Odds and ends

Before and After

We have spent a lot of time trying to find the right color for the hallways in our house. We've got a lot of color in our house so the color for these common areas had to compliment all the colors and also work on both floors as we have a two story foyer so the color will travel up there as well. I wanted a light brown or dark tan kind of color and tried out lots of choices; going so far as painting the common areas only to determine I didn't like it. So we tried again and by the time our 2008 Christmas party got here we'd actually chosen the final color after narrowing it down to two choices; coffee and oatmeal (oatmeal won.) The problem was that we'd only had time to do some of the painting and still had one wall that had both choices painted there in big ugly squares. It didn't really bother me at the time - it was sort of one of those... 'it is what it is' kinds of things.... But..

When the party rolled around for 2009 A WHOLE YEAR LATER and the wall looked exactly the same... well I thought that was not a good thing so two days before the party I was on a ladder painting the more obviously unfinished sections; including the wall across from the front door with the two big splotches - phew. All the walls aren't done, but at least it's no longer so dead obvious.

it's the top square of paint that is the winner; oatmeal

This little noel sign on the newly painted wall is maybe my favorite addition to the Christmas decorations this year.

The window that Bandit broke

I talked about it in an earlier post, but here are the before and after pictures.

I guess I should be happy that the window was double paned so Bandit didn't go all the way through... but because I don't love this dog at all it's hard to be that happy.... oops did I say that out loud?

Really? you have an extra window in the basement... yay!

The magical, wonderful, expanding table

Again I talked about this wonderful table in an earlier post but then decided to take some pictures. It folds down into a biggish hallway table and then expands to a card table size and then has two leaves and gets big enough to sit eight - it's the perfect table for an apartment short on size.

At it's smallest - in our last house this sat under a nice pretty mirror except for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

Brad is showing the progress of opening it up to card table size

We've played games and made puzzles on it while this size.

This has both leaves in it (I think) and will sit eight.

Camela

a few things.....

Something you don't expect your husband to say....

"Jack! Licking food off the table is never appropriate."


The great books...

In high school I took several literature classes (I don't know what they were really called but I read a great many great books in them) and I've always been grateful for having been forced to read all those wonderful books; Wuthering Heights, The Great Gatsby, A Tale of Two Cities, Babbit, Canterbury Tales, Catcher in the Rye (one of my all time favorites)... you get the idea. Though through those classes I never once read Moby Dick and I've always felt a little secret guilt about that. A couple of years ago I ordered it through Amazon with the best of intentions. I cracked it as soon as I got it home and ... I couldn't do it. A few months later I tried again but... nope. It's still on the list. I am going to read that book! But so far it hasn't happened. Frankly it hasn't even made it to my "next in line to be read" shelf or the "next group of books I need to read" drawer - but I do know where it is and I. Will. Read. It.

So fast forward to this morning and Teddy tells me he's reading Moby Dick. Wow, I think. That's great! He's 11 and he's reading Moby Dick, I'm impressed. I tell him how I've always wanted to read it, how I recently bought it, but hadn't quite gotten to it yet. I tell him what a great book it is, what a wonderful story it is (totally trying to encourage him to keep reading it as I've found it too dry to capture me and am afraid he'll find the same thing). And really I am in all honesty impressed that he'd be reading it in 6th grade. (That may be perfectly normal; after all he got it from school, but it sort of feels early to me) He is appropriately proud of himself given my reaction and all is well. Then Jackson leaves the room.

T: You know mom, I'm only reading it because of the last name. You know... Dick.

It was all I could do not to fall over laughing at him. Why I didn't see that coming I have no idea. Boy is he going to be sorely disappointed. I was told a Star Trek Next Generation episode was loosely based on the book which I told Ted when I picked him up from school today - I hope that connection will keep him interested when he realizes it's not exciting in exactly the way he was hoping for.

Camela

Jack's birthday

I'm just bad at this NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) stuff, I missed another day... or two.... Oh well.

But boy did we have a busy day yesterday.... that's my only excuse. We had Jackson's birthday party which was at a movie theater from 12 to 5. That's 5 long hours with 15ish eight to eleven year olds. We saw Planet 51 and the kids all loved it. The adults thought it was just okay (or at least I did). The best part as far as the kids were concerned.... while the aliens were seeing the human man naked for the first (and only) time one of them cocked his head and said... "uh that's an odd place to put your antenna." Brad and I were a little surprised the movie went 'there'. But there was much high pitched giggling from the little girls sitting in front of us and when polled later boys and girls alike cited that as their favorite part.

Before and after the movie we were in a party room that was actually situated on a balcony of sorts overlooking the main lobby of the movie theater. It had several games for the kids to enjoy; a basketball shot game, Foosball, ping pong, and air hockey along with a chalkboard the length of the room. The downside to all these games with balls was that occassionally the balls ended up down on the lobby floor. Luckily there were no serious injuries. Here are a few pictures....

Jackson looking sweetly at his brother (ok maybe he was looking at him with that know it all, I'm in charge today look - but from a distance it looks kind of sweet, wouldn't you agree?)

One of my favorite kids in the world (and Jackson's too) Jake.

Josh's ice cream cup exploded on him... oops.

Jack was in kindergarten with Niall and they've been friends ever since.

Teddy was in kindergarten with Niall's brother Devlin and they've been friends ever since. (it's nice how that's worked out so well!)

Teddy's best friend Matthew

Teddy

Chae, Sophie, and LaLia (Sophie and Jackson have been in class together since preschool and are known to carry on like an old married couple)

That's the card Sophie made for Jackson that includes a picture of them at the end of second grade - how cute is that.

Jack opening presents with Brad and the kids looking on.

At one point a bunch of the boys started an impromptu game of telephone...

While the girls played basketball and air hockey.

Then we took some group shots.....

Isn't this a handsome looking group!

Okay, perhaps they are a bit crazy at times

This is their movie star pose

Here they are very, very mad. Jack's so mad he's hiding.

Jackson couldn't believe that everyone was so surprised by my antics.

I think they've all had enough... well maybe not Jackson and Matthew.

Camela

Two little stories from today

1.) Whenever you leave the house (really it could be anyone leaving - we could have just met you) Bandit GOES BALLISTIC. He barks and jumps and runs and barks and runs back and forth across the house and more than anything he barks and a close second is he runs to whatever window he can see you from best (he travels around the house as the car drives away) and runs up to it as if he could go through it. Well..... we went and got our Christmas tree today and when we got back we were thrilled to discover Bandit had broken one of the windows and there was glass all over the dining room. Luckily the glass is double paned and even more luckily somehow Bandit didn't get hurt. AND even more, more luckily Brad had an extra window just hanging around in the basement. Seriously who has an extra window in the basement. Do you think there's any chance Bandit will learn not to slam the windows so hard?

2) We got back from seeing the Blind Side to drop off my MIL and then Brad and I were heading back out to go on a dinner date. I walked Ricky to drop some things off and was told that Jackson had inadvertently hit the Christmas clock with a tennis ball he was throwing for Bandit and it shattered the glass front. Then - not realizing it was actually glass, thinking it was just plastic, he through some of the pieces at Teddy's face. OMG. Jackson felt awful. (of course only awful that it was glass and could have actually hurt Teddy, not that he'd thrown something at his face - oh and he felt awful about the clock to begin with as well.) Luckily no one was injured and our extremely wonderful babysitter had it all cleaned up and out of the way lickity split. She said Jack was a model boy after that.

Camela

Decorating progress pictures

One of the fake trees; it's in the living room. I found a note in each of the two boxes of Christmas tree ornaments that I had written to myself last year. (I crack myself up) It says: CHRISTMAS TREE PLANS (1) Real tree in fam rm - Red & Gold ornaments w/a few others special ones (2) Fake Tree in Piano Rm - red, white, silver ornaments (3) Tree up high above door Tie securely left over gold OR silver shiny snowflake ornaments. We put the tree up high before I read the note so I didn't put the ornaments on it. I'll have to put them on when we take it down... oh well.

The newest tree. It's in the kitchen and perfectly sized because it's so narrow. It is where I'm putting up all the ornaments the kids have made over the years. I've been wanting to do this for a few years and thrilled I finally got around to getting it done.

The garland on the stairs that you see right as you walk in the front door.

The only real hallway on the first floor. The tree and garland can be seen from the street as you drive up to the house.

The snowflakes that are opposite the front door. A few years ago they were lighted stars which is really what I wanted. But then they died because we sort of ended up using them as a night light on the first floor until they burned out somewhere in the spring (oops). So the next year we went to get a replacement (cuz we couldn't get them lit again to save our lives), but they only had snowflakes. Then the same thing happened again last year and now this is the third string of odd lights we hang there. (and each year I like the strand less). But it's part of my grand plan to be able to turn off all the normal lights and only light the house with Christmas lights and candles for the party. Hopefully this will be the year. No lights - woo hoo!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a wonderful day, spent with family and friends.

Our dinner was wonderful and I'm very thankful for my family. My parents divorced 25 years ago and I am very thankful that I was able to have both my parents and in this case my Dad's extended family along with my MIL all sitting down together for a nice, peaceful and fun Thanksgiving dinner. It's nice to be related to adults.

We had my grandfather who is 93 years old (I think) who still bowls every week and drives. He lives with one of my cousins who unfortunately had to work and wasn't able to be here. My Mom and step Dad and my Dad and step Mom and Brad's mom. My Dad's brother Gary and his wife Carol, his sister Marla and her husband Keith along with their two high school age kids; Sarah and Kevin. And my sister and her husband and my two wonderful nieces along with their Colombian born au pair, Angelica. My sister's girls and my boys ran around like crazy people as they often do and totally and dramatically destroyed my relatively straight bedroom. The boys did a reasonable job cleaning it though so it ended up being okay.

Teddy was in a good mood and overall very lovely and helpful all day long. It's so nice when I get glimpses of my wonderful boy. (another thing to be thankful for this year)

Camela

I'm sensing a theme

We went to some parent teacher conferences today for Teddy; four to be exact. One was band and we learned from him that Teddy is not as organized as he could be and often forgets his sticks and music book - Brad and I were shocked speechless... Our Teddy!!? Not organized? No. Not prepared? It can't be. Okay I'm done with band, now for the other classes.

Challenge Reading: Teddy is a really great kid, I really like him but he's consistently rushing through his classwork to get to whatever book he's reading instead of working more carefully on what he should be working on. He's getting a B but should easily be getting an A in my class. He's just not putting forth his best effort or really much effort as all. He's really smart and is basically skating by on smarts alone. With just a little bit of effort he'd have an A.

English: Teddy's a good kid; funny. He really rushes though his work during class, doing the bare minimum so he can pull out a book to read. Uh, he, um, well, he's really not putting forth much effort in here. He's getting a B but with just a tiny bit of effort, really just using the class time for what it's for; reviewing his work alone and with peers, he'd be getting an A. He is very smart and really should have a high A in here.

Social Studies: (very matter of fact) Teddy is getting an B. The place he could really bring up his grade would be in tests and quizzes, well except the county assessment. He's one of only 3 kids to have gotten 100% on the multiple choice part of the test and he got a perfect score on one of the written sections and only 2 points off of the other, so he did really well on that. He's really smart but he usually rushes through his classwork so he can pull out a book to read. Though even with that sometimes I'll call on him after he's been clearly reading for a while; head down, clearly engrossed in his book. I'll call on him to sort of point it out to him that he needs to be paying attention and he always gets the right answer so it's hard for me to even say anything about it. (Brad suggested she take the book away from him as soon as she sees it). He is really smart and is skating by on it. He's not putting forth any effort in here and with just a little effort on his part; even a quick review of the material before a test, he'd be getting an A.

Camela