Family Visit

https://picasaweb.google.com/mbuschel/FamilyVisit

Click on the link above to see pictures from when the Buschelman's came to town!

William and Stephen colored one night after dinner.  William told me all about the differences between drawing a bad guy and a good guy.  Bad guys have little eyes and good guys have big eyes.  Or was it the other way around... I can't remember, but it was cute.

This little girl was darling and really independent. I was impressed by her ability to actually walk up and down stairs, instead of just sliding on her stomach or rear like most little kids do.  

One evening I asked William if he wanted to play hide and seek outside with Dominic and Molly.  He replied with an enthusiastic "yes". I love playing hide and seek with this kid.  He'd start out hiding on his own, or where you told him to hide, but after a few rounds he'd just ask to hide with me and when the person who was "it" started to count, he would urgently say "Lets go".  We let Molly just wander the backyard, but a took her to hide with me a few times and she was super sweet!  She was really still and would whisper baby talk in my hear.  She's so smart and totally didn't give our hiding spot away with her quite giggling.

We all played a couple rounds of "bocce ball".  Fun and easy going game.  I'm sure my cousin Sarah could easily beat us all just by herself though.

I took a day off work to hang out with everyone, but forgot my camera on our adventure downtown.  We walked through the underground en route to the myriad gardens, played around a bit on the kids parks, had lunch, saw the ducks, and headed back home.  The trip downtown would have been really cool had the splash park been open, but it wasn't.  In retrospect, we could have just stayed in Edmond and played at the park at Hafer, but I know that Stephen had a lot of fun showing us all around town and showing off his Godson to the peeps at work.

This was all my idea of putting Molly in the doll crib I had from when I was little.  I knew she wouldn't fit, and I had no idea how she would react to it, but it was hilarious.  She just had this blank look on her face while she played with her feet like "uh, ok Aunt Megan, I can't believe you put me in this and are now taking lots of pictures of this hilarious situation, but since I can't really get out of it myself, I'll just play with my feet until you pick me up"

I took her out, but then she just turned right back around and tried to get in it herself.  She managed to sit it in and then promptly gestured for the blanket and doll.  She looked so proud.

Then it was William's turn while Molly rocked him to sleep.

Alright...more pictures and adventures another day!

coolness

Man, it's been awhile and TONS  of events have happened as of late.

But today, I don't have the gusto to write a long post.

Instead I will share with you two photos of which speak for themselves.

Painting is done!....almost

These pictures aren't the greatest because of bad lighting and I'm totally not a good enough photographer to figure out how to make these look great.  But you'll get the idea.

Speaking of getting the idea.. now that we painted you can tell what our texture looks like!

Here is a picture of our new vent/light  in the bathroom.

These pictures are not the greatest...but we did finish painting!  (except for a tiny sliver where the green tape is because I have to find my long artist brush to reach that bit and a few touch ups of spots we missed)

And obviously, we installed our new lighting!  It's awesome...but way too bright!  We'll be swapping out the 60 watts for 40 watts for sure.  One thing we noticed though is that the bulbs are a tad longer than the globes so they stick out and you can see them.  We hadn't planned on that and we can't turn the light to have the globes face upwards because we measured this out exactly and if we turned it, the globes would be like 1.5 inches from the ceiling.  That would look really funny and probably leave some serious white hot spots on the ceiling.  Hopefully, lowering the wattage will solve our problem.

So...to recap.

We started with this mess. Super gross looking frosting like texture. A soffit with a terrible light fixture and a really large builders mirror.

Then we started tearing off the texture, which thankfully came off really easy thanks to the previous owners texturing over some really gross wallpaper circa 1981.

And now here we are.  Much improved.  We haven't decided if we are going to start tiling next, or if we'll put the crown molding on and frame out the existing  mirror to make it look prettier and at least of this portion of the bathroom basically done.

To Do:

-Install crown molding

- hang builders mirror and frame it out

-touch up blue paint and all trim that is messed up

- tile floor and shower

-install all new bath fixtures

-install new counter top

-strip and repaint cabinetry (eventually)

Texturing the walls

So this week we didn't watch any tv (except for The Bachelorette on Monday night) and the hubs only had like 3 total hours of gaming time just so we could knuckle down and get a move on the bathroom project.

We didn't quite have time to paint it though (boo) because of said shows watched and of tutoring night.

However here is what we DID accomplish!

(Not pictured is the drywall repair job that Stephen did.  He did a fantastic job of patching everything up.  I probably should have taken a photo since it was an important step in the process..whoops)

This photo shows that we taped and mudded all the new drywall seams and also some old ones.  It was a bit tricky, and we left behind a few bumpy spots that we were afraid would be obvious when we textured over it.  I thought it looked fine and after a dispute over that issue, Stephen ran to the store, got some more mud and a different "mudding" tool.  Hallelujah for that tool!  and the mud!  It just spread so much easier and smoother.  We should have used it in the first place.  Anyway, crisis averted and it looked even better than before.

Next step was priming the drywall.  Easy peasy and we didn't even have to tape anything off because pretty much all the trim is getting a touch up.  Oh, all the minor details, how I loathe thee.

And here we are all textured!  Don't be afraid of texturing on your own, people.  It's super easy. And now that I think about it, it would have been awesome to shoot a little video so you could see how we do it.   Maybe I still will on some left over drywall in the garage.

Oh and sorry for the bad lighting and the fact that you can't even tell this is textured.  

Can you see it in this picture?...Sorta.  Well, it's a super subtle texture made by putting on some texture with a texture roller, which gives a more or less even coating of it, then you come back with a trowel and just start spreading it around in different directions creating swooshes.  And some drywall will still show through, but it's supposed to, that's the "textured" part.

So that's where we're at. Keep a lookout for the next bathroom update which should be about painting and putting in our new fancy light!

My how things have grown

This is totally unrelated to this post, but I thought I'd buy a cheapo temperature reader at Home Depot today because it's always nice to look out the window at any time of day and see what the temp is.  I just hope it doesn't blow any in any wind.

First pick of the season!  Cherry tomatoes.  There should be about 5 more ready to pick in the next few days.

My one cucumber plant was getting out of control and I had been meaning to make a trellis for it for  quite some time so the plant could learn to grow up the trellis instead of just spreading everywhere.  Well, so I finally made one today!  I did have to loosely "twisty tie" the plant to the trellis though.  I'm hoping that doesn't hurt it in the long run.  Once it actually attaches itself to the trellis, I'll be able to take the ties off.  Think of it like training wheels for plants!

And now with a trellis, our garden looks like a serious garden!

Here's an updated look of our corn.  It's about 18" tall. 

All of the tomato plants!!!!!  And I found like 8 roma tomato and 1 regular tomato starting to grow already!!!! 

Whiz Kids Spring Fling 2012

Last Saturday we attended the annual Spring Fling with our whiz kids Jesus and Nataly. 

There was a bungee jump thing...

Rock Climbing...

 

Even I wanted to try...but this is as far as I made it before freaking out.

Nataly (left) and her friend being silly.

We were all exhausted after the long day being outside but we had a lot of fun.  Our kids graduate from the program this year and we hope that we've taught them a few things, made them better readers and helped them feel worthy and proud of their accomplishments.  

Thank you pest control

I have a serious aversion to moths and june bugs.  I turn into an instant ninja master when I see one anywhere outside or in my house.  Ninja master meaning I just start freaking out and fail my arms and scream like a scaredy cat and demand that Stephen take care of the problem before I will enter the room where I saw the moth.

So you can imagine my surprise when I opened my front door the other day to find this.  I almost stepped on them BAREFOOT!!!!  I flipped out and gasped in disgust.  I carefully went outside and got the broom.  I started to sweep them and quickly found out that they were not dead.  Just stunned I guess by the spray the pest control people had done about a week ago.

 So, i guess that meant the pest control people did their job well!  But it was still a weird thing to randomly have like 30 toppled over june bugs in my entry way. I tried to sweep them up, but their gross legs started getting stuck in my broom and I just couldn't do it anymore.  Naturally, I called stephen and said that he HAD to sweep them out of here and throw them away.

 There were two one legged crickets in the mix, too.  Gives me the heebee jeebees.