Monthly Archives: April 2008

Moving Along

Exciting things happening with the house. The insulation is in and they start on the drywall today. You can’t imagine how much difference it makes having insulation (REAL insulation) on the second floor for the very first time.

Yes, they had something up there before but it more closely resembelled a rat’s nest rather than a product designed to keep the heat in and the cold out.

And anyone who has been on our second floor in the peak summer months could tell you that it was difficult to even find any air to breathe, never mind a cool place to hide. The air just did not move up there. But now it will thanks to the modern miracles of well-placed ventilation and those big pink (well beige) pieces of who-knows-what that manage to keep our heating bill in the “I can actually pay it” range.

The amazing thing is that the difference is INSTANTANEOUS! Amazing, amazing stuff. (My dad actually worked for a company in Australia that made insulation for about 20 years. He has always been a stong proponent and will be so impressed by my excitement. It may make up for the fact that I failed chemistry in year 12 – he is a Chemical Engineer.)

Ok moving on. I have a LO to share and I have to say it is one of my favourite LOs for a long time. Sometimes I see LOs in the galleries and they have so much STUFF on them. I love the way they look but I have a really hard time going through my files and finding the right stuff. Then I get frustrated and I am not happy with the result and… you get the gist.

So I am giving myself permission to keep it simple. Here’s the result.

View credits by clicking on the image.

ETA – Just found out I am on the catwalk at SISTV. So exciting!

In other news – think I have been having some Braxton Hicks contractions the last couple of days. Hard to tell, but I feeling uncomfortable today. This baby is not allowed to come early – we have a house building schedule to adhere to and it would mess things up. OK – he could come the week after next if he really wanted to. As long as the hardwoods are installed while we are in the hospital. Not too much to ask right?

Have a very happy humpday.

Shameless

So I stole this directly from Jodie’s blog. Reminds me of one of my favourite quotes: “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources” – Albert Einstein – hey, if it’s good enough for Al…

I digress.

Here are the rules for a little blog post about me:
1. go to http://www.flickr.com
2. type in your answer to the question in the “search” box (just use one word, with the exception of question #5)
3. use only the first page to choose your picture
4. copy the html and paste for the answer

Easy enough? Well here goes:

1. What is your first name ?

It had to be the Aussie right?

2. Favourite Food?

3.What school did you go to?

4.What is your favourite colour?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

I bypassed some of the more gratuitous shots so had to go to page five for this one.

6.Who is your favourite Disney Princess?

7. Favourite Drink?

8.Dream Vacation?

9.Favourite Dessert?

But may change after I have this baby. It’s a craving thing.

10.What do you want to be when you grow up?

11.What do you love most in life?

12.One word to describe you?

13.What do you dream about?

 

Some of these questions were hard, but what a great way to see some amazing photography.

Link me up if you do one of your own.

A case of the Mondays

Yes – today is Monday and it started, appropriately, with a car that wouldn’t start – when I was already running late. I think we may have left an interior light on or something because the battery was nearly flat. It had just enough juice to make me think it was going to start but not enough to actually get going. Thankfully the AAA guy was able to give me a jump start and I was on my way – about an hour late but I did squeeze in a work call to London before I left so all was not lost. I think the fact that I felt like crying when the car wouldn’t start had more to do with hormones and less to do with the gravity of the situation.

We had our weekly house renovation project meeting this morning and everything is moving along swimmingly. The best news is that we won’t have to move my Mum out of the house as soon as she arrives. The timeline was indicating that we may need to move out for a couple of days while they seal the hardwoods but it now looks like we can move that up a week so it will be done just before she gets here.

More progress:

  • Plumbing, electrical and heating vents are almost all complete. Just have to put in the new hot water heater and hook everything up. In the process, absolutely every room in our house has been affected in some way except the living room. We have holes in walls and vents running through closets all over the place. It will all be nicely hidden when we are done but Kei and I are a little tired of moving things in and out of our very packed closets.
  • Kei fixed the leaky sink in the kitchen (after two years of complaining that I haven’t been able to use the sprayer). Just waiting on couple of parts and my sink will be living up to its full potential. 🙂
  • Speaking of sinks, I have a brand new Laundry sink in the basement. It replaced the original concrete monstrosity that has been here since the house was built in 1923. I can also use hot water to wash clothes for the very first time since we moved in (long story).
  • We have windows – well most of them. I think they will wait to put the last couple of windows in until the very last moment as they are currently using the windows as a doorway to the second floor. The best part is that it is so much lighter upstairs now. Oh, and now that the upstairs heating is connected we are heating the inside more, and the outside less.

The best news of all is that we are right on schedule so we should have most of the really noisy/dusty work done by the time this baby comes… IN THREE WEEKS!

Here is a new picture of the house. Not much has changed from the outside except the addition of two window. The one on the right is Thomas’ room, the boarded window in the middle is the baby’s room and the little one on the left is the bathroom. We also have new windows on either side of the house. The best thing – we will be able to open them without needing super-human strength!

 

TTFN

Nicole

P365 Day 118 – April 27th 2008

Finally starting to feel like spring. The rain even stopped for a couple of days. There are tulips all around our neighbourhood and they are so pretty. Almost makes me want to do some gardening. Almost.

P365 Day 117 – April 26th 2008

Thoams and Kei were both “roaring” for the camera. I guess Thomas renegged on the deal a little. Kei definitely looks more into it.

P365 Day 116 – April 25th 2008

Friday night – finally the end of a very long week. So we went out for Sushi and a walk around the neighbourhood. Thomas loves traveling on Kei’s shoulders. I asked Kei what we’re going to do when we have two kids but he still has only one pair of shoulders. He didn’t have an answer either.

P365 Day 115 – April 24th 2008

Ever had that feeling when you get in the elevator and you realize you didn’t really take notice of the floor where you parked and you wonder how many floors you will have to stop and get off so you can take a look around before you finally find your car?

Happened to me tonight. And this is the most interesting photo I had the time to take. Unless you want to see pictures of an awards ceremony for the Portland Business Journal that I had to attend for work. Didn’t think so.

P365 Day 114 – April 23rd 2008

I asked Thomas to make some funny faces for my photo of the day. Apparently his idea of a funny face is to screw up his face as tight as he can because I have quite a few photos that look just like this.

Don’t tell me that you didn’t try to check out my bum cause I know that you did…

Listening to Pandora and this song came on. Love it!

Pandora is my lifeline at work. You create a “Station” based on a song or artist you like and then it plays random songs that have characteristics similar to the song you chose. This song played from my station called “Love Song”. Oh and here’s that song too.

I am in such a musical/creative mood. Making it hard to get work done.

Chatterbox

Thomas was an early talker. His first word was “bubble” at about 10 or 11 months and he hasn’t stopped talking since. In fact lately he has kicked it up a few notches with most of his statements arriving in the form of a question. For example… “Is that Miguel?” (one of the builders who he has taken a shining to) “Are those my shoes?”, “Are you eating something?”, “Is that a chair?” and on and on it goes.

It’s very cute and I LOVE that Thomas has a good vocabulary – but lately I have been very tired thanks to interrupted sleep and my patience level is not as high as it was a couple of weeks ago. Last night I found myself just willing him to “Shut Up!” It didn’t help that Kei was late home from work and I was the only person there to listen to, and answer, the thousands of questions that came from his mouth in the hour we were alone together. I feel like such a bad mother. Some parents would be thrilled to have a child who can properly express himself through language and I know we are very lucky. I just have so much going on right now that I dream of just a little bit of silence. The opportunity to shut everything out for a while and not have to say for the 50th time “No, you can not watch the wiggles!” (only a time out threat stopped that conversation).

So – not feeling like the best mummy in the world today, although I am pleased with myself for keeping it contained so Thomas didn’t understand the full extent of my frustration.

Coincidentally, I scrapped this page a week or two ago for the You Rock Lift on Lauren’s CT blog. Appropriate, don’t you think?

One more thing before I go… I receeived my digital copy of Digital Scrapbooks Mag today and there he is on page 81! Thomas is in print and I am officially published. Whoo hoo! Can’t wait to get the hard copy.