Wednesday, December 19, 2012

I help daddy....


For the past....2 and a half months we have been remodeling our kitchen/dining room area.  We know that remodeling is dirty, hard, long and often stressful, but besides having a wonderful, spacious, new, clean, workable kitchen when we are done, we have found so much joy in having Elias "work" alongside daddy and help him.  It has been so much fun seeing him follow Andy around and copy all he does.  Here are a few pictures to give you a glimpse of what we have been up to.
I want to be just like my daddy!

I've seen Daddy do this, now "Eli do it"

the demo has begun... bye bye kitchen as we know it

Elias loves the project and loves helping and watching daddy!

Eli the tool man!

I got my tool belt just like papi!

yay! I get to help daddy by crawling in the tunnel... Eli wanted to cut his own hole in the floor later.

loved the "tunnel" crawl space under the house!
Elias turned out to be a good "fetcher" for daddy when they were in the cramped crawl space

I help daddy cut the pipes!
kitchen before
ALMOST done!

kitchen during
make shift kitchen during

Friday, December 7, 2012

Zoo lights year 3

This is the third year in a row we were able to go see the zoo lights with our neighbor (now x-neighbor) annabelle (6 weeks older than Elias).

We got to ride the zoo train! A big hit with Elias!


using an umbrella for the first time was also a highlight!



2011 zoo lights

2011
It has been a fun tradition even though every year I hesitate because it is raining and cold....

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Boating with uncle Jim









We had a great time visiting uncle Jim at his "floating home" and he took us out on a boat ride,,, an new experience for Elias, half of the time he seemed sea sick and half of the time he loved it!

when we got back to uncle Jim's elias danced and sang the names of his cousins and spun himself dizzy!

Sunday, August 12, 2012

home sweet home

Daddy's helper- Eli even borrowed his cousin's tool belt!

moving back in
putting in the new floor

Saturday, June 30, 2012

Surprises!

We moved into our new home on father's day.  We absolutely LOVE the location.. but, The move has been much more difficult than we had expected.

I realized this if the first home (of 4 homes) since I was married that hasn't been brand new or completely remodeled and updated.  I realized how spoiled I had been to have all the windows and appliances working.  Andy and I realized that our quote "we like this house because there is work we could do, but don't need to; we can move into it just how it is" was not quite accurate.

The previous owners must have had more candles burning than I had realized the two times we walked through it, because when we got here with the moving van, the house smelled like one thing- animals.  Since I am allergic to animals, that is not my favorite smell.  We camped out with Andy's parents (3 doors down!) and waited two days to set up our furniture so the carpet cleaners could come. When the carpet cleaner came, he said... um, there is animal pee on the carpet, the steamer will just make the smell worse until it dries.  Well, we gave it a try, then dried the carpets and set up our bed.  That night the smell was so strong, we could taste it.  Not quite what a woman in her first trimester of pregnancy with an overactive sense of smell wants.

sorting cherries with mommy
The next two days I deodorized, vacuumed, cleaned, sanitized, deodorized, vacuumed, febreezed, etc, the house still smelled like dog.  So we went to cherry harvest in eastern WA for the weekend.












at the loading dock in the cherry orchard



 When we got back, the house stunk.  It did smell much better when I had candles lit!   Wednesday I gave in and surrendered the battle of the carpets and had Andy rip it out, I didn't care that we have nothing to put down in its place, get the carpet out! And he did in about 15 minutes! He is so amazing.
ahhh, no more carpet!

master bedroom
We took the carpet out of our bedroom too and are camped out in the nursery. Elias loves his new room, but has a hard time staying in his new bunk bed and still prefers to sleep in his stroller.

tree in our front yard with a bouncy hammock in it
The other night Andy went downstairs to discover that the toilet was leaking and the walls of the stairs were being damaged...
it looks like this didn't start till we moved in though.
bunk beds...  before we took off the steps to
get on the top bunk

The yard of the house is still amazing as ever.  We have two kiwi vines, a male and female... hopefully they will produce many baby kiwis this year!  We have 7 blueberry bushes and 2 big red currant bushes (if anyone wants currants, now is the time to let me know!) 


kiwi vines on the garden shed



One last surprise is in our bedroom (the nursery) Andy and I get to stargaze as we go to sleep because there are plastic glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling.  Its pretty fun, maybe I'll get them for our room when we finish the master!

Monday, June 11, 2012

Vancouver or Bust!

We bought a house in Vancouver, WA!  It really officially closed today, after a long tiring search and loan process.  This is Elias in the front yard of the new house (the front yard is much bigger than the back yard, but the backyard is a nice size too).  We plan to move in in about 2 weeks, but this rain and cold weather could make things with cherry harvest delay enough that we may have to adjust that...

Friday, May 25, 2012

My birthday boy!


We didn't do a big party this year... pretty much just family.  Here are Eli and his cousins celebrating his birthday

Auntie Dayna made him a tractor cake... look who's driving the tractor -Elias!

a sand box, his birthday present from mom and dad

Fresa "Fruta" birthday cake while visiting Eastern WA

Thursday, April 19, 2012

TRACTORS!

I suppose you could say Elias is a little bit obsessed with tractors! Who knew it was so much fun to look at tractors, play with tractors, and talk about tractors.