Bragging

Warning! I am about to brag about the cuteness of my kids!
Not everyone may think they are as cute as I do, but to me they are the most beautiful, cute, photogenic kids in the world. Judge for yourself....She loves me, no matter how greasy my hair is

1 step back, 2 steps forward

After getting so many compliments on my floor, I decided that I should get back to work on it. My focus in my renovating quests has been the dining room. I painted the new wall, moved furniture around, and today I would finish the floor. It really only needed 3 more rows. So I installed the first 2, picked out the boards for the 3rd row, and got them ready for Joe to cut lenghtwise to size.
Although the picture of my front hall makes the floor look fabulous, it had started to come apart, and large cracks have been forming over the last month. Let's just say that when I originally bought glue for this project I had no clue what I was doing. After the cracks started forming, and I grew more and more frustrated with using a brush to get the glue on, I consulted Joe's woodworking dad, and he gave me some good glue. The parts I have done since that point seem to be holding together much better.
So, the front hall was looking pretty bad, and I was in the working zone, so I decided to pull up the worst part of it. That really sucked for progress!! I spent several hours uninstalling and reinstalling, but now I am much happier with the final result.
My to do list for today is still very long, but I satisfyingly crossed "work on floor" off my list. Without a doubt it will be back on my list again tomorrow, but for now I am content.

Mountains of clothes

Today I embarked on a project I should have done Months ago! I decided to tackle the task of organizing the mountain of clothes that's piled in our garage. (no wonder we need so much storage space these days)
When we moved, I kind of just piled non-fitting clothes into boxes, with no regard to size or gender. As some of you know who live close, I have not found the box with Ginger's clothes. So, she has been wearing a lot of Sterling's old clothes, and she got some new ones for Christmas. I mean,.. why buy new ones, when I KNOW there are clothes somewhere in the massive pile of boxes. So I rolled up my sleeves, mustered up the courage, and hauled all of the boxes with clothes (that I could find) inside.Yesterday I bought some nice storage containers at Target, but it seems I didn't buy enough. I decided to keep the boy and girl clothes together, and just sort them by size.
I even found some sweaters that Sterling actually still fits, that I didn't think we would need in Texas. AND, I found Ginger's box!! I am so excited to finally have some sweater, dresses, and even a couple pair of pants for her. Of course, now it's starting to get warmer, and soon she won't need these warm clothes anymore.
You'll have to wait for the after picture, since Joe is buying me 7 more!! containers... what a miscalculation on my part!Here's the after picture. I finally got everything put away on Saturday

too much, yet too little

so the last couple of days there have been multiple small things going on in our lives that I thought about writing down. It seemed however that none really deserved their own blog entry. So as I think back, there are many things missing in my record keeping.

Winter was home from school ALL week, getting better and fighting with Sterling.
Yesterday we built a fence around our garden, but didn't finish burying it.
I painted our dining room wall in a nice yellow/mustard color.
We also had a fun bonfire with hot dogs and 's mores with family and friends.
Today we visited Joe's friend Tyson, and picked up some hay for our longhorns.
Winter and Sterling start T-ball practice this coming week.
Our to do list for our house seems endless, and I didn't get anything done to make it shorter since I was sick.

Lets hope this coming week will be more productive, peaceful, and interesting than last week.

Chills, shakes, and hot flashes

For the last couple of days I have been under the weather. Not mild weather, but severe thunderstorm weather. My kids were all sick while we were in New York, and as soon as I got back I got my own dose. Today I decided it was time to visit a doctor. Turns out I have strep throat.... don't come too close! They gave me a shot in my tush, and the craziest thing happened. A pain, so indescribable went down my leg, and then I almost fainted. I sat down, and threw the breakfast I had managed to eat. I know... too much information... the point is, the shot seems to have worked, because I am actually sitting at a desk, not shivering, and being able to write down a cohesive story. Then we had to go to Walmart for a prescription.. let me tell you... I will NEVER go there again (for prescriptions) We had to wait 1,5 hours, and we still only have half the prescription. I can't believe we have to go back there!

Yesterday I did something I probably shouldn't have, in lieu of being sick. My neighbor let us borrow her tractor, so when I was temporarily feeling a little better, I went out and plowed our garden. It was a lot of fun. I don't know if the area is big enough, and I know it's not broken up deep enough, but I felt like a real farmer. Sometime in the near future we plan to use a rototiller to break it up some more.

NY continued...

Today we were able to hang out with Mary and Ram all day.
First we went to Mary's lab. She does stem cell research on mice for Cornell University. They use the embryos from mice to do experiments on different gene mutations (at least that's what I understood from it). One of the colleagues did do her work on time, and some baby mice were actually born (that's not supposed to happen)
Then she put some mutated embryos in a dish for us to look at. They can put "markers" on certain genes, and see what part of the development they impact.After that we took the subway down to Chinatown. Chinatown is a lot busier and there are a lot of street vendors. Many of them sell scarves, hats, and accessories, and there are also many of them that try to sell fake designer handbags. We met Joe's other cousin Annie, and her husband Kah-Leong for Dim Sum. Mary has a good description of it on her blog. In short, it's a big banquet hall with lots of tables, where the waiters bring carts of food around, that you pick food from.

Chinatown has a really cool store "Pearl River" where they sell all kinds of cool Chinese things, from traditional clothes, to dishes, soaps, vases etc. I just wanted to buy all of it!! I restrained myself though, and just got a couple of cool handmade dishes.

After walking around a lot, we wanted a little brake, and went to a fun little bookstore. It's an independent bookstore, so not one of those big chains. Recently I have been wanting to make more Asian food, but haven't had good recipes. So my mission was to find a good Asian cookbook. I found a really cool on that has recipes from several different countries, and the ingredients don't seem too complicated. We also visited a used bookstore. In there, you just have to browse, and there is just too much!!!

Later at night we went to Annie and Kay-Leong's apartment (on the other side of Manhattan) The funnest part of the night was when we all made music together with instruments they had. There was a drum, flute, Australian super duper big horn (I don't know the name), rattles, and music sticks. Joe got a good recording of it, and I will try to post it here with my blog later.

Conan Sucks!

Well, I really don't know, because we didn't get in!!! That's what really sucks. When I was doing all my research, I understood that it didn't matter when you picked up your standby tickets in the morning, but that you had to be there extra early in the afternoon to make sure you got a seat. Well, apparently it was just the opposite. The standby tickets had numbers on them, and they just let people in, according to their number. Even after they told us they were only taking numbers 1-24, we hung around to see if they had spots after all. Only after checking 2 more times did we actually leave. I was crushed!! There were probably New Yorkers that could go any day that got in, and here I am, someone from Texas, who will probably never even be back to New York (or at least within the next 20 years) and I don't get in! The really sucky part is that we would have been willing to be there at 7:00 am, if that's what it takes to get in, but we just didn't know.
Enough of that whining. So after we were booted, we walked a couple of blocks to the library. They don't actually have any books you can check out, but it's more a research and display library. Then we walked around with all the other millions of New Yorkers, saw some street performers, went to a souvenir shop, shopped at the H&M (one of my favorite clothing stores), and then we met Mary and Ram for dinner at a cute little Swiss fondue restaurant. I love fondue (cheese and chocolate, what's not to like right?) We had a great time, but I have to say I now feel pretty guilty eating soooo much chocolate! (not so good for my healthy eating spree)