The Next HGTV Star

The kids favorite part of the kitchen project?  The cardboard boxes!  They made themselves a little box city on the patio.  They took markers and decorated them outside and in.  But Jill thought hers could use something a little bit more..

Cabinet Day

Cabinet Day has arrived!

The first cabinet... about 10AM.

Progress as of 6PM.

The grandfathers are on their way back to do some more this evening.  Updates to follow!  :)

Race Day and caching

This morning we squeezed in a quick market run before the kitchen chaos commenced. We made it there just in time to make our way to Binns Park to see the start of the Red Rose Run which Stef and Matt (and Ozzy!) were running in.  Unfortunately we missed them, but it was fun to see the race!

Then the kitchen called and Daddy went to work.  (See next post!)

The girls picked up Cousin Kole and did some geocaching in Ephrata.  But not after some panic last night when Mommy discovered the GPS wasn't working!  Thankfully it is still under warranty, but that wasn't going to help her with some very disappointed kiddos.  So she did the next best thing she could think of... find some really easy ones and zoom really close on Google Maps and pray.  And wouldn't you know it... they found 5 out of 7 they looked for!  Yay!

Lunch at Ephrata Public Library. 

(Used the timer function for the first time ever and we were ALL in the picture.  Score!)

Much to Agent K's delight, we found one on this big tank at the Amvets.

Daily Kitchen Pictures

Wednesday Day 5: walls painted.

Thursday Day 6: flooring installed

Big helper

While Mommy was grilling dinner, Natalie took the pile of plate, utensils and cups and set the table all by herself for the first time.  She was so proud!

kitchen update

Four days later, the kitchen may not look much different, but trust us, a lot of work has been done! We've got a new plywood floor base installed and lots of patched up holes, but the big task was the electrical stuff. Daddy spent a good portion of the weekend trying to unravel the mysteries of our house's wiring, including finally deciphering the mystery switches that seemed to do nothing. He also added outlets for accent lights on top of the cabinets, put our dining room light on a dimmer. And he only got shocked once?!?!

Next up? Painting and some plumbing this evening.



And in non-project news...

Natalie is beyond excited to go to the library again. Specifically she wants to play "puter", i.e. hear a TumbleBook on the computer there. Mommy really disappointed her last night by begging off due to the rain. When she started asking (begging) again this morning, Mommy told her if she wanted to go she'd better get her books ready. She started bringing each book on her night stand out one by one and inquiring if it was "keep?" or "brary?". She must have figured it out after the first couple, because the next thing we saw she had all her library books on the table and not a single one of our keepers. What a smarty! Guess we'll defintely have to hit the 'brary tonight!

Memorial Day Sunday

Sunday was the Blauch Family picnic at Uncle Ron and Aunt Georgia's house in Marysville.

Ben, Great Grandma Blauch and Kristen

Jilly and Mike

Ben peeking over with a smile!

Aunt Crickett and baby Trevor

Jilly was so excited to help Uncle Ron make the ice cream.  Yum!!!!

Pappy sharing his ice cream with Natalie

Coloring with Tyler and Abby

Memorial Day Saturday

We went to Nonna & Tof's for a picnic and a swim after a long day of kitchen work (Daddy), market, shopping and caching for the girls.

All the pretty purpleness!

Our Friday night... the park

While Daddy, Pap  and TOF took apart our kitchen, Mommy, the girls and cousin Kole went to the park for the evening.  We went to Stoner Park, near Jill's "baby house", i.e. our previous residence.  There's a nice playground, path for riding bikes and some geocaches! We packed our dinner and spent the evening playing.

Grandma met up with us there after work and joined the fun!

Kole's first geocache.  After we put it back, he looked up at Mommy and breathlessly said "Aunt Sherry, that was so much fun!".  It was adorable!  We'll have to take him with us the next time we do some caching.

Another cute moment...  Natalie asked Mommy for more 'spit'.  "Spit?"  "Yeah, spit in my mouf."  She points wildly to her mouth and says it again.  

???   

Took Mommy a good five minutes of brainstorming to realize she meant she wanted to hit the water fountain again!  Oh, the things they say...

Our Friday night... the kitchen

It was D-Day for the kitchen project! The grandfathers and Dad did the honors, using saws, crow bars, pick axes, etc.

After 5 hours of work, three walls and a fridge are all that's left.

Except for what Jillian described as our "outside kitchen"!

Today's fun stuff

Extra cute hair dos for picture day at school.

All cleaned out and ready to demolish!

Weekend catch-up

Our finished floor in the basement. We went with a contrasting color to fill in the holes from the waterproofing, since we couldn't find a matching tile. (artwork by Jillian)

Then there's Daddy's escapade of the weekend. Friday night he went to get a load of dirt to fill in the raised garden beds he's been working on. Since our neighbor's cars were in their driveway and Daddy didn't want to wait, he tried to just gun it up our rather steep bank and hope for the best. Yeah, well, that didn't work as planned and he got stuck! So when we got home from the museum on Saturday, Daddy called a tow truck to pull him up the hill.

Here are the girls spectating on the proceedings.


And here's some happy news... Our baby birdies finally hatched! Mommy Birdie is now joined by her two babies in their nest. So cute!

Our curly girl!

Hanging out watching Mommy and Daddy work on the garden beds post tow truck rescue!

Our Sunday project was to clear out the kitchen cabinets. Oh, my what a lot of stuff there is! This is only about 2/3 of the contents of our cupboards...