Patriots, Dark Pink, and Braids

What do these three things have in common, you ask? See if you can figure it out.

Church went as usual last Sabbath. Nothing too exciting to report there other than the day started off poorly with a 5:45 wake up from Brady. Not the way I like to kick off the Sabbath but apparently he's excited to get it started. After naps, we headed over to Ron and Elaine's for dinner. Elaine made a terrific vegetarian chili which I must admit, my mouth is watering for as I think back on it now.

Sunday was game day for the Patriots vs. Ravens. The game wasn't until 6:30 so I spent a good portion of the earlier part of the day doing some house cleaning like the bathrooms, scrubbing cupboards, appliances,etc. You know, the kind of stuff that most people get to on, say, a weekly basis. Me? I'm just glad I went dark this time around. Covers up so much stuff. We also had someone come pick up the dryer we were selling on behalf of David and Yully. They had let us borrow their washer and dryer rather than taking it to Boston with them. We used it for awhile until we got our new set and then sold theirs on Craig List. All worked out well as we sold the washer last week and then now the dryer on Sunday. I guess it was an omen when the guy who bought it said he was a Giants fan and gave me a hard time since I was in my Patriots jersey.

At 6:00, Lisa, Adam, and Luke (Rob was out of town) arrived and a short while later, Megan. Lisa brought an old jersey of Adam and Luke's for Calleigh and she actually put it on. She was back on the Patriots band wagon! We had dinner and spirits were high. Too high, apparently. Ron and Elaine also arrived and it was game on! We didn't start it until after 7:00 because we wanted to be able to fast forward through the commercials. I told them that we would bring out the brownie delight as soon as the Patriots scored a touchdown. Well, that didn't happen until the second quarter and poor Adam was in agony having to wait that long! And then, little did we know, it would be the ONLY touchdown they would score in the game. So yeah, the game turned out to be a big fat dud in the second half and the Pats lost 28 - 13 (at least, I think that was the score. I took the girls to bed before the end and obviously didn't watch any of the post game stuff). But, we had a good time with friends and more importantly, we did not lose sight of the fact that it is just a game and the sun will still rise the next day...even if we do now have to endure all the Ray Lewis hype over the next few weeks. Go 49er's!! The funny thing was that the next morning when the girls got up, I think Aubree mentioned the Patriots and I reminded them that the they had lost and now they wouldn't be in the Superbowl. Instead, the Ravens would be playing. And Aubree said, "Well, we can just PRETEND that they are the Patriots."

Enjoying the brownie delight.

Before reality sunk in....

Monday was a holiday so we had the pleasure of Duncan having the day off work. The big thing for the day was that the wall paper guy was coming to do the wall in our upstairs living room. As you might imagine, given the demand for wallpapering services these days, I had a difficult time procuring someone to do the job. I found someone awhile back but they wanted $35/roll which sounded a little pricey. Back to the drawing board. We had a guy, Joseph, who did our bathroom at our townhouse eight years ago that I had considered but I distinctly remembered that he was no spring chicken then with a mop of white hair and I figured he must be retired...or worse...by now. Nonetheless, I found his business card that I had kept in my wallet all this time and gave him a call. What do you know...still in business. I didn't know whether to be impressed that he was still working at his age or feel bad that maybe he had too. Either way, his rate was only $22/hour and with that, we had ourselves a wall paperer. It turns out that it's also VERY difficult to find a place that sells wall paper. Both Lowe's and Home Depot discontinued selling it at the start of the year. We could have bought it on-line but then if we had to return it for some reason, major pain. Fortunately, we did find a store on East Colonial that sold some and they had what we wanted in stock. Whew.

Joseph and his wife arrived around 8:30, did their thing and left by around noon. We are very happy with the results. Ideally we want to put in actual brick but didn't want to spend the money right now so brick wallpaper it was! Thankfully Joseph was better at wall papering then he was at bookkeeping. He gave me the invoice and the name on it was "Mrs. Cherie Gropak." Can't say I've ever been called either of those names before.

This is a horrible picture. Obviously I need to take one during the day with natural lighting.

Later in the day we headed out to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to try and get everything for our guest room. Duncan's parents are coming tomorrow evening to babysit and then we have "real" guests coming next week in the form of Aunt Toni and Uncle Terry so we are motivated to get it done. Duncan has been diligently working on the head board which he is making out of white washed boards, inspired from Pinterest. It's a beach theme, not sure if I had mentioned that. It is not completely nailed up as of this moment but will be before the weekend is out so I will have pictures next week.

The rest of the week was pretty straightforward. Calleigh had Adventurers on Wednesday night and for a change, I took her. A lot of the time Allen has been taking her with Braelyn but Duncan got home in time and I was able to go. I like to show my support and see what she is up too. We got there at the same time as Braelyn and Tangie. As we waited for things to get going, Tangie started braiding Braelyn's hair. The next thing I know, Calleigh is asking for me to give her one. Now, this is MAJOR news. Calleigh has been adamantly refusing to have any braids in her hair for months. During Christmas, Camille had tried to do a french braid and Calleigh would have none of it. We saw older girls in the mall with braids and tried pointing that out to Calleigh but she was steadfast. It's been a bit of an annoyance because when her hair is messy, it was always nice to have a braid to take care of the problem. I should have guessed it would all be solved by a little unintentional peer pressure. It wasn't even a one time thing either as she asked me to braid her hair yesterday too. I must remember that any time I need Calleigh to do something- - - just have Braelyn do it first. Problem solved.

When I texted Duncan that we were on our way home, he said that Aubree and Brad had been busy playing and had been really quiet. He texted me this picture a few minutes later..."Now I know why!"

There were a few more yard sales this morning than there were last week. I'm sure ready for things to start heating up on that level. January is by far the worst month for them. Most of them were a dud although I found a few clothes for Calleigh in the end and also a plunger. Yes, a plunger. Is that a little weird to be getting at a yard sale? It had a plastic bag around the bottom and I'm almost afraid as to what I'll find when I unwrap it. But it was free and you can't beat free. As for the clothes for Calleigh, as I was looking through stuff, I came across this shirt that had shiny sequins on it that I knew would be up her alley. The only problem was that it was pink. Of course, she doesn't like pink anymore so I wavered. It was only $.50 so in the end I said "what the heck" I'm just going to get it. As I showed her the stuff I said "Here's a shiny shirt that I thought you might like but I know it's pink. If you don't want it, Aubree can have it when it fits her." She studied it for a few seconds and ran her fingers over the sequins and then said "Well, I like DARK pink so it's a good thing it's not light pink." Glad that has now been clarified.

In other news, Brady has still been hit or miss with the sleeping. I think I'm going to go back with my original hypothesis which is that girls are better sleepers than boys. At least, that rings true in my family. He goes to sleep at night with no problem but inevitably wakes up somewhere between 11:00 - 1:00 am and can often have a tough time going back to sleep. Sunday through Tuesday mornings he actually spoiled me by sleeping until between 7:30 - 8:15...you know, just enough days that you start thinking, "Maybe he's going to do this every day now!" Nope. But, he's so darn cute in everything else that I can't stay mad. Tired, yes, but mad, no. He's adding on names to his "I love you" now and this morning he came out with the cutest "I love you Daddy" to Duncan that my heart just melted into a big puddle. Some of his favorite phrases now are "I do" meaning he wants to do something himself like get water out of the door on the fridge or "I go" when he wants to get out and go with me at a yard sale stop. On occasion we've put Lassie on after supper and the other day after we had eaten I found Brady perching himself on the couch and I was like "What is he saying?" Sure enough, it was "Lassie, Lassie!"

If I may take a moment to complain about our builder, David Weekley, should they ever look at customers blogs, I must say that I have been so exasperated by their lack of service after our home purchase. After you move in, you, of course, find a bunch of stuff that needs to be fixed or touched up or whatever. I don't know if we have unreasonable expectations or what but we are going on five months now and there are still things not done from then. One of them is the smoke alarm in our kitchen. Some of you may have had the misfortune of listening to that darn thing go off because it goes off virtually EVERY time I'm using my oven. They obviously placed it too close to the oven. We mentioned this issue to them months ago and nothing has yet to be done with it even though they've said, yes, we'll have someone come out and take care of it. After it going off several times in one pizza baking operation this week, I've really come to the end of my rope. The kids scream every time it goes off. So I emailed our warranty guy a few days ago and got no response. I sent it to someone else last night who apparently contacted the warranty guy this afternoon (who either was ignoring me or doesn't check email) and he calls me this afternoon. He suggested that he come over and take out the battery so it wouldn't go off but "don't worry, the rest will still work." When I said I wasn't comfortable not having a working smoke alarm in the kitchen and that I really wanted to just have it taken care of, you know what he said? I still can't believe it. He said "Well, I just can't get the electricians here on such short notice." WHAT??? I told him "We reported this to you months ago!" He really didn't have a good answer to that. So today is 1/25. Let's see how many more days it's going to take. David Weekly is going to get a big ding on their 10-month phone survey, that is for sure.

Did you figure out what the three things from my title had in common? I suppose it's fairly obvious that these were things that Calleigh didn't like but now likes again.

A few parting pictures...