Trouble” that shows Mrs. Moore’s thoughts-that’s nothing to what my Mom was thinking just a few months ago.

  

I know you won’t be able to read the text in those boxes, so here a few examples of what the boxes may say, “28th-Chemo Treatment,” “3rd-Benjamin Catches a Beaver,” “6th-We Visit Inyart Family",” “13th Appointment w/Dr. Gillam 2pm, Lab Tests 3pm” etc. Obviously there are a lot of other things that we’ve forgotten and also the day-to-day items like having nurses coming in and out of the house, trying to run to the grocery store and make a meal, trying to keep caught up on laundry, taking care of proj…

In the picture above you’re seeing less than the first 6 month’s worth and it certainly got busier in the summer and fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Took a few photos the other night while taking Lydia to go potty, and, of course, she has on a sweater.  However, usually she also has a coat on when she goes outside.

Well, a merry day to you all and to all a good night!

Snow

  

When I opened up the shade in my bedroom this morning I had the pleasant surprise of seeing snow!

New Kitchen Sink

 

  We had a late start today because we arrived so late at home last night.

   We had to pick up some plumbing supplies at the hardware store and then came back and replaced the kitchen faucet.

Moving Appliances and Skating in Forest Park

It seems that during this renovation in order to get a job accomplished it requires a series of steps in order to finally get the job accomplished. Noah and Mom were up ‘til 2:30am painting a second coat on the laundry room walls. We had to paint so we could put on the trim so we could move in the washer and dryer so we can do LAUNDRY!!!

We haven’t cleaned a load of clothes here at the house since before we left for Florida and that was back in October! It’s pretty exciting…as soon as the dryer and washer get hooked it’ll officially be LAUNDRY DAY!

Wow, I guess when you eat 2 long-johns for breakfast you start writing in all caps with exclamation POINTS!!! You may think that the picture of Lydia to your left has nothing to do with laundry, but Lydia’s pretty tired of wearing stinky clothes too…and she does wear clothes….

We loaded up our comfy leather couch to deliver it over to my Grandma’s place. However, to move the couch we had to move the chairs that were blocking the washer and dryer which had to be moved out of the way so we could move the boxes that were on top of the couch so that we could move the couch unto the dolly! Whew, all in one breath!

             

Picking up breakfast…I think that we’ll need some Wheaties too…

 

The dolly made it fairly easy for us to get the couch to the front door, but we had to lift it to get inside the doorway.

Mom was getting the trim placed in the laundry room while the rest of us worked on getting the appliances out of the garage.

 

Installing the anti-tip device                                                Measuring for the trim

The next appliance was the most difficult of all and that was the refrigerator. When we had moved it out to the garage a few weeks ago it barely squeezed through the front door and it was so heavy that it required all 5 of us to move it. However, this time we’re going to take our time and do a few things to the fridge first to make it lighter and thinner.

We duct taped the sides of the door way to minimize the chances of the fridge getting scraped up.

 

 

Grandma and I worked on getting everything off of the refrigerator and freezer and moving the food into the kitchen.

Removing the doors                         We also had to detach wires and a water hose for the icemaker

 

 

Then once the fridge was on the dolly it was smooth sailing

Re-attaching the wiring and also hooking up the water to the ice maker…which was a project that happened a few days ago.

The entire line for the ice maker had to be replaced because it was rotten and we also had to remove the old filtering system and replace it with a new one. It’s been at least half a dozen years since the icemaker’s worked, so getting this set up finally is pretty exciting.

The trim was finished in the laundry room so we could move the washer and dryer in. We were pretty excited at how the white trim and the white appliances popped off the pomegrante walls.

When we setup the washer we found that both of it’s shut off valves were leaking and will have to be replaced.

This evening we went to Webster Groves to have some fun…Grandma and Glenn came along and also Noah’s good friend, Aaron.

We ate dinner at Dr. Jazz’s which is designed to be an store that you saw in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  We found these two guys on a park bench who needed a meal so they ate with us too.

 

 

 

After dinner we drove to Forest Park and went ice skating.We didn’t start skating at the rink until 11pm so we stayed until it closed at midnight. We were all pretty tired so it was a quiet ride back home.