Oliver lost one of his top teeth, finally! Poor dude was getting a complex about it. Woke me up at 1am to show me. Glad he didn’t swallow it in his sleep! Looks like the adult tooth is already coming in.
While getting in the van to take the boys to camp this morning, I stepped in a red ant pile that was hidden under some Asian jasmine. A lot of cursing and slapping at my feet followed. I hate those assholes. (Here’s the full video if you want to see them up close.)
Today a company is coming by to give us an estimate on having the attic insulated. Hopefully we can afford to do it, because I imagine it would pay for itself in a couple of years. Upstairs gets so, so hot. Anyone have experience with this? Our a/c is just struggling to keep up with the heat.
I also am scheming to get the living room in order. Painting, first of all. And then just making it look a little nicer. Maybe it’s time to take down the baby gate at the top of the stairs? I dunno if I’m ready for that. Here’s what it looks like currently. At least I moved the lego table into the boys’ room. It’s a start.
Oh shoot. Two days til the triathlon. Better start thinking about that.
Mmm, oysters.
Kristina and I tried out this new food market the other day before she went back home. We had some really delicious raw oysters, a cheese board, a salad, and a crepe stuffed with macaroni and cheese and pulled pork. I mean, yeah. It was good.
We also attended the boys’ school fundraiser on Sunday night. More good food, especially the brisket tacos from Taceaux Loceaux (the name annoys me greatly, but what can you do?) (PS It’s pronounced Taco Loco. I don’t know how obvious that is if you’re not from here.)
Entertainment at the fundraiser
I may have hit the open bar a few times, because by the time we left, I had a fancy bottle of wine from one raffle and I’d outbid everyone for some hair salon services in the silent auction. It’s all for a good cause, at least.
Sunday was a really big day, actually. Between the garage sale and the school fundraiser, we also went out to cheer on my friend Heather as she finished her first half Ironman triathlon!
Well, I should say we attempted to cheer her on. Thanks to some gross ineptitude by local organizers, the website said the race finished at City Park. But no, it actually finished several miles away at the lakefront.
By the time we finally go there, she had already finished. 😦 I was so upset about it, and really freaking angry at the organizers. I wonder how many other people missed seeing finishers?
The kids made a poster for her, and the adults made a few too.
On the bright side, I almost got to see fellow identical triplet mom Kim close to the finish line. You may remember me posting about her husband, who was killed last year in a training ride for this very same triathlon. She decided to train for it and race it in his memory. So inspiring.
(My friend Robin, also a mom of triplets, also finished it. I know so many kick ass women!)
In horticultural news, a couple of weeks ago, I planted some jasmine along our iron fence. We only have a side yard, so hopefully this will add some privacy as well as some beauty and nice scents. And probably bees.
And it’s already growing! I don’t know how much I am supposed to nudge it along the fence, but it seems to be doing okay. I guess it’ll be a few years before the fence is covered, but it’s fun to watch the progress now.
On the other hand, the Bradford pear I planted when we moved in eleven years ago has some weird black spots on the leaves, which also look like they’ve been eaten. I need to figure out what to do about that.
Remember when my friend Matt got very very sick about five years ago? Well, the husband of another mom of multiples is currently very ill with the same kind of situation. A flesh eating bacteria. Matt pulled through, and I’m confident Melissa’s husband will as well, but they can use all the positive thinking (and other support) we can send their way.
I remember Alicia saying that Matt did as well as he did because he was a rugby player, so big and muscly and solid. Melissa’s husband Josh is a police officer, so similarly brawny, so I think this is a good sign. Keep them in your thoughts.
Next week, the boys and I are headed to Virginia for Emily’s first communion. A plane ride with all three – hopefully I won’t get barfed on this time. Hmm.
I cannot believe I forgot our 11 year houseiversary the other day. Okay, okay, maybe I don’t have to mark every anniversary of every thing that’s ever happened. Yeah, I don’t have to. I just like to.
But wait…I’ve only posted once about a houseiversary, and that was ten years ago! So now I don’t feel quite so ridiculous for posting one today.
Living room, pre-kids.
Old stairs
The kitchen, back in the day.
Love these doors
In the past eleven years, we’ve been through a lot in this house. Engagement, Hurricane Katrina, marriage, and the arrival of three kids at once (as you can imagine, we bought this house on the assumption we’d have one or two kids, max.)
We’ve redone the kitchen, rebuilt the stairs, moved rooms around, built in triple bunk beds, painted the exterior, and added a wall, but I still want to repaint the living room and get new floors downstairs and fix the ones upstairs and redo the totally ’80s downstairs bathroom and finally change the lightbulb at the top of the stairwell that has been burned out for a decade.
One day.
Would I love to have a bigger house? One without so much wasted space? God, yes. The boys won’t fit in those beds forever, and I’d kill for, say, an actual laundry room and a back yard. But I also love the idea of the boys growing up in the same house forever. And I can still remember the knee-weakening feeling I got when we walked through the front door for the first time.
(Of course, the previous owner was an artist, and had one teenage kid. And was more on the minimalist side than we’ll ever be.)
The kitchen is done, and now our attention turns to the living room. It’s not terrible, I suppose. We got a new sofa from IKEA a few years ago, and as the boys have gotten older, their toys have gotten fewer, so it doesn’t look like Toy R Us vomited everywhere (just the LEGO factory.) But still, our “entertainment center” was a mess of wires and dust and functional but ugly furniture.
Before: So. many. wires.After: Much better!
The unit is by Prepac and if you’ve put together IKEA furniture before, this will be no sweat.
I have more plans for this room, like re-painting and fixing the floors, but this is already so much better.
For the first 17 years of my life, my home was at 5822 Port Hudson Drive. A four bedroom, two and a half bath brick ranch built in 1975. We moved out when I was in away for my junior year at Louisiana School, and I guess I never felt like I truly got to say goodbye. Or maybe at 17, I didn’t know I should. In any case, I’ve dreamt about it, and I’ve driven by it countless times. So when my mom told me it was for sale, I knew I had to see it. This past Sunday, there was an open house, and I brought the boys.
I expected it to make me really emotional. I have so many memories of that house. And of course of my dad. As it turns out, the whole experience was surprisingly unemotional. It was interesting, but I never felt like I was going to burst into tears or anything.
I’m in the midst of some serious purging. The kitchen is done, and now I’m focused on the dining room/bike storage area. Chris is building us a huge storage bench and shelves, and we’re getting rid of furniture left and right. It feels goooood.
Over the summer, we did a little refresh of the kitchen. Not a full gut job by any means, but a nice update.
It all started when my friend Mary Catherine got new granite countertops, and when I heard how reasonable they were, well, I wanted granite countertops. (When I came home and told George, he merely pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.)
Ten years ago when we bought our house, the kitchen was a sunny yellow. Sponge painted, if my memory is right. With royal blue trim. It was okay, but not my style. Especially the tiled pelican “artwork” behind the stove.
Was not sad that we had to get rid of that fridge post-Katrina.
So before we moved in, we painted the kitchen, um, lime green. Okay, maybe not the wisest choice.
There’s that damn pelican.
A couple of years later I was already sick to death of it, and went in the opposite direction. Dark brown. I actually loved it for a long time. The contrast against the while cabinets was nice. We also tiled over the stained white laminate with large beige ceramic tile. It was fine, but definitely an amateur job. Over the years, it cracked near the sink, and I hated that I couldn’t roll out dough on the countertop.
Not terrible, I guess.
By this point, we’d already replaced all of the appliances with black ones, and I was itching to get rid of our range. It was a slide-in one, which is expensive to replace, but the oven was small and off by at least 25 degrees, and it was just yuck. I knew that replacing the stove would have to wait until we got new countertops, which I always assumed was a pipe dream.
But it turns out it wasn’t! So this summer, we decided to change them out, paint the kitchen, get a new stove, and FINALLY GET RID OF THE PELICAN! (Confession: I made most of the decisions while George pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.) (Not really. He was very supportive.)
The kitchen should have been done weeks ago, but I started losing steam when we got to the backsplash tiling part of the renovation. I was all ready to grout, but then I went to Mexico, and then I had my triathlon, and finally I just bit the bullet and finished. Whew. Here’s the finished product. I’m so, so happy!
Ta-da!The new stove (with a chicken nuggets button!) to replace the yucky old small one. And look! No more pelican!Nothing on top of the cabinets. Clutter-free! (Well, mostly.)New undermount sink and lovely new faucet. Heaven.
It’s not perfect (don’t look too closely at the backsplash, okay?) but being in the kitchen and cooking is so much more pleasant now. Particularly chicken nuggets.
The painters came on Saturday and were like rockstars. The house is done! Almost. Maybe. There are a couple of spots that I wish they’d painted the trim color, and I only noticed on Sunday. I knew something was bothering me about the front, and that’s what it was. Too much gray. Need some trim color to break it up. But still…it looks amazing. What a transformation!
and if you’ve put together IKEA furniture before, this will be no sweat.
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