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Chloe's first bike and Momma's failed attempt at showing her how to ride it.

One of Doug's cubicle cronies passed this bike down for Chloe.  She was so excited, as were we.  I thought I would be all evil-knevil and show Miss Chloe how it's done.  Everything was going great, until I ran into the door jam with my knee-cap.  It hurt so bad. You can hear me in the video say "I think I am going to puke".  I know, I am such a baby.  Anyway, enjoy seeing me in pain and sorry about the wee bit of butt crack showing :)

Here is a video of Poppa giving Chloe her bike

Here is the video of Lex and her butt-crack :)  

A perfect Sunday

Skylights!

Pa getting all hot and bothered over the skylights, ooooh watch out Doug!

No going back now

Hi Mamaw and Chloe 

Two of the skylights are installed, one more to go.  They are awesome! We love all the natural light coming in.

Hmmmmm, very interesting

We checked our blog stats today and discovered that we have followers in India, Canada, United Kingdom, Indonesia, Germany, Denmark, China, Russia, Malaysia, and Egypt. 

Serious Apple Addiction

As soon as Beasley's opens their doors for the fall season, we are there getting our apple surplus.  Chloe and I head over there about once a week and get a bushel of apples and a few gallons of cider.  They have the best apple cider I have ever tasted. I took my camera along today and grabbed a few photos of Chloe checking out the pumpkins.  We didn't get any though, we want to go to an actual pumpkin patch with Poppa sometime this fall (when we take a break from the kitchen nightmare, oh, I mean remodel)  and pick out that oh-so-perfect pumpkin for Miss Chloe.

Sheds a whole new light

We put Chloe in charge of reading the instructions for the window installation.

Getting there, first window is in. 

Doug jumpin in head first with the mortar and bricks. 

We had to clean all the bricks and then cut them down to the right size for the new ledge. 

Miss Chloe thinks it is hilarious to put her cold drink on Pa's back.  

Voila! Not bad for amateurs.

Progress

Not sure why Doug is plugging the grinder into Levi right there, but at this point.....who cares?

Levi and I having a little fun with the insulation.

Insulation is up and skylights are framed in. 

And, this part really sucked.  The floor has a million nails in it.  If we were lucky enough to get a piece of the floor that was bigger than 2 inches, there was cause for a celebration!

Ma and Pa doing celebratory floor dance.

There must be some home-improvement rule that you can only hang drywall at 3 a.m. 

Who has two thumbs and loves hanging drywall?   LEVI!

Doug mastering the masonry saw. 

The small window is out.  My mom and I cleaned the old mortar off the bricks today and we should be getting the new window in soon.  

Doug stayed up until around 6 a.m. yesterday morning and mudded the kitchen.  The dude is a die-hard.  He has been on "vacation" this week.  I know for a fact that he got less than 3-4 hours sleep each night, but the amount of work that guy accomplished is crazy. 

Another view of the kitchen and dining room.  These two walls will be taken down. 

I had to add this beautiful pic of our girl taking a nap.  She sleeps right through the drilling, hammering, and sawing. 

The old kitchen has officially left the building

See ya!

Tearing down drywall and cleaning up MORE insulation.  This is the window that I mentioned in an earlier post, it will be replaced with a 72"x 48" window on Saturday...........hopefully. 

Old kitchen gutted.  This will be the new dining room

The insulation bandits.  We got a little tired of hacking up huge chunks of fuzz, so we improvised with these handy t-shirts.

Hmmmm.........looks like Mom and Poppa are distracted with the kitchen, I think I will dump out this entire box of toothpicks.....................yeah that sounds like a great idea.

Chloe dancing on the counter duirng the kitchen demolition

D-D-D-Demo

Ceiling before

Doug and Pop had to move all the insulation from one end of the house to the other.  It was a nasty, nasty job, and they are glad that part is over. 

Cleaning up after we kicked the ceiling down "Jackie Chan" style.

Rafters are down

Old kitchen with cabinets still "hangin around".

The cabinets received their eviction notice 

The upper cabinets are gone! As you can see Pop is covering his eyes,  trying to hide his tears.  He didn't want us to see that he was going to miss the old cabinets :)

 Poppa and Chloe taking a lunch break on the front porch.

Ceiling is down in old kitchen.  We are amazed at how much bigger the house looks with the vaulted  ceiling. This is going to be the new dining room.  We are going to remove the wall that refrigerator is on now and also the wall on the right side.  This will open the back of the house into the living room. We are also taking the small window that is now in the kitchen and replacing it with a 72"x48" window and adding 3 skylights in the ceiling.  Doug is working on the electric tonight and will probably start planing the wood floor tomorrow morning.  We have our work cut out for us that is for sure, but slowly we are getting it done.  We made huge progress this weekend thanks to Pa and Mamaw.  Love you guys and thank you sooooo much. 

Chickie says Bawk Bawk Bawk

Chloe and I took a little road trip down to McCormicks Creek State Park to see our friends Brook and Lil.
 They have a little chicken coop and Chloe saw chick chicks for the first time.

Brook gave me a much needed photo shop lesson.  I have been desperately wanting these little accordion photo books.  I just couldn't figure out the template, so she helped me.  Let me just say, it was pretty challenging working on the computer with a 14-month-old and a 16-month-old.  It literally took us ALL day to finish them.  I received the books in the mail earlier this week and they are adorable.  I bought three.  One for me, one for Doug, and one for Mamaw.  Plus, they are magnetic, so they stay together, or you can pop them on the fridge.