Eating Cheese & Chocolate

This picture of Jimmy was taken before the cheese.

Yesterday I had lunch with my mother, sister, brother, and nephew. It seems strange writing about them in the third person since they are maybe the only ones who will ever read this but whatever. We don't get together like that much because of the distance between us, so it was a real treat. We are just regular middle-class (whatever that means) people but when we get together we mostly act like hillbillies. We don't waste time with pretense or pomp, we just get down to the basics and we just have fun.

We lunched at the Macaroni Grill and Mom and Jimmy wasted no time in pointing out to us and the wait staff that the prices were too high for lunch. Jimmy told us that the sugar packets may be affordable but he settled on a dish called Brick Oven Formaggio. It looked good; it had lots of these big garlicky parmesan toast pieces with it. The food was very good, we all enjoyed it. After we finished eating we discovered that Jimmy had just eaten a big bowl of melted mozzarella with a piece or two of pepperoni, and we realized it was an appetizer meant to be shared between many people.

Renee’s birthday was last week and I didn’t get to spend it with her so I told the waiter that we were celebrating her birthday (not untrue). So we were treated to a lovely serenade of Happy Birthday in Italian and shared the best chocolate cake ever. It was amazing! Jimmy didn’t have any for some reason. I had the best time; probably the only group (other than my kids) I could ever smile lovingly at, with a big chocolaty cake sauce between every tooth grin and get the same chocolate smile beam right back at me.

Thanks for lunch Mom.

Sarah's Rainbow

Look at this picture I took of the girls yesterday. Sarah found the rainbow when she was looking out the window, so we called it "Sarah's rainbow." So pretty.

I'm A Painter

Look at me, I can paint...a wall...all by myself! We were not fully confident about the color, but it turns out we love it! I can't wait to do more walls. This is what you might call an accent wall, it's not the main color for the house, I am using the same color for another wall in the living room-- the one that faces the backyard, it's really a partial long wall that extends to and over the dining room and kind of overhangs in front of it. The ceilings are really high so it's kind of hard. I can't believe how good it turned out! As far as the floors go, we are starting Emily's room tomorrow and hope to also get Wyatt's room done this weekend. What we have done so far looks great. It only took us a few hours to do all of Sarah's room once Tony got past the closet. It's really coming along! Here are the before and after of the wall I painted. Big grin.

Paw Paw Would be Proud!

Yes, my little fisherwoman came home yesterday with the booty. It was a nice big "striper" as she put it. Thanks to Paw Paw for the guidance on how to do the dirty work
of cleaning her up and getting her ready for the oven...the fish of course! She was mighty tasty, poor 'lil thing!

Daddy's Little Helper

We're making progress thanks to her, she really knows how to install wood floors! And the price is right! Priceless!

Wrong!

Yeah, yeah, whatever. So we are mostly done with the living room and just beginning to go down the hallway. This weekend we should make a lot of progress with the floor, you know...learning curve and all. I'm keeping my patience close by. The kids are home from school until Tuesday for President's day holiday and today we visited and toured the Hershey factory. Fun, fun, yum! We also stopped on the way home and picked up Saltwater Sandals on sale for all three girls, they are all chocolate brown and it's so cute to see them all in the same shoes! Funny thing is that Emily is wearing size 4 kids...and they fit me (almost).

The First Step

So we are finally going to install our new floor this weekend. We decided on the bamboo. It's the engineered one that clicks together and it's carbonized (or caramelized) not the natural color (that's actually bleached). We are going to put it down this weekend in the living room and the hall and Sarah's room hopefully. Last night Tony ripped off the baseboards and we're ready to go. All we have to do now is remove the carpet and lay the floor down, piece of cake right?