Jeff on Nights

Jeff is working nights so I wanted to get out of the house so I wouldn't accidentally wake him up. Both Kimberly and Nicole had plans but Nicole needed to go shopping to get a birthday present for Lindsay's son, Conner, who was turning two. So I headed into town a little after 9:00. Nicole was going to Conner's birthday party at 2:30 so we had to get our shopping and lunch done before then. I picked up Nicole and Haylee then off to Target we went. After Target we went to Bed, Bath and Beyond. Jeff and I needed another sound machine as we only have one and we need one for the kids room and one for the guest room. When Haylee and Brayden spent the night last weekend, Brayden had to do without a sound machine because I only had one and Haylee wanted it. While at BB&B I also picked up an over the door mirror for the guest room. Since we covered up the little mirror above the chest in there I had to get another one to take the place of it. When we were done we headed to Ruby Tuesday's to meet Kimberly and Brayden for lunch. We still had some time after lunch so Nicole, Haylee and I went to Home Depot. I had a couple items to return and I wanted to get a small can of paint, a new weed killer container and look at some flowers. Nicole decided not to go to the birthday party as she didn't sleep well last night and she was tired. Also, the party was a cook-out and it was a little warm out especially for someone who is 36 weeks pregnant carrying twins. So we decided to go get ice cream at Dairy Queen. Then I dropped them back home. Haylee wanted me to stay and go swimming but since Nicole had plans to go to the birthday party I didn't bring my swimsuit. She wanted me to go home and get it and come back but since I live about 50 minutes away, that wasn't an option. I guess I just need to leave my swimsuit in the car for times like this.

When I got home Jeff was up and around. He had finished mowing the ditch for me. I had mowed the front yard last night but I didn't mow the ditch as the lawn mower leans and I feel like I'm going to fall over so I always leave the ditch for him to do. When he left for work I mowed the backyard. I wanted to hurry up and get it done before the mosquitoes came out. They are awful this year. I ended up wearing sweat pants and spraying my ankles and arms with Deep Woods Off hoping that would help and it did. It took me a couple hours to mow. I think we have the slowest riding lawn mower ever. The neighbors can mow their one acre lot in one night and it takes Jeff and I two days to mow our 1 1/2 acres. We haven't figured out how to make ours go faster. Maybe one day we will figure it out but till then I guess it will just take us two days to mow our yards.

Kids Table and Chairs

Kylie was over one night for a sleepover and came up with a great idea. We made a kids table in the kitchen a few months back, I found the idea on Pinterest. Then we bought five chairs from Ikea. Well, she came up with an idea of putting the kids names on the back of the chairs so they wouldn't fight over who would sit where. That was a great idea! She said they should be in age order and that we would have to wait till Noah and Jackson were born to figure out their chairs. So I ordered some vinyl decals off of Etsy to put on the back of them.

before

after

Kylie (purple), Haylee (pink) and Brayden (orange)

Noah (blue) and Jackson (green)

The font I picked, Pharmacy, made some of the letters capital and some in lower case so that's why Jackson's name begins with a small "j". The names could only be 1" tall so Kylie and Jackson are a little smaller because the dot on the "i" and "j" made them taller. Over all I liked how they turned out. Thanks Kylie for the great idea!

Sleepover Continues

Haylee woke me up around 7:00 saying Brayden wanted out of the crib. So I got up and went and got him out. Around 8:30 or so we got Jeff up and I fixed some pancakes for breakfast. We laid around the house for a couple hours while the kids played then it was time for Haylee and I to take showers and get dressed. When we got done we came out to the great room and saw Brayden had fallen asleep on the couch.

guess someone was worn out

I couldn't believe he fell asleep standing up. This pose reminded me of someone else who had fallen asleep standing up years ago too.

Auntie NicNic

I was afraid if I moved him he would wake up so I just left him like that. We decided to go outside for awhile and let him sleep.

Haylee driving around in the Barbie Jeep

After a little bit I went back inside to check on Brayden and he was waking up. I guess he slept like that for about an hour. I'm surprised he didn't fall off the couch. I got him dressed then we went back outside to play; however, that didn't last long as Brayden didn't want to ride any toys. Now it was time for lunch. I asked Haylee where she would like to go for lunch and she said Cracker Barrel. She loves her some Cracker Barrel.

Brayden eating pancakes, corn and sweet potatoes, what a combination

After lunch it was back to our house for some more fun. Kimberly is doing a surprise makeover on Kylie's room and Nicole was over at her house helping so they didn't want to pick up the kids till later. We ended up meeting them around 4:00. We had a great time with Haylee and Brayden this weekend. How was your weekend?

Haylee and Brayden Sleepover

It was Brayden's turn to spend the night so I went over to Kimberly's to pick him up. Kimberly and Jacob were going to Ocean Breeze around noon so she wanted me to pick him up around then. Jeff worked today so I made the trip alone.

After I picked Brayden up we went and picked up Nicole and Haylee to go shopping and eat lunch at the mall. Nicole had a gift certificate to Macy's so she wanted to look for some clothes for the twins.

shopping at Macy's

It's funny how we bring strollers for the kids but they end up walking and pushing the strollers instead. Well, actually we bring the strollers for us so we have something to hold our purses and shopping bags.

After our lunch and shopping excursion we went back to Nicole's to go swimming for a little bit. It was a nice day for swimming.

While I was at Nicole's, Jeff texted me to go ahead and eat dinner before we came home. When Jeff works days he never eats dinner because he usually eats lunch late in the day. So Nicole, Haylee, Brayden and I decided to go to Red Robin for dinner. We normally go to Red Robin for someones birthday so we hadn't been there since Nicole's and Kylie's birthday. When we were done and loading up the cars I asked Haylee if she would like to spend the night too, I felt bad for her. She asked her mom and mom said yes so she was excited to be able to come too.

When we got home Jeff had already gotten there from work. So the kids played with him for awhile before it was bedtime.

grandpa reading them a bedtime story

Brayden cried for about 20-30 minutes when we put him to bed in the crib. He just doesn't like sleeping at our house.

Kitchen Outlets

First of all I want to say, we aren't professionals. When we installed the back splash we made the mistake of covering some of the screws in the outlets not thinking that if we need to replace them one day we wouldn't be able to get them out. Also, we found out we needed to put spacers behind the screws to push the outlets out to be able to put the covers back on. So during lunch I went to Lowe's and bought a tile bit for the Dremel at Dad's recommendation. When I got home I started right on the outlets. I'm over the kitchen update project so I'm anxious to get it finished. I used the tile bit on all the outlets while Jeff installed the spacers behind the screws. That wasn't fun. Two of the outlets had too much wire so Jeff had a hard time getting the outlets back in once he had pulled them out to get the spacers behind them. Drilling the tiles sure did make a mess. Once they were back in I vacuumed all the tile dust and wiped down the counters.

We still have a little trim work to do and put the under cabinet lights back up but overall this project is completed. We liked how it turned out but I don't think we will ever do another tile job again.

Grouting the Back Splash

While I was at work Jeff worked on power washing the side of the house and the front porch. We get mold on the side of the house and we received a letter from the HOA that we need to clean the house. Jeff spent almost all day doing that and by the time I got home from work his back was killing him.

I decided to go ahead and finish the back splash even though Jeff's back was hurting. I put the grout on and he wiped off the excess off the tiles plus cleaned up where it was falling onto the floor and counter. It was a messy job and I'm so glad that is over with. By the time I was finishing the last wall I was getting real messy trying just to hurry and get it done with. We finished that up around 8:00 then we finally ate some dinner and took showers and relaxed some. Jeff ended up falling asleep in his chair with a heating pad on his back. He was worn out, poor guy.

As soon as I get the grout sealed and we move the stove back in place and get the stuff back on the counters, I'll post some pictures of the finished kitchen. It might be a couple days though as I don't remember how long the grout needs to sit before we can seal it.

I do believe I'm finished with my projects at this time. Might have to work on our bathroom next year. Painting the laundry room and working on the kitchen did me in.

Installing Kitchen Backsplash

When Jeff and I got up we decided to head to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. We figured we would eat a big breakfast so we wouldn't have to stop midway while we were installing the tile to eat lunch. After breakfast, it was back to Home Depot for something that we forgot. We are always forgetting something.

Now it's time for tiling. The first sheet didn't go up too well as I had peeled the whole back off and it was real sticky and sticking to my fingers and the wall as soon as I would touch it. I ended up taking some of the freshly painted wall off right along with some plasterboard. Not good. After the first piece we realized we had to take up a little off the back then slowly put the tile on the wall while while we were pulling the back up. Cutting around the outlets was a pain! We had bought a cutter for around $20 at Home Depot and when we used it to score the tiles then break where we had scored it, the cutter would break some of the tiles that we didn't want broken. I had a tile nipper that I used a lot. I think what was the pain most of all was after we put the 12x12 sheets up we had to go back around and put up about 1 1/2" more of tile above that, right under the cabinets. I think Jeff and I are in agreement that we will never do tile again. It's such a pain. We finished tiling right before Kimberly, Jacob and Brayden stopped by to get Kaysee on their way home. We decided to wait till tomorrow to grout as we were over the tile installation and I needed to get some laundry done as I was a week behind on that.

Time to Paint the Kitchen

I got up around 8:00 or so and started to tape off the kitchen cabinets, that didn't take long as there were only a few to tape off. Ready to paint now.

It was such a pain to paint above the cabinets since I'm so short. I basically ended up standing on the counters to paint. When I got to the corner Jeff had to paint since he is taller and his arms are longer. He hates the smell of paint so painting for him is a chore. Then I took back over. When I got to the fridge Jeff moved it out of the way for me so I could paint behind it. It was also fun laying on the floor to paint underneath the shelf which is the grandkids table. While I was finishing up painting Jeff went to get us some lunch as we didn't eat breakfast. By the time he got back home I was almost done. After lunch and cleaning up it was probably around 2:00.

I wanted to go to the antique mall in Virginia Beach to see if I could find some items to go in the laundry room. I was looking for mason jars or any jars and laundry items like old timey clothes pins or a bucket. I found some jars but boy were they expensive, no clothes pins though.

Then we went to Home Depot. We had bought some tin back splash  a week or so ago which was actually not tin but it looked like it. It was called Fasade and it was water, impact and stain resistant. Well, we decided not to use that so we had to return it. While we were at Home Depot last night we saw some peel and stick tiles that we liked the concept of. We liked the idea of just sticking them to the wall and not messing with any mortar; however, they didn't have anything we really liked so we hit Lowe's after we got home last night to see what they had. They had some mosaic tiles we really liked so we bought a 12x12 tile and took it home to look at it and we decided to go that route even though we have never tiled before. After we returned the tin back splash to Home Depot we went across the street to Lowe's to get the mosaic tiles. We bought 16 more 12x12 sheets, the grout and necessary items to install tile.

We had a nice dinner with Nicole, Dave and Haylee at Olive Garden. We met them there at 6:00.  I think we were there for close to two hours. Just sitting, talking and relaxing. It was nice.

After dinner it was back home to get the kitchen in some type of order. We ended up hanging all the items back up on the wall and I dusted off the tins and Jeff put them back up on the cabinets. By then we were pooped and it was time for bed.

Kitchen Prep

After work, I met Jeff at the Mexican restaurant to eat dinner then we went to Home Depot. I plan on painting the kitchen tomorrow and we needed a couple more items. When we got home Jeff had taken all the items off the wall while I was at work. Also, I have some old tins above the kitchen cabinets and he had taken all those down also. That was a major help. I couldn't see the kitchen counter with all the pictures, tins and the items that were on the other two counters. It was a mess and pretty dusty as those tins haven't been dusted since we lived there and they had five years worth of dust on them. Major achoo!

Hope you have a good weekend! Mine will be busy.

Jeff's Employer

Well, it's finally official! Jeff found out several weeks ago that as of August 1st the operators will be back working for Raytheon. Jeff officially got his offer letter today via email.

Raytheon decided not to renew the contract with SA-Tech which is great news. It's hard to work for a company when your boss works for another company. The best thing out of this is that Jeff will go back to his old schedule of two weekends off a month. Yah! Right now Jeff only has one weekend off a month so it makes it pretty tough to plan any vacations around that one weekend off. The benefits with Raytheon are better, he never liked the benefits with SA-Tech. The HR department plan on coming on the 29th and 30th to go over the benefits. They will also be bringing back the DTSA program which Jeff had qualified for when he worked for Raytheon before so now when there is a DTS out Jeff can fill in.

The bad thing about this move is that he loses his vacation just like when he went from Raytheon to SA-Tech. SA-Tech will pay him for the remaining vacation hours he has left but he won't have any vacation hours on the books with Raytheon till February 2014. So when he takes vacation after August 1st till then he will have to take it without pay. So when SA-Tech pays him for his remaining vacation we will have to put it aside so we can use when he actually takes vacation. Of course, this year we are going to Illinois for Christmas so he will be taking some vacation without pay then. It's such a pain. I wish they could just transfer his hours over.

Now comes the fun part of filling out all the paperwork again, drug test, background check, security clearance and orientation.

Let's Paint the Laundry Room

Today I painted the laundry room and boy am I pooped. While Jeff was working I decided to go ahead and paint. The day didn't start out on a good note as I didn't have a roller, I just had the roller covers in our painters box. So I had to make a trip to Lowe's to get the roller and a paint brush as I hadn't washed the paint brush from painting the twins' red shelves yet.

When I got back home it was time to prep the laundry room. I had to move the washer and dryer from the wall and disconnect them both. Move the bench out to the hallway. Take down the wire shelf and all the pictures, key hook and jacket hook off the walls. Then the outlet covers. I had to vacuum the room and wipe down the baseboards as they were dirty and dusty. That was a nightmare in itself doing all that. The washer and dryer is not light plus I don't have a big room to work with when I moved them from the wall. I didn't bother taping off the baseboards or the ceiling as that takes too long so I just have to be careful painting in those areas.

Now it was time to begin to paint. When I got done painting the wall where the washer and dryer went I had to stop and move them back so I could paint the other side. Told you it is a small room. Even though the room is small, painting it took several hours and I thought I was going to have to go back and get some more paint. I hate textured walls as they soak up the paint. I'm so glad I didn't have to as I got the paint at Home Depot instead of Lowe's. The color I picked is a teal color and both Jeff and I like how it turned out.

When I got done painting I started putting the outlet covers back up and the wire shelf, key rack and coat rack back up. I didn't hang up the keys or coats though and I didn't want them to hit the wall since it hasn't completed cured yet. I didn't hang the pictures up either as I don't know which ones I want to keep. I then moved the bench back in. After I put the room back to some sort of order I started wiping down the doors, washer and dryer. With the dogs going in and out through there to the garage they rub against the doors and dryer and it gets pretty dirty. The laundry room looks so fresh now. I will post before and after pictures when it's completed. I still have a few things I want to add to the room first.

When all that was done it was time for me to get something to eat. I was starving and it was around 4:00 so I decided to go to Wendy's and get me a salad. I stayed in front of the TV for an hour or so relaxing till Jeff got home. I was worn out and my back was killing me.

When Jeff got home I decided to mow the back yard as it's way behind and the weeds are so tall. Jeff filled up the mower with gas and even brought me some water while I was mowing. I only had time to mow half of it before it got dark and the bugs were eating me alive. Plus Jeff wouldn't let me do anymore since my back was hurting from painting. When I came in the house Jeff had the shower prep for me and the heating pad out on the couch ready to go for when I got out of the shower. That was nice and thoughtful. Jeff's back can't take mowing the back yard so I try to do it. Hopefully, I can finish mowing it tomorrow night but it's calling for 30% rain so we shall see.

One thing I learned from today was never ever paint a laundry room after you have moved in. It's too much work moving everything out of the way. So make sure you paint before you move in.

Campground Visit

Kylie didn't wake us up till 9:00 even though she said she woke up a little after 7:30. She ended up turning the TV on and watching it in bed. So that was nice. We ended up spending a lazy morning in front of the TV watching cartoons and Jeff reading the newspaper.

Around noon we decided to head to Elizabeth City for lunch and Lowe's to get some flowers for the front porch and some paint for the kitchen. I have been in the mood to paint so I better paint. It has taken me five years to get back to this point. After we moved into the house I painted so much that I got burnt out on it so it was never completed.

We went to lunch first at Chick-fil-a. Kylie likes eating there because she can play for awhile before she has to eat. She must have been hungry because she ate her chicken tender quick. She hadn't eaten anything all morning except her bagel for breakfast. She ended up trading her book in for some ice cream. The book was her prize in her kids meal. Then on to Lowe's we went.

By the time we got back home it was time to take her home. Bruce and Dare invited us down to the campground which is real close to Kimberly's so we told her we would drop her off on our way. We ended up getting to the campground between 3:30-4:00. Bruce and Dare have a time share and a trailer so they spend the summer at the campground. It's a real nice place and it's pretty quite. It has two pools and you can normally find them at the pool. Bruce cooked some ribs up on the grill and made some homemade peach ice cream. I love his homemade ice cream and he knows he better make some when we come. We ended up leaving there around 10:00 as Jeff has to get up at 4:30 tomorrow to go to work. We had a real nice visit. Hopefully, we can do it again this summer.

Kylie Sleepover

We wanted Kylie to spend the night before she heads to Illinois to visit family next Saturday. She will probably be gone for about a month so tonight was the night. I met Kimberly and Kylie after work to pick her up. We usually meet at a McDonald's that's sort of on the way home. I had Kimberly ask Kylie where she wanted to go to dinner and Kylie picked Cracker Barrel. So after I picked up Kylie off we went to Cracker Barrel. Jeff's tummy has been acting up so he didn't feel like meeting us.


waiting for our food

As soon as we got home Kylie wanted to check out the new TV in the guest room. So she jumped in bed and started watching it.



Then Jeff joined her and they ended up watching several movies, Spirit and Beauty and the Beast.

The movies didn't last long then she decided she wanted to go outside and play so grandpa took her out where they played for a while before bedtime.

We will miss Kylie while she is gone but she will have a blast in Illinois visiting Nana, Papa, Great Grandma, great aunts, great uncles and many second cousins.

Happy Independence Day!

Pool and Cook-out at Nicole and Dave's house

dessert and fireworks at Kimberly and Jacob's house

homemade vanilla ice cream to go with the brownies Nicole made

sparklers

I like how the red reflects on the water

the finale

My country, 'tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,

Of thee I sing;

Land where my fathers died,

Land of the pilgrims' pride,

From ev'ry mountainside

Let freedom ring!

My native country, thee,

Land of the noble free,

Thy name I love;

I love thy rocks and rills,

Thy woods and templed hills;

My heart with rapture thrills,

Like that above.

Let music swell the breeze,

And ring from all the trees

Sweet freedom's song;

Let mortal tongues awake;

Let all that breathe partake;

Let rocks their silence break,

The sound prolong.

Our fathers' God to Thee,

Author of liberty,

To Thee we sing.

Long may our land be bright,

With freedom's holy light,

Protect us by Thy might,

Great God our King.

~Samuel Francis Smith