This is for Adam

Isn't she a beauty?

My Friday Night

Church is having a dads and kids camp out night tonight on the green in front of the building. Scott brought Emily with the idea that they would try it, and just come home if she didn't get to bed, and go back in the morning to take down the tent. The women had a pizza get together at a house, and I just got home. I called Scott, and Emily is asleep in the tent, and all looks like it is going well.

I have never spent a night a night by myself since we moved into this house, and I think it is truly only the second time I have been in the house by myself since we moved in. (the first time was last mother's day... I kid you not.) Not to mention this is the first time that I have ever spent the night away from Emily.

And I'm not complaining. I like having a night all by myself. There is laundry to do, a dishwasher that needs to be unloaded, but I think I will go start reading the stack of magazines that I haven't even looked at from the past four months.
:) It's a one of a kind Friday night.

Harvest Brown

I had a project planned to start and complete over spring break. I go back to work Monday, and there's no way it will be done then.

I know I have mentioned before what a crappy paint job the previous owners did. The bedrooms aren't so bad, but the worst is the common areas like the upstairs hall, the stairwell, the living room, and the little inlet between the downstairs bath and closet. This was all the same color. Now their color choice I don't mind, it's just that the job was so bad, that you can see all sorts of brush strokes, places where they missed, and then on the white trim where they didn't tape and got the wall paint all goobered on the frames and base boards. It drives me nuts. Not to mention the job around the fire place mantel. Atrocious.

At first I thought that I would do the same color that they did which was more of a carmel latte', but then a friend talked me into doing something different... going to all the trouble, might as well have a new color. I agreed. So I went with "Harvest Brown," which is more a Frappacino brown base. This is very similar to what Scott and I (really what Adam) painted in our bedroom on Floradora. I love love LOVE the color now that we have gotten started, but it is taken for freaking ever! So far we have finished the upstairs hall and laundry area and put the first coat of white trim. I hope to finish the second coat today during Em's nap time. Seriously though, the entire project is going to take us forever. And also Scott had declared me the messiest painter ever. I get paint all over the plastic covering, the paint brush, myself... I changed out of my paint clothes and Scott was amazed that somehow I'd even gotten paint on my stomach under my shirt....? Who knows.

And then there's the problem with the stairwell. We have a two-story tall ceiling that goes from the bottom of the stairs all the way to the top. The guy at Lowe's said to get an extension latter and then put a cinder block under the one side that is on the lower stair to make them level, and then have at it at the top to do the line at the ceiling. That just seems crazy scary to me.
Any other ideas?

Happy Easter!

I hope your Easter is a little warmer than ours. Our low was in the low twenties last night... not normal at at all for this time of year. But a few flannel sheets over the vegetables and berry vines, and all is well.

This is Emily in the car after church. Everybody had their Easter dresses on, but with added long sleeve shirts, jackets, and leggings. Emily's dress wasn't nearly as cute as it would have been if the weather would have been above 80 like last weekend. To compare, I heard the weather man say that our low last night was twenty degrees lower for Easter than the low last December for Christmas.

It was just the three of us this year, which was okay. I asked Scott what he wanted for Easter dinner (thinking he would say something like a ham, turkey, or possibly even grilled steak) but all he said was the chipped beef cheese ball that Mary makes with Ritz crackers. Hmmm. Okay. Easy enough. I made that, but added a glazed ham and a few other things. Entirely too much food, but we have great leftovers.

This morning at church for the second Easter in a row, we watched a short clip from a sermon. The tag line through the entire thing is "But it's only Friday... Sunday's a'comin'. " Anybody else ever seen this? It apparently is famous, and part of a sermon. It took me a month last spring to get it out of my head (it's catchy) and now I've got it stuck in there again after this morning. I want to try to find the entire sermon. I bet it's good.

Happy Easter!

Weekend update

It was beautiful this weekend, and the pollen seems to have let up... some. Here are some of the highlights:

- Went to Kids Day on Friday evening. Ate fair-like food, watched Happy Feet on the lawn once the sun went down. Very fun. Emily got to play with her friends Sara and Noah, and I think she enjoyed dancing around before the movie started even more than the movie.

- Had a great time with friends last night at our our house. Scott grilled chicken and shrimp, and I made roasted red potatoes, green beans, and a salad. To add to that (Scott and my highlight of the evening) was some "Monterey Sourdough Bread." We were skeptical, but seriously, it was the real thing. It tasted soooooooo good! We also had stellar chocolate cake with coffee. WOnderful time with friends.

- Church Easter egg hunt was this afternoon. We almost didn't make it because EMily had a napping mishap today and only slept for twenty minutes, but luckily for her and her sweet tooth, we made it. She was so excited about all that candy.

And: Here is my question, speaking of napping mishaps... is it awful to scream at a kid who rides his little miniature scooter-like thing around the neighborhood? It runs on this loud motor that drives us crazy, and wakes Em up during nap time. I can understand the fun he has, but seriously, he was on it going around the neighborhood when we returned from church at noon, and was still on it at three when we left for the egg hunt. Twenty minutes was all she napped. Is it wrong to ask if he could give it a rest? I thought surely he MUST run out of gas sometime, but he must store a refill in his garage because he seriously didn't stop the entire three hours. Where's Bessie's potato gun when you need it?