What a Gift

Since it's been raining so much the past few weeks, I haven't been able to mow my lawn. Well, I haven't wanted to either, so it was kind of a good excuse. But since it's been dry for a few days, I knew it was coming. Not only did I know that mowing was coming, but with all the rain, the grass was really long and thick. Since Sunday was wasted due to my Titans loss depression, I forced myself into a Monday night date with the mower. All day at work, I was dreading coming home to grass up to my knees (almost). Not that my job is physically demanding, but it takes something out of me that I just hate to have to come home and work some more. I wish I could look at mowing like the guy in this picture, but it just doesn't do it for me. We've got several trees, a hill on the side of our yard, and a stupid chain link fence that the mower always catches on. It usually takes me about an hour and a half when it's not super long.

So to my great surprise when I drive up the road on my way home from work, I see a freshly mowed lawn! Wow, what a gift. my awesome wife took her time when Keeley naps to mow the lawn to take the chore off of me. I know I didn't tell her or show her how much I appreciated her doing it for me, so I hope this blog post makes up for it a little. Thanks baby! I love you.

Bed frame craziness

Our friend Brad graciously gave us some bedroom furniture he needed to get out of his house after adding several people to his family all at once (thanks Brad!). It is nice furniture, it all matches, which is a totally new thing for us. It includes a long dresser, a short chest type thing, a desk with hutch, a night stand and a bed frame. Wow, a bed frame! It's a nice light wood, maybe maple or something, I'm not too sure. I'm obviously not a furniture aficionado. So the bed frame has a headboard, a foot board and wooden side-rails. The side rails fit in different slots depending on if the frame is for a full or a queen sizes mattress. While it was in Brad's house, it held a full sized mattress. So we finally get the time to set it up. I take off our queen sized mattress and box springs, take apart the old metal bed frame that came with the mattress, and bring in all the pieces to the new bed frame. I lay them out on the floor, and start putting them together. Everything so far is going well, it's a pretty easy job, the side-rails fit into the slots on the head and foot boards. Great. Now time to get the box spring and mattress. I get Liesl and we lift the box spring up over the frame and gently place it into the frame... oh, wait it's a really tight fit. OK, I guess we need to drop it straight down instead of angling it in. Huh?? it doesn't seem to fit. What's going on? Out comes the box spring, and I measure. Nobody ever told me that a full sized mattress is shorter than a queen! The side-rails were made for the full, the head and foot boards can be used for either. Now I'm faced with using the old frame with just the head and foot boards. The old frame has no spot for a foot board, so that's out now too. So I focus on the headboard. There are screws included to fasten the headboard to a metal frame. Great. I'll just do that. I pull out the screws, remove the foot board, and the side rails, re-assemble the metal frame that came with the mattress originally and get to work on the headboard. The screws, however, also seem to be made for a full. The place where they go through the headboard is thicker at the queen setting, because they are going through the posts. Foiled again. I go to Home Depot (they should know me by first name now) and I look for screws. Would you believe that they did not have really what I needed? Because the screw head goes right where the mattress sits, the screw head needs to be flat (I guess it's more of a bolt than a screw)So I get some weird, I forget what they call them screws (bolts) and nuts. Not really sure if this is going to work. Then I think maybe I can find some queen sized side rails at a mattress store. I go to some discount mattress store and find some plain metal ones. not the nice wooden ones. But I'm still not sure that's what I want and this mattress store is going out of business so all sales are final. I'm not dropping $60 on something I'm not sure will work. So I go home, mope around because, once again, a project that should have taken an hour has now taken way longer. I discuss this with Liesl and we decide to go for the metal rails. I measure and make sure I know how long the rails should be, I go back to the store and measure them in the store. Bring them home start assembling the head and foot boards to the rails. I hook 3 sides on and the fourth just doesn't want to go in right. The hook has to fit into a slot on the foot board and it is slightly bent outward. so it doesn't quite go in the slot. these things are hardened steel so there's no bending either. Finally, with Liesl and I pushing as hard as we can, it wedges into the slot. and hooks onto to foot board. At last. A bed. A real bed, Liesl is very excited. I'm exhausted. We put the box spring and mattress on. Finished. Forgot the dust ruffle, take off the mattress....ughhhhhhh

It's done, I'm done

The playroom/guestroom is finally done! This weekend I finally tackled the last of the pieces (the ones I could actually do instead of our friend Chris). I swapped out several electrical outlets that were that "tan" color in favor of white ones. I also got white outlet covers, and a new garage door button. The big project was the window unit air conditioner. I brought it home and started immediately thinking that this was going to be one of those projects that should take 30 minutes but will turn into one that takes 4 hours. Apparently my windows were not made for window unit AC's. So with lots of weird screw placements, white electrical tape and loads of weather stripping, with several trips to Home Depot, it is finally installed. As you can see from the pictures, we have no decorations on the wall. But after spending all that time and effort on that AC unit, I am done.

Play Room Almost Done

If it weren't for my procrastination, we'd be starting the decorating process in the play/guest room. It is now painted, carpeted and has furniture in it. But I have yet to change out the few outlets that are the old tan color for the white ones we bought. The kids are loving having another room to go into while they are running around the house. Before we put furniture in there, it was also used as a handball/soccer room. Keeley loves the soft carpet. She doesn't much like to be held by her big brother...

Play Room almost done

The play room is almost done. The carpet folks come tomorrow and then we start moving furniture in. The walls are painted, the doors are painted. I need to put some outlet covers on. Liesl is very excited. I think the kids are excited too. I think we are going to get a gate so that Keeley cannot get in so the boys can play with their legos in there. We also are going to be having some visitors come and they will stay in there. Oh yeah, we need some blinds too. Then comes the decorating part. I think we've decided which furniture to put in, but we are going to make it a sports theme, so we need to gather up some sports related items and get them framed. You can bet you'll see something with a Jayhawk on it.

New Room

We are having a new room being built into the back part of the garage. It will be a play room/ guest room. Our garage was built with a section on the back that is the same height as the rest of the house. It is basically slated for a room. It even has a window. Since we have a small house and 3 crazy kids that run around everywhere, Liesl needed another room. It's kind of exciting to be able to pick what kinds of things we actually put in it. I picked out a ceiling fan with a light. we actually have outlets where we need them. We'll eventually pick out carpet and paint. For some reason, I only have one picture of this so far... It is kind of funny, it is a picture of the doorway out to the garage, but the hole for the door is only halfway cut.

We now have both doors on, the door that was out to the garage has been moved to still be out to the garage and we got a new door from the kitchen area into the playroom, which I am guessing will be open most of the time. We have also decided that we are going to give the room a Sports type theme. I have several things I can hang on the wall to make it look "sporty". But you'll have to wait for pictures after it's all done. I don't think we are going to put field turf in, but that would be really awesome.