Home Alone

Kolby is finally back after leaving me home alone for two weeks! He had training for his new job that took place in Chicago, and then he had to fly straight to Santa Fe for his grad school residency. He had a great time at both, but he’s glad to be home. Maya and I are glad to have him home, too.

I’d say I fared pretty well while he was gone, thanks to a few friends staying the night with me here and there. I was able to put in some extra time at work and I kept myself occupied with a home improvement project that I’ll talk about later. I’d say the low point of my extended time alone was when I went to the grocery store and purchased nothing but a 40-pack of Bagel Bites and a 2-liter of Coke. It wasn’t my proudest moment.

Kolby really enjoys his time with his grad school peers, particularly because they have a lot in common when it comes to their interest in creative writing. For the graduation ceremony that took place this year, the guys in his cohort decided to don mustaches (not sure why).
  I made it abundantly clear that he was not to return home with that stache. Ron Burgandy, anyone?

Kolby started back to work this week. We may have to put Maya in therapy to help her adjust to not having one of us home during the day like she always has. We did finally spring for a decent dog bed for her, though. I’m not sure why that’s related to her getting accustomed to being home alone, nor why it is even worth mentioning, but she’s excited about her new digs.

Back to the home improvement project. For the weeks that Kolby was gone, I spent every day after work turning our (detached) garage into a guest house. The previous owners converted the garage into a game room-type space, with carpet and real walls and an A/C unit. For the past year, we have just been using it as garage storage--- leftover paint, Christmas decorations, power tools, lawn mower, miscellaneous junk, and pretty much anything that we didn’t want to deal with in the house. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

But after some hard work, sweat, the unsupervised use of a circle saw, and a very minor black eye from the back side of a hammer--- I converted the space into this:

The grey curtain is hiding a bunch of shelves that I built to hold all of our junk. Thanks to my fam for helping me put together the furniture, which has been in the family since Brad and I shared a room when we were little. And also thanks to Ikea--- you sure do know how to price some bedding. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Not that we’re expecting a lot of guests anytime soon, but this was a project we’ve had hanging over our heads for awhile, and we’ll need this space come September when our Life Group starts back up and the little kids need a place to play. I have some cheap decorating ideas in the works, but I’m not in any hurry to spend any more time working on this room for awhile.

While I’m on the topic of home improvement projects, let me post a few more pictures of some other things I’ve done lately. My friend Alayne helped me make a curtain for above our kitchen sink:

When my parents moved, this baker’s rack that had been in their laundry room was up for grabs. It found a great home in our dining/kitchen area. I’m trying to decide if I want to paint the base of it black or antique red or leave it alone. Any thoughts? The shelves are full of things I’ve collected from my great-grandmother’s house. I can’t decide what should stay or what should go, so it’s a bit cluttered right now.

When my parents were here last weekend, they brought me these curtains and curtain rods that were left at their new house. Free guest room makeover… can’t beat that.

I wouldn’t say this is an improvement in any real sense, and definitely a step back in the decor department, but we installed our window A/C unit in our master bedroom for the summer. It allows us to leave the central A/C set really hot at night and keep our room cool at night with this thing for a lot cheaper.  It didn’t fit as well in our old window, but we made it work with some foil and binder clips. Classy, eh?

That’s about all that is new here. Oh, and some exciting news--- as a birthday gift from Kolby, I had someone create a blog design for us. It will go live on Sunday (I think). I’m pretty adept at most computer things, but I don’t know the first thing about Blogger or blog backgrounds, etc. I thought it would be fun to add some color around here, so Kolby treated me to some help in that department. Hopefully it’ll look OK!

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Catching Up

So, it’s been awhile since a normal update about what’s been going on with us. I would say that not much has been going on, but since it’s been two months—surely I can come up with something!

Let’s start with Kolby.  The kid is getting really excited about his new job! The more and more interaction he’s had with his principal and with other teachers (and students) at the school, the more psyched he’s gotten about how great of a fit this will be for him. The kids are great, and the teachers are fairly young and several are pursuing their Master’s degrees as well (or just received theirs). There is also a great balance of male and female teachers at his school, which has not been the case at the other schools he’s taught at. He’s usually on a teaching team with older women, which has allowed him to learn a lot from some great veteran teachers, but they didn’t really provide the type of social interaction he would have loved to have. He’s hopeful for an all-around great experience this year, and I personally don’t think he’ll be disappointed. It’s a great job at a great school. Plus, senior AP English and a creative writing elective--- I mean if that doesn’t sound perfect for him than I don’t know what does.

I also have some exciting news on the job front--- I got a promotion last week. I won’t really be doing anything different, I basically just got a new title (and it has the word “economist” in it, which is really thrilling to me) to mark the new responsibilities I’ve acquired over the past few months. Still no upgrade from my cubicle though, so Brad can still email me pictures of his plush office at his new job to try to get under my skin :)

Our summer has actually been really busy, although I can’t really recall what makes it feel that way. We went through a three-week stretch where we had something going every night of the week, which isn’t usual for us. Things have settled down for a bit but I’m sure they’ll pick back up once school starts.

One major task that we’ve recently taken on is to watch the TV show LOST for the first time--- all 6 seasons. I was mourning the loss of a summer break, so we (I) decided that a TV marathon could help bring me a sense of the carefree summers that are now a thing of the past. We’re hooked. We’ve already made it to season 5. I’m embarrassed to calculate how many hours of TV that sums to, but the episodes are nearly an hour long and several seasons have upwards of 20 episodes. It’s been so fun, though! I mean why not?!?

In anticipation of dual-income for the first time in our marriage, we’ve really ramped up our spending lately--- upgrading to HD cable and signing up for a pest control service. What can I say, we live on the edge.

I’ve been working on some home improvement projects lately, but I need my regular point and shoot camera to take some pictures of everything.  Or a wider lens for my nice camera.  I sent my point and shoot with Russell for his study abroad trip to London this summer.  I wouldn’t say that I have high hopes of every seeing it again.  So far, he’s already managed to lose his debit card, laptop, and passport.  My oh my.

And just so I have an excuse to add some pictures to this post, we took a short road trip a few weekends ago to visit some family in Emory, TX. Brad and Remy came with us and we had a great afternoon visiting Ruth & Ray, my great aunt and great uncle who stood in as my quasi-grandparents at our wedding. I try to visit them every few months, and I think that town and that mobile home are some of my favorite places on earth. Visiting them is an experience that only our family on that side can truly understand, but let’s just say that a great time was had by all. Especially the baby raccoon that Uncle Ray was trying to coerce into a humane trap so he could raise it in his kitchen. Apparently he misses Misty, the squirrel he raised from infancy (also in his kitchen), who recently escaped. Like I said, Emory visits are always an adventure and never disappoint.

This is Pete.

This is Uncle Ray’s tobacco.

This is Pete snacking on Uncle Ray’s tobacco.

Well, that about sums things up!  Until next time…

Baby Emersyn

I’ve had the same 4 best friends since middle school.  Jessica & Alayne both got married three years ago, Laura just got married over Memorial Day weekend and Katie has a wedding coming up in November.  Jessica, the baby (by age) of the group, was actually the first to leave for college, the first to get married, and will soon be the first to have a baby!!!

We all gathered at Lake Texoma last weekend to celebrate with Steven and Jessica, who will welcome baby Emersyn into their family in early September.  Aside from playing games, hanging out on the lake, and chatting late into the night, our families also came up on Saturday afternoon for a BBQ baby shower.

 

It was a great weekend we are so happy for the parents-to-be!  Emersyn will be a very loved little girl!!!

July 4th

We spent a wonderful 4th of July weekend with my mom’s side of the family down at my parents’ ranch.  All 22 of us were able to make it this year and it was so great to have everyone together!

It was a pretty typical family gathering for us--- lots of food, games and fun.  Here are a few highlights.

We introduced a new game called Ladderball.  We usually pitch washers, but this game sufficed until we found a good spot to dig the washer holes.

I don’t have many pictures of other things we did, but I have a lot of pictures of everyone playing Ladderball because I could take them while reclining in one of the zero-gravity chairs.  If you haven’t tried one of these, you are really missing out.  They will change your life.

There aren’t any restaurants near the ranch, so we all took turns being in charge of meals.  We had BBQ, burgers & brats, and a fish fry complete with homemade hushpuppies and fried okra.

We also had a lot of other summer goodies, like watermelon, homemade ice cream, and some fun treats that Remy made.

When it wasn’t pouring down rain, we took the boat out to do some tubing and catch some rays (we needed the sun… Kolby is practically glowing in the picture below, and I’m not any better).

One highlight of the day at the lake: Russell asking Kolby to put sunscreen on his back and then proceeding to sit on his lap.  It make Kolby pretty uncomfortable, yet he obliged so who knows.

Like last year, we played a few games of family whiffle ball.  Also like last year, Brad and Russell were team captains and I was chosen last.  What is it with brothers and their need to pester?

We got a ping-pong table for the screened porch and put it to good use.

We played hours and hours of a group ping-pong game called One Bounce where when it was your turn, you had to let the ball roll off the table and bounce one time and then hit it back on the table for the next person’s turn.   With a lot of people in a really small space, we joked around about how one of the adults (most likely Mom or Uncle Wayne) were sure to accidentally bust through one of the screens.  But it was Brad who lost control and braced himself by sitting one of the many coolers that lined the wall.

Unfortunately, it was the one that was styrofoam.

Like any real vacation, naps abounded.

And finally, we just relaxed and soaked in the fact that we were in the country and away from the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives. 

Some family pictures:

*Sidenote:  Russell appears in 7 pictures in this post.  Who noticed that he has a full-grown mustache?  No one?  Exactly.  It is blonde and it is totally disgusting.  I’m campaigning to get him to shave it but I’m not having any luck.  Now he’s in London for the rest of the summer.  Good luck picking up chicks with that thing, bro.

Flickr

My computer and I had a disagreement about its willingness to upload the rest of the photo slideshows from our vacation.  After many failed attempts, I looked into other options.

Meet my friend Flickr.  You can follow the link to view more pictures from our trip.  When you click on a set, you can then click on the Slideshow button in the upper right corner of the screen to view all the pictures in a much larger size.

Back to regular non-vacation-related blogging soon!