Oink

well, like the rest of the country, our family has H1N1, we've all been home at each other's throats, ahem, I mean resting since monday. We're all on tamiflu and the doc has us quarantined until Friday, however, due to Annalee staring tamiflu a day later than the rest of us, I think we'll make that Monday. I don't think it would be very nice of us to go to church on Sunday on the slim chance we'll pass this around more. So, almost done with our boring week, I've gotten to know my netflix account very well and I've decided to do a Pampered Chef booking blitz this week because I can't leave the house! In other news, my herniated bellybutton has been hurting (still) I had surgery for it in May and it's not better so, guess what! I get to have surgery again! Ok, so I'm not real thrilled at the prospect but at least it'll be fixed this time, right?

Glad it's Monday

Do you ever have a weekend where you're glad it's Monday? I did. How was your weekend?

Finally the promised pictures of the deck

Well, I have a minute today so you lucky people get TWO posts from me! Here are some pictures of the deck, before and after.

These first few are the deck before, you can see why we needed to sand it down, it was in bad shape. The previous owners put laytex paint over the old stain so the only way to fix it was to sand it down completely, and restain. The sanding took about a month, the staining? A day.

Here are some before pictures



This is just a view of the general deck



This shows how bad the paint was peeling



again, how bad the paint was peeling.



The view from the back yard



We were relieved to see that once we sanded down a little bit the wood was still good, we couldn't afford to replace the whole deck.



There were some parts that were particularly difficult, inbetween these railings was one, the other was the beams underneath which follow this picture.



yep, these were hard.



The back after it's all sanded and ready for stain



The deck all sanded and ready for stain.



The back all stained



The beams all stained



The deck all stained, isn't it beautiful!



And lastly, me all stained! I was so happy to be done! I am still recovering, I'm starting to feel like I can function again but this was sooo hard, I hope to never had to do this again! Now that it's been done right, I should just have to restain every three to four years and that only takes one day, not a month.

Time to put up those gates

Well, it's official, as of Monday, October 12th, I have a crawler. It's about time! My kids are always late on their "physical" development. They're late crawlers, walkers, rollers, etc. But I'm really OK with that! But, at 10 months old, Tank was getting a little sick of being stuck in one place. So he's a much happier camper now and I need to vacuum better! I also put a gate around our fireplace and I need to put the gate at the top of our stairs in today. He just gets faster and faster everyday. Here he is in his nine month pictures.

10 years ago today. . . .

Sooo, in a show of how wonderful I am as a wife, here we go. Sushi called me last night ( I was up at my mothers house making homemade butter mints for my little brother's upcoming wedding), and asked me if I had plans for tonight. I told him I didn't think so, why? He said "we should go on a date". "oh, great, that would be fun." I say. My little sister volunteers to babysit the kids and when I get home later I say "tomorrow will be fun, what brought this on?". SUSHI reminds me that 10 years ago tonight we went on our first date. What a great husband to remember all the fantastic details and stuff! What a crappy wife I am that he had to remind me. Seriously, I am so glad to have Sushiboy for a husband, he is so fantastic. He works so hard for us and loves us all so much. Who would have thought at our college homecoming dance that ten years later this is where we would be! Three kids, a house, a minivan, I think we've fallen pretty nicely into the whole "american dream". I am able to be a SAHM, we're able to have a great full time job for Sushiboy, he is able to get an education. We always have enough food on our table, most of our wants and pretty much all of our needs are met. What a great start ten years ago was. I'm so glad he asked me out! This is an old picture from when we blessed Tank in May but it shows how happy we are.