Baby steps.

First, the requisite toddler picture.

She wants to share an onion ring with you.
But she only wants to share because she stole it from me to begin with. Little thief.

This little beauty is growing up through a crack in my sidewalk near where I had petunias in a planter box last year.

And now, on with the renos.

Here we are partway through the shelf building. Not terribly difficult, but millions of pieces, so it took a long time.

Finished!
Except, as you can see if you look closely, it's missing 3 shelves. Yes, that's right. When you try to add up what boxes you need in your head instead of on paper, you come up short. 12 shelf boxes does not equal 12 shelves. It equals 15 shelves. But we have to go get new coat racks anyway, since I'm building a wall right through the middle of the old one.

And the missing shelves thing works out, because I have lost one of these doo-dads. It's a little silicone plug that fits in so the shelves don't crack, I guess. Anyway, I'm short by one. At least I managed to keep the other 89. (15 x 6 - 1)

I have some spare parts. Not sure why the orientation came out this way, weird. If anyone has any need for 13 (and counting) IKEA wrenches, let me know. We have to keep one for the time being, because Katie likes to pack the "fing" around and be a "hupper". Also have 7 straps to fasten furniture to the wall. Sorry, don't think I need nine of the silly things to fasten down a set of shelves in a room where small children never go unattended. I did put 2 on. Just in case.

Now the important part:

Andrew's office space as of this morning. Poor guy. Immediately to the left of that shelf is a closet that we don't use except for to store junk we don't need to keep. So I ripped it out. Or, more accurately, I hired the teenager who mows our grass to rip it out.
He says "it doesn't feel right taking apart someone's house." See the gap where you can see through to the kitchen? That's where I'm building the wall. Until now, it's had a curtain across it with a board behind so Bailey couldn't get through. That's where she sleeps at night. Since I took the photo, I have managed to get the ceiling and floor there down to bare wood and nailed in 2 pieces of 2x4 (header & footer, right?) to start the new wall. I think the ceiling must be made from petrified wood though, because I spent 10 minutes pounding on the last nail and it's still sticking out 1/4 inch. Maybe screws and a power drill are in order. Air nailer? Is that a bit over-kill for a 36.5 inch wall?

This corner is where Andrew's office space will be after I'm done. Under the window, where he can have good natural light and not feel like he's in a cave all the time. And where he won't have to stretch his cell phone booster across the room anymore.

Minus shelving and closet. That shelf that's still there is going into Katie's room, I think. Or it'll be for Andrew since the desk I bought doesn't have any drawers. (Have to save room for his legs.)

So far, so good. A little behind the schedule I wanted to keep, but I'm pleased with the progress so far. The ceiling is coming down as well, but I have discovered that it is solid underneath the sagging cardboard tiles, so it shouldn't be difficult to spruce up with some sheet rock. Hoping to get this all done (at least Andrew's corner!) before he gets home again and needs that space to work in.

An ongoing project.

The last big project left in our house is the addition. We need to redo the ceiling (and re-seal some of the roof), paint the walls, build a little bit of wall, redo the flooring and maybe get a door for it. Lots of things to do, and that's my project for the week because I'm tired of looking at it. The whole room is in a constant state of "when we get to it" and it's draining.

So I'm doing something about it. First, I had to clean out the basement so that we will have a place to put all the stuff that we're just storing in the addition. See that giganto TV box in the back of my truck? The one for the TV we don't have anymore? It's full of other boxes and jars that we can't use and various other things we don't need. There's also a smaller box in the truck that you can't really see. The basement looks great comparatively, but you won't see any pictures because it's still the basement, and it's still not pretty.

Then I needed new shelves. We do have a lot of wood shelves, but since the basement takes on water in the spring and occasionally after a heavy rain, we don't really want to put wood down there. The shelves aren't going to be sitting in water, but they'll probably get a bit damp on the bottom. So a trip to IKEA was in order. I knew that I wouldn't be able to fit everything in my car with Katie in there too, so she got to stay and play with Trey while I went to the city.

You can't see it very well in this picture, but my poor car was riding quite low in the back end.

And this is why.

I figured if I was going to go without a carseat, then I may as well take advantage of the situation.

The four big boxes. A desk, an office chair, a dresser, and some flooring from the as-is pile to put under the dryer instead of the carpet we're going to put in the other room. This pile doesn't look all that impressive until you realize that the flooring is 4.5 feet long.

Plus 24 little boxes for the shelves.
And various other small things I picked up as well.

Who needs a truck?

Rain, rain, go away.

I want my clothes to dry today.

Katie, of course, thought it was hilarious.



Until I told her that her clothes are out there too.

Little funnies

No pictures at the moment, keep forgetting to take the camera card out of the computer.

Katie has started putting words together to make sentences. Sometimes, good ones. Her new thing is "no want", the meaning of which should be obvious. This morning she told me "Katie hungy" so I asked her if she wants breakfast. "No want. Hungy" Okay, do you want some yogurt? "no want." Waffle? "no want" Pancake? "no want" Cereal? "no want. Daddy cereal." Apparently, cereal just isn't as good unless it comes from Daddy's bowl.

She also got pretty excited a couple of days ago because "Bailey tail running". Bailey's tail is in perpetual motion when there's a kid around.

Loads of pictures

For my birthday we went camping. Big surprise there, I think I've been camping more birthdays than not, and what better way to spend a birthday than surrounded by family in beautiful surroundings? I love camping, Andrew loves camping, and it appears that Katie loves camping too. See those mountains? Well, we didn't quite make it there, but we were close. Most years, it's my side of the family, this year, the Midgetts decided to get together too, so that's where we went since we were with my family in March at the Great Lakes 50th anniversary.

Here is about 10 minutes after we arrived. The Way farm, where we all camped, has 300+ acres for Bailey to run on... And all the kids want to take her for a walk on the leash. Of course, she loves kids so much she won't complain for anything.
Here she is with Katie & Alicia.
Then we did some stuff. Mostly eating, it seems like. We did go for a nice long quad ride around the pastures, which was great fun. We took plenty of quads and plenty of helmets, so everyone who wanted to go for a ride could do so safely, and it was fantastic. Lots of people who hadn't ridden on a quad before got to, and everyone got suitably muddy. Even Miss Bailey, who hasn't gone on a quad run for a long time and was so excited that she wouldn't stay on the back of mine when she got tired. So she over did it and got a bit sore. And then slept for 3 days. Young at heart does not mean young legs, my girl. You are 9 now, you know.

On the morning of my birthday, instead of breakfast in bed, I got this while I made everyone else breakfast. But it was so sweet to listen to that I don't mind one bit.

At lunch time, we had watermelon. Here is Katie with a bunch of her girl cousins.
Jalina, Aliyah, Katie, Lauren, Diana.
And one boy cousin, Dylan. Waiting for someone to suggest another quad ride.

This is the look I got when I suggested eating something besides watermelon today.
Then someone mentioned spaghetti.
And it was GOOOOOD spaghetti. So good that she ate 2 platefuls of it.

And for dessert, more watermelon.

While everyone huddled under our awning to escape the torrential downpour that arrived the second we finished lunch. Good thing it's a big awning! We had even more people under there a few minutes after this picture.

And on the car rides and while a little girl was napping, I managed to put the finishing touches on my first sweater. It's a bit big yet, but I did that on purpose (who knew when it would get finished?!), and both of us are happy with it.

Goings on

Uncle Mark and Aunty Kim got married!
It was a beautiful outdoor wedding at the family farm. Lots of room for the kids (and adults) to run around and burn off energy, and a fantastic sunny day.

And, in true farmer fashion, they arrived at the reception (which was about 20 feet away from the ceremony) on the quad. Which got washed first, at least. Photo credit for this one goes to Aunty Alice, I was too busy keeping track of a 2 year old.

Who spent the entire ceremony munching crackers and guzzling water.

The night before, Aunty Naomi came over to paint her toenails to match her dress, so Katie had to have painted nails too. Good thing I managed to find some super-quick-drying polish for her!

Today when we checked out our yard, we found lots of big apples,

in the enormous apple tree.
(someone should really prune that thing)

Fat, juicy raspberries that taste so good, but you have to brave the nettles to get to them!

Cauliflower!

And tomatoes! Pay no attention to the weeds, please.
Some of those tomato plants are about 2 inches shorter than I am. And about 3 feet wide. It's getting jungly in there.

Today's haul.
Red & blue potatoes, a few peas, 3 cherry tomatoes, and 2 strawberries.
Yum!

Horsey business.

I almost didn't get this post written tonight, because my internet was distracted by the storm. Getting a bit tired of that. But I played for a while and then it was back. Here's what I was playing with.

I was playing with the picture, not the horse. We played with the horse earlier today. There are more pictures of him, but I spent so much time playing with this one that I didn't get those resized. Here are some other things to look at.


For instance, the twins. They share Charlie's paddock. (Did I mention that we're boarding him down the road at a friend's house? She has an arena and other horses who are teaching Charlie to be friendlier) These twins actually come from 2 different sets of parents, but they share strikingly similar characteristics. They are nearly identical in size, you have to spend a ton of time out there to see which one is smaller. They have identical leg markings, and their face markings are almost the same as well. And surprisingly, they are exactly the same shade of palomino.

But the little one is much friendlier. He wanted Katie to reach out to him, but they couldn't get their timing right, he'd reach when she wasn't looking and vice-versa. This is the best picture I could get, because Katie was much more interested in Charlie standing next to me.
Katie is in love with this bunny. He is obviously a child's bunny, he wants nothing to do with me, but he darts right over to Katie as soon as she shows up.

Here are a couple of pictures from before the storm that interrupted my internet. The only thing I altered was their size. This rainbow was amazingly bright.
Or as Katie calls it "raining-bow"

It's a start.

This.
Becomes this.
(Plus about 3C that I send with A when he went to work)

And with a little help,

Becomes this.
(And then some.)

We still have nearly a gallon left, hoping to get to that this afternoon and tomorrow.

Made you smile!

She does, doesn't she?The other day, we discovered that kids 2 & under are free at Galaxyland at West Edmonton Mall. And apparently, their chaperones (since they are not tall enough to go alone) are free as well. Which means that we went on the carousel for free. And this one is much slower than the one in Paris. We were by ourselves, so this is the only picture I got, but she's clearly much happier than she was on the horse in Paris. She was quite disappointed when our turn was over.

Yesterday she decided to get out the pouch Grammy made and cart her baby around just like Mommy carts her.
"See, I can bend and everything!"

She does not, however, like to hold still for very long.

And this morning, Andrew's mom and I escaped at 7am and went and picked strawberries.
Between the 2 of us, we got 4 gallons in less than half an hour. Not too bad.
So today, I guess we're making jam.

Birthday wishes from around the world.

This parcel actually arrived last week, but with the holiday weekend, the post office was closed for 4 days.

Some friends in Japan sent Katie a nice birthday gift. She was so excited to get some mail just for her. Inside, she found a new purse with a bunny on it, a toy fan, a beautiful handkerchief and a little washcloth. She stuffed it all in her purse and demanded "PENNIES!" to put in there too. She loves her new purse, she was a little upset that I wouldn't let her take it to bed.

Then she wanted to take a picture with a more realistic expression.