Friday, May 28, 2010
Garage again... nearly finished.. :)
Hi all, sorry it has been so long since my last post.... Here are 4 posts..... showing a bit of a kid art update and our progress on our garage project.. :)
Putting up the siding and flashing..
Looking good.... 
Alan our super cool contractor ordered us some "grown up lego".. a.k.a. cement landscaping bricks so that Eric and I could do some landscaping to retain our bank... The wall Eric is standing next to is behind the garage... We hauled each super heavy cement brick one by one up the make-shift chicken run bridge to the back of the garage. (see pix below) It was hard work but Eric and I sure had fun...
The other wall next to the garage is going to eventually be steps leading up to the top of the garage. (Eric and I still have heaps of work ahead of us to get this finished so stay tuned)
Here is the finished garage!
Yep the door is going to stay red.. (well the color is really called "Salsa".. Alan teased Eric and said that it is more like "Watermelon"...:) We hope that it will not fade to pink with the sun... but remember we wanted to match the front add-on so we used the same colors... and our front door is red.. :) I guess we decided to do the Aunty Chris thing and go for color! :)
The builders have completed their part and now we need to get the yard tidy and start the process of making the yard pretty again...
We are also busy painting the inside "Rumpus Room" and bathroom..
I will put up pix of the inside rooms when we are done.. The plan is to finish painting the inside this weekend.. The yard and the rest of the outside painting will have to wait because we have been having some yucky winter rainy weather and the forecast calls for more of the same..
The Garage - next steps... Easter timeframe...
Here are the garage plans so you get an idea of what we are trying to accomplish.. The plan is to have a single garage with workshop and a rumpus room with bathroom.. That way if anyone comes out to visit us they will have their own little room and bathroom.. :)
We built it in a box shape so we can have a deck up top and to match the add on that the previous owners added to the house in 2001.
(here is the front of the house that we tried to match)Moving on.... as soon as the concrete slab was poured Blake and Gareth our awesome builders started framing the structure...
The builders lined it with weather paper.. and left a note for the girls that they hid some chocolate Easter eggs in the new "Man Cave" for the girls...
The builders lined it with weather paper.. and left a note for the girls that they hid some chocolate Easter eggs in the new "Man Cave" for the girls...
The girls had a BLAST looking for their chocolate eggs... 
Like I said earlier, we built the garage so it would be strong enough that we could have a deck on top... here we are trying out our new deck for the first time..
Like I said earlier, we built the garage so it would be strong enough that we could have a deck on top... here we are trying out our new deck for the first time..
Having coffee and watching the sun come up!
A little bit of a kid art update..
Thought you were getting more garage pix... well here is a little mental health break instead...
These are some paintings that the girls did in art class..
Athea painted the "Debil" in outer space and Haidyn painted a "serpent"... hmmmmm everyone else painted flowers and mermaids.. Their Art teacher was a bit curious.. and so was I :) ...
The latest from Athea is Courtney Love from the cover of Rolling Stone...
New Garage - Stage One
Hi all,
I have been promising to put some pictures on the blog of our Garage project.. I finally downloaded some pix just today, this project has been in the works since February.. (yep it has been a long time since we last posted.. )
Eric and his Dad demolished our old leaking garage and shed way back in February.. They dug out our trees and we saved and replanted them.
The digger arrived.. we needed to dig into our hill..
The digger found this hiding under the mound of dirt... it took ages for the guys to break through this hunk of industrial super cement...
We finally were able to lay the cement foundation and start building the brick walls.. this was in April I think...
More to come....
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Happy New Year!
So here is a quick update from our last post.....
Woooo weeeee, Christmas sure came and went is a hurry around here..
Both my girls ended up getting strept throat so we had to get antibiotics in them quick so we could enjoy the festivities...
Christmas Eve day we had our annual "waifs and strays" xmas party/pot luck with a group of friends that are far away from their family. Eric and I took turns attending so we could have one parent at home to take care of the sick kids. Our friend Ian watched the girls for a bit so Eric and I got to be together at the party for a bit too. (Thanks Ian!)
Later in the evening we opened our wonderful family gifts from afar.
******
Christmas day the girls were feeling better (yeah!), just in time because we were invited to an excellent Christmas dinner at Mike and Kellys house... Eric made apple and pumpkin pies. This was such a fun day..
Boxing day.. the fun and feasting continued we were treated to yummy dinner with our dear friends the Lancasters. Another great day with great friends!
Woooo weeeee, Christmas sure came and went is a hurry around here..
Both my girls ended up getting strept throat so we had to get antibiotics in them quick so we could enjoy the festivities...
Christmas Eve day we had our annual "waifs and strays" xmas party/pot luck with a group of friends that are far away from their family. Eric and I took turns attending so we could have one parent at home to take care of the sick kids. Our friend Ian watched the girls for a bit so Eric and I got to be together at the party for a bit too. (Thanks Ian!)
Later in the evening we opened our wonderful family gifts from afar.
******
Christmas day the girls were feeling better (yeah!), just in time because we were invited to an excellent Christmas dinner at Mike and Kellys house... Eric made apple and pumpkin pies. This was such a fun day..
Boxing day.. the fun and feasting continued we were treated to yummy dinner with our dear friends the Lancasters. Another great day with great friends!
After Christmas we quickly tidied up the house and packed up the car. We had to get everything it ready for my parents that were due to arrive on Jan 1...
We decided to have family camping holiday working our way up to Auckland from Wellington (about 12 hours away) in order to greet my parents at the Auckland airport. We tent camped in three different locations over 4 days.
We met my parents at 5:00am at the airport on Jan 1. It was great to see them!
I found the local hospital and brought him to the ER. They admitted my Dad and he spent the next 2 days in hospital while they regulated his blood clotting levels and monitored his heart. A EKG found no heart attack but his labs were off due to the medication delays we encountered earlier. A chest x-ray revealed that he had actually developed pneumonia. The Doctors started him on antibiotics and discharged him with strict instructions to get to Wellington (still about 4 hours away) and lay low without travel until Jan 10.
We have been following doctors orders, we have been hanging out at my house visiting, playing games, watching movies and spotting the boats that pass outside the window. (We even got to see a blue penguin). My Dad is feeling better but is still a bit weak. I took him out last night for a little walk down the street and he got winded quickly...
But what really perked him up was his 28 point cribbage hand that he got while playing with Eric... If you do not not that is just about the best hand you can get in cribbage and it is pretty rare... He was one happy camper! (sorry the pix is turned on its side, I did try to rotate it for you and failed.. but you get the gist :)
We decided to have family camping holiday working our way up to Auckland from Wellington (about 12 hours away) in order to greet my parents at the Auckland airport. We tent camped in three different locations over 4 days.
We met my parents at 5:00am at the airport on Jan 1. It was great to see them!The plan was that I would slowly drive them back to Wellington in the car while stopping in a few towns along the way for sight seeing. Eric needed to get back to work so he grabbed the suit case that they brought with all the x-mas presents to give us some extra room in the car and caught a plane home.
We started our mini vacation without Eric in Rotorua NZ. When we arrived and unpacked the car my folks realized that they gave Eric the wrong suitcase. We actually had the presents and my Dads suitcase containing all his meds and clothes went to Wellington with Eric. YIKES!!.. We had to quickly figure out how we were going to get my Dad's meds on the Jan 1 holiday in the middle of NZ. Luckily we found a doctor that was willing to recreate his scripts.. and we were able to keep him going...
Well for awhile that is.. two days later while we were in another hotel in a town called Taupo, my Dad woke me at 2:00am saying he was having chest pains and I needed to get him to a hospital A.S.A.P...... (YIKES!!! again)
I found the local hospital and brought him to the ER. They admitted my Dad and he spent the next 2 days in hospital while they regulated his blood clotting levels and monitored his heart. A EKG found no heart attack but his labs were off due to the medication delays we encountered earlier. A chest x-ray revealed that he had actually developed pneumonia. The Doctors started him on antibiotics and discharged him with strict instructions to get to Wellington (still about 4 hours away) and lay low without travel until Jan 10.We got finally got to our house in Wellington late on Tue Jan 5 .
We have been following doctors orders, we have been hanging out at my house visiting, playing games, watching movies and spotting the boats that pass outside the window. (We even got to see a blue penguin). My Dad is feeling better but is still a bit weak. I took him out last night for a little walk down the street and he got winded quickly...
But what really perked him up was his 28 point cribbage hand that he got while playing with Eric... If you do not not that is just about the best hand you can get in cribbage and it is pretty rare... He was one happy camper! (sorry the pix is turned on its side, I did try to rotate it for you and failed.. but you get the gist :)That is all for now. We are just about ready to feast once again. My mom is cooking all the "comfort foods" we love. (yum) It is just really great to have my parents here!
