Monday, July 11, 2011
Midland Splash Park
Mom is here for the week and we are having a blast! It has been warmer here (not as hot in IL though...whew!!) so we decided to take Layla to the splash park in Midland yesterday evening. This is her second trip there and this time she really missed Grayden. It took her a bit to warm up to the water but once she got wet, she was fine. Here are a few pictures of our wet and wild child!
Monday, July 4, 2011
Happy Birthday Daddy!!!
Not only is today Independence Day, but it is also Bryan's birthday! This afternoon we decided to hit the beach to eat lunch and play in the sand. Here are a few pictures of Layla and Daddy enjoying this beautiful day! Happy Bday BB!!! We love you!!!!!
Pump it!
Like I said in an earlier post, my Grandparents weren't even here for 10 minutes before we decided that a few trees near the house needed to go. First of all, they were ugly (mostly because the previous owners didn't take the time to trim them) and second of all, they were just way too close to the house. So we got to work!
The house looks SO much brighter with those trees gone. And with the paint...we are looking at a total transformation! Can't wait to post pictures after we are done painting. Then we'll just have the landscaping to work on and the outside will be almost finished. :) YAY
PS- the title of this blog refers to my Grandpa's favorite phrase of the day. Bryan got a new electric chain saw that apparently needs to somehow be pumped (don't ask me...I won't go near it) and every 5 seconds you'd hear my Grandpa yell "pump it!!!! pump it Bryan!!!" LOL
 |
| Not wasting any time |
 |
| Does anyone else look at this and cringe? |
 |
| Here goes the left tree |
 |
| Gone! |
 |
| Now for this weird one |
 |
| Gone! And the guys are taking a well deserved break! |
PS- the title of this blog refers to my Grandpa's favorite phrase of the day. Bryan got a new electric chain saw that apparently needs to somehow be pumped (don't ask me...I won't go near it) and every 5 seconds you'd hear my Grandpa yell "pump it!!!! pump it Bryan!!!" LOL
Pick a color...any color...
When we bought this house we knew there was a lot of work that we wanted to do...what we didn't know is that we'd be getting started this summer!! We just can't help ourselves I guess...so we decided to get to work on the paint job. So far the hardest part has been deciding what color because I can't make a decision to save my life. At first the house was going to be green, then I feel in love with gray, then I realized our roof was red so we settled on yellow.
Out of all the colors of the rainbow, yellow is probably my least favorite so I needed some options. After picking up about 10 pounds of paint swatches from every hardware store within a 30 mile radius we decided to use Behr paint from Home Depot (pronounced "deeee" - "pot" for those of you that didn't know). We found 4 colors that we liked, had deeeepot the mix up some samples and then started randomly painting the exterior of our house like we had the faintest clue what the heck we were doing. Here is what we ended up with:
Quick tip- make sure to label your paint samples when you are testing them (see the notches next to ours?). I quickly realized there wasn't a huge difference between our colors and I wanted to make sure when we picked the right one, that I didn't take in a different color and buy 10 gallons of it!
So after letting the paint dry we decided to go with the most yellow color we had which was 1. It looked the best with our brick and we thought it would lighten things up. We picked out paint in perfect timing because Behr was running a rebate program on their paint ($5 a gallon back) so we picked up 10 gallons and a few paint brushes and went to work.
So far it has taken us about 6 days of on/off painting (during naps or after bedtime for L) to have about 75% of the house done with coat #1. Our cedar siding was starved for paint so it is just soaking up the first coat (good thing we bought those 10 gallons!). I don't want to share any after pictures yet because the first coat is very spotty with a lot of bleed through so it isn't looking that great. Hopefully we will only need to do 1 more coat or I might shoot myself.
Although it is hard work and a lot of time, painting the house ourselves is going to be SO worth it. We estimated we are saving about $5k by doing it ourselves. Cha ching! I think I'm going into business as a painter after this. ;o)
And on a slightly random note we started taking up the carpet in our sun room. Gross!! It was so dusty/moldy/gluey and just had to go. So here is a "before/during" shot of Bryan hard at work. We still can't decide what to do on the floor in here (paint it or do outdoor carpet) and the walls...but maybe we just need to save this for next year?
And on an even more random note...we have a hawk in our back yard! Here is a picture of it's nest. I've seen it circling the neighborhood once (Layla had to wave to it) and I'm not sure how I feel about this. We won't have a mouse problem, that's for sure...but it is a HAWK in our backyard.
Out of all the colors of the rainbow, yellow is probably my least favorite so I needed some options. After picking up about 10 pounds of paint swatches from every hardware store within a 30 mile radius we decided to use Behr paint from Home Depot (pronounced "deeee" - "pot" for those of you that didn't know). We found 4 colors that we liked, had deeeepot the mix up some samples and then started randomly painting the exterior of our house like we had the faintest clue what the heck we were doing. Here is what we ended up with:
Quick tip- make sure to label your paint samples when you are testing them (see the notches next to ours?). I quickly realized there wasn't a huge difference between our colors and I wanted to make sure when we picked the right one, that I didn't take in a different color and buy 10 gallons of it!
So after letting the paint dry we decided to go with the most yellow color we had which was 1. It looked the best with our brick and we thought it would lighten things up. We picked out paint in perfect timing because Behr was running a rebate program on their paint ($5 a gallon back) so we picked up 10 gallons and a few paint brushes and went to work.
So far it has taken us about 6 days of on/off painting (during naps or after bedtime for L) to have about 75% of the house done with coat #1. Our cedar siding was starved for paint so it is just soaking up the first coat (good thing we bought those 10 gallons!). I don't want to share any after pictures yet because the first coat is very spotty with a lot of bleed through so it isn't looking that great. Hopefully we will only need to do 1 more coat or I might shoot myself.
Although it is hard work and a lot of time, painting the house ourselves is going to be SO worth it. We estimated we are saving about $5k by doing it ourselves. Cha ching! I think I'm going into business as a painter after this. ;o)
And on a slightly random note we started taking up the carpet in our sun room. Gross!! It was so dusty/moldy/gluey and just had to go. So here is a "before/during" shot of Bryan hard at work. We still can't decide what to do on the floor in here (paint it or do outdoor carpet) and the walls...but maybe we just need to save this for next year?
And on an even more random note...we have a hawk in our back yard! Here is a picture of it's nest. I've seen it circling the neighborhood once (Layla had to wave to it) and I'm not sure how I feel about this. We won't have a mouse problem, that's for sure...but it is a HAWK in our backyard.
Fish and Spaghetti time!
My Grandparents came to visit last week and we had a great time relaxing working with them. Grandpa kept saying he was coming to work and he wasn't kidding! Within 10 minutes of being at our house Bryan and Grandpa had removed a tree from our front yard. Yes, an entire tree. Poor Grandpa did so much work while he was here from removing a few trees and bushes to painting our house...he even went to Lowe's and bought all the stuff he'll need to replace our gutters during his NEXT visit. We really appreciate all the hard work (even if he did offer us "a thousand bucks" to not attempt to paint while he is away LOL).
And while Grandpa was working outside, Grandma was working hard in the kitchen inside! We had hot home cooked meals every night including, yoooooou guessed it! Fish and spaghetti! We were in heaven.
I have a few pics to post of the house in another blog but here are just a few other pics from their trip.
And in true Ashley fashion I'm just realizing I didn't get a single picture of Grandma and Grandpa with Layla. I promise to get one next time guys!!! Love you and miss you already...we are going to have to eat mac and cheese tonight. LOL
And while Grandpa was working outside, Grandma was working hard in the kitchen inside! We had hot home cooked meals every night including, yoooooou guessed it! Fish and spaghetti! We were in heaven.
I have a few pics to post of the house in another blog but here are just a few other pics from their trip.
 |
| Her first ever banana!!!! |
 |
| She loved it and we were so proud of her for trying it! |
 |
| The first batch of fried fish...world famous |
 |
| The sweet salsa for the fish...we tried this on roast also this week and it was excellent. I think this is my new ranch dressing...G'pa needs to teach me how to make it so I can pour in on everything I eat. |
 |
| Can't forget about the spaghetti. |
 |
| We bought cupcakes for Bryan to celebrate his birthday a little early. Here he is getting ready to make his wish. |
Happy 18 months!
I can't believe Layla is a year and a half old. It feels like she should be 9 months...the time that we've been in Midland has just flown by.
Layla is a very active 18 month old. She loves to dance, go down her slide, blow bubbles and color with side walk chalk. Her favorite song is "row row row" your boat (we sing the "your boat" part) and she loves to chase and feed her doggies. L's favorite animals besides the dogs are birds and squirrels. She loves to watch them out our window and anytime we go anywhere outside she is always waving to the birds.
Layla can say: juice, mama, dada, go, gaga (dogs), more, shoe, and noooooooo (her favorite). She also has a few other words she has made up but we can't really make sense of them yet. And we can't forget her favorite foods- milkshakes (made by Daddy) and Nutella. A kid after my own heart for sure. LOL. Her eating habits are getting better and for her 18 month birthday she ate a banana and apple! We were SO proud of her!
Some of Layla's dislikes include the dogs not wanting to play with her, bare feet (she wants to wear her pretty shoes), being in the car and eating anything other than the items mentioned above. Haha. I haven't done Layla official 18 month pictures yet, but here are a few that we took for fun outside our house. Happy 18 months Hippo! We love you soooooooooooo much!
Layla is a very active 18 month old. She loves to dance, go down her slide, blow bubbles and color with side walk chalk. Her favorite song is "row row row" your boat (we sing the "your boat" part) and she loves to chase and feed her doggies. L's favorite animals besides the dogs are birds and squirrels. She loves to watch them out our window and anytime we go anywhere outside she is always waving to the birds.
Layla can say: juice, mama, dada, go, gaga (dogs), more, shoe, and noooooooo (her favorite). She also has a few other words she has made up but we can't really make sense of them yet. And we can't forget her favorite foods- milkshakes (made by Daddy) and Nutella. A kid after my own heart for sure. LOL. Her eating habits are getting better and for her 18 month birthday she ate a banana and apple! We were SO proud of her!
Some of Layla's dislikes include the dogs not wanting to play with her, bare feet (she wants to wear her pretty shoes), being in the car and eating anything other than the items mentioned above. Haha. I haven't done Layla official 18 month pictures yet, but here are a few that we took for fun outside our house. Happy 18 months Hippo! We love you soooooooooooo much!
Monday, June 13, 2011
A journey to freedom!
Some of our friends and family have asked about how the dogs were doing with the new "fence" so I thought I'd quickly blog about our their journey to freedom without leashes.
Our dogs have never been particularly BAD outside (they save that behavior for inside) but they certainly aren't the best either. They generally listen to us until they see something they want like a squirrel, rabbit, small child or leaf blowing in the wind...then the ear muffs are on.
We went back and forth (and by "we" I mean I) about the pet fence. No, it wasn't the shock that I was worried about...I just had absolutely no confidence it would contain the beasts. Let's be honest, our dogs have major issues, we all know this. Plus I still maintain that I would feel much safer with Layla outside if we had a fence to keep her in and other things out.
Anyway, we got an electric fence. It was cheaper than an actual fence (totaled under $400 vs probably about $5k for a self installed fence) and took hardly any time to install. At first we just laid the wire on the ground so that the dogs could see it (along with the flags) and we knew where it was for training.
Oh the training. We wanted to do it right so that we didn't screw anything up, it is very hard to undo bad training (Moose) and we didn't want to go through all the effort for nothing. The first step is to train each dog separate and spend 15 minutes, 3 times a day outside. Great, that is an hour and a half every day taking both dog out individually and saying "go potty" about 10,000 times while holding a toddler that doesn't like to touch grass. Needless to say I made Bryan do it the first couple of days.
So session 1 with Oscar went well if you prefer to have your husband forget to turn down the shock "volume" and have your 15 pound dog receive the shock set for a horse. So session 1 = "success" and Oscar was trained...he hasn't gone near the line since. In fact, he practically pees on the back patio and is ready to go inside.
After calming Oscar down and making sure he wasn't having heart palpitations, it was Moose's turn. Bryan turned down the "volume" and Moose got shocked about 2 times. Not too bad but he did come back after being shocked which are all good signs this will work for your pet.
Now, 2 weeks later I can actually say that we let the dogs out and they stay in the yard. Like I said, Oscar will barely leave the patio but we are making progress with him. Moose still gets shocked at least once a day but he's getting it (and let's be honest, it is going to happen for awhile). We even let the dogs stay out with us while we were doing the yard work yesterday and they did great!
Overall I think the pet fence was a good choice. If it works for our dogs I fully believe it can work with almost any dog. We aren't to the point where we can just open the door and let them out yet (they need to comfort of us telling them "no" when they get too close to the line) but hopefully by the winter they will be a little more independent.
So fine, Bryan was right. There I said it.
Our dogs have never been particularly BAD outside (they save that behavior for inside) but they certainly aren't the best either. They generally listen to us until they see something they want like a squirrel, rabbit, small child or leaf blowing in the wind...then the ear muffs are on.
We went back and forth (and by "we" I mean I) about the pet fence. No, it wasn't the shock that I was worried about...I just had absolutely no confidence it would contain the beasts. Let's be honest, our dogs have major issues, we all know this. Plus I still maintain that I would feel much safer with Layla outside if we had a fence to keep her in and other things out.
Anyway, we got an electric fence. It was cheaper than an actual fence (totaled under $400 vs probably about $5k for a self installed fence) and took hardly any time to install. At first we just laid the wire on the ground so that the dogs could see it (along with the flags) and we knew where it was for training.
Oh the training. We wanted to do it right so that we didn't screw anything up, it is very hard to undo bad training (Moose) and we didn't want to go through all the effort for nothing. The first step is to train each dog separate and spend 15 minutes, 3 times a day outside. Great, that is an hour and a half every day taking both dog out individually and saying "go potty" about 10,000 times while holding a toddler that doesn't like to touch grass. Needless to say I made Bryan do it the first couple of days.
So session 1 with Oscar went well if you prefer to have your husband forget to turn down the shock "volume" and have your 15 pound dog receive the shock set for a horse. So session 1 = "success" and Oscar was trained...he hasn't gone near the line since. In fact, he practically pees on the back patio and is ready to go inside.
After calming Oscar down and making sure he wasn't having heart palpitations, it was Moose's turn. Bryan turned down the "volume" and Moose got shocked about 2 times. Not too bad but he did come back after being shocked which are all good signs this will work for your pet.
Now, 2 weeks later I can actually say that we let the dogs out and they stay in the yard. Like I said, Oscar will barely leave the patio but we are making progress with him. Moose still gets shocked at least once a day but he's getting it (and let's be honest, it is going to happen for awhile). We even let the dogs stay out with us while we were doing the yard work yesterday and they did great!
Overall I think the pet fence was a good choice. If it works for our dogs I fully believe it can work with almost any dog. We aren't to the point where we can just open the door and let them out yet (they need to comfort of us telling them "no" when they get too close to the line) but hopefully by the winter they will be a little more independent.
So fine, Bryan was right. There I said it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
