big mess

Halloween also was the Great Basement Jack Hammering Day. It was a lot of work to get things ready for this project and it was only the beginning!



Okay, so you can see there are piles of things everywhere that came from downstairs. Mattress propped against the dining room wall, stacks of things, boxes, lamps, displaced dining room chairs, etc. When this is all over I am going to have to post a video of our house when it's together just to prove we don't live like packrats. But I admit, that is a lot of laundry; however, in our defense it was laundry sorting time and without the laundry room the sorting happened on the living room floor!

Emma was boarded (jack hammering sounds can be scary). I came home from work to find big barrels of concrete chunks in the driveway ready to be hauled off, and a thick layer of concrete dust coating the walls and floors downstairs, clinging to every object in our garage, and sneaking upstairs despite the plastic barrier. We were thrilled to turn the furnace back on in the wee hours of Friday morning after our first clean up attempt while wearing masks and goggles – that stuff is nasty -- although more rounds of cleanup remain. What a project! We are really crossing our fingers that in late November, three and a half months after the flooding, that this whole thing can be done and the house can be back to normal.

One good thing that came out of this is that we discovered we have hardwood stairs in the house. A neighbor tipped us off and after prying up not one but two layers of gross carpet and chiseling away disintegrated carpet padding, we found a little treasure, or at least great potential, in our entryway stairs! See, didn’t we say that the wet basement would mean a house project that grows exponentially? Maybe we’ll table working on the stairs until the spring. Now I’m itching to see what lies beneath the living room carpet (besides more carpet).

bananas

Zuzu’s Poppa (Norm) will be thrilled to know that she ate his favorite food on Saturday for the first time. Yes, bananas. Dad, I’m sorry to say she gagged on them, but we’ll keep trying.

october 22nd

Happy 12 year anniversary, Ty. We started dating on this day in 1995 and haven't stopped dating each other since. You are an amazing daddy and husband and best friend. Who knew that falling asleep while watching Babette's Feast for a philosophy class could lead to such great things?

sunday morning nap

We went away on our fall trip for two nights recently. We followed Zuzu's routine -- like clockwork. Somehow, "strange place" and "schedule" didn't fit with Zuzu's plans, so her sleep cycle got thrown off, leading to an out-of-character tired and cranky girl. On Sunday morning I was so delighted to have her successfully go down for her morning nap that I decided to take a quick video of my sweet sleeper. Here's what happened.

fall trip

it's an annual tradition. when the air begins to turn crisp and the leaves, crispy, we take a couple days off from work and head to where the foliage seems to fall in slow motion. autumn seems to be one of our busiest seasons of the year, so this trip forces us to stop for a moment and breathe in the beauty around us.

this year, jenn and i have become tour guides to our newest october traveler (zuzu), pointing out all of the places we've enjoyed visiting in the past. today, we made it to the main attraction - starved rock state park. riding in a backpack carrier, zuzu took it all in with a smile.

(click to enlarge)