Before and After - The Deck

We've been thinking of clearing the main level of carpet for a while now. It's just not practical with 3 doors to the outside... all the dirt, pebbles and whatnot being carried inside and lodging themselves to the carpet. So, we do a lot of talking but never set aside the money for the project.

Turns out Caboose has pretty much forced us to get moving on the remodeling project. He had stomach issues as a puppy and pretty much ruined the carpet in the living room. Bartee called the carpet replacement "an emergency" and wanted to start on it right away. Within days of buying the materials (we're going with a laminate flooring) Caboose promptly threw up on the carpet and just this morning urinated on the carpet. Everything he'd been holding all night long and he's a big doggie. It was a mini swimming pool in there. Both times, I didn't bother cleaning it. Very liberating and a little stinky. :) In any case, the carpet is gone and Bartee plans to start on laying the new floor tomorrow morning. Will hopefully have some before and after photos in a few days to share.

In the meantime, it was time to sand and stain the deck again, and I do have some before and after photos of that... what do you think? The before pictures unfortunately were taken after the sanding so the old stain color is gone. The old color was similar to the house color, but not an exact match so it always looked like we tried to color match but failed horribly. So, this time we went with something totally different.

BEFORE...

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AFTER...

Bridgette

Sanjay,

Thanks for the incredible weekend at your place. I have been waiting a long time to come home with you and it was worth the wait.

Just before we walked into your house, the sound of barking put a big scare into me. I must say, that meeting your big dog face to face like that, was NOT the highlight of my weekend. Rather, the time we spent at the Indian New Year festival ranks among my special memories with you. Seeing all those lovely costumes, hearing the Tamil music and devouring the yummy spicy Indian food, it was hard for me to believe that we were still on American soil. For those hours, I felt transported to India. Thanks for sharing that with me and bringing along your sister's little stuffed furry friend.

Fortunately for me, I got a couple of extra days with you and you decided to take me to your piano class. Funny that you just learned a note called "Alligator A". Your teacher used my cousin, Alex, to demonstrate. It was good to see him again... hadn't seen him since Easter. Keep up the good work in piano!

The weekend went by so fast, and now it's time for me to visit another preschool friend. I'm looking forward to more adventures and I'll see you in the classroom soon.

Love,
Bridgette

Tamil New Year Celebration

This weekend the Tamil community gathered to enjoy a wonderful South Indian buffet dinner after a full afternoon's worth of dancing, game playing, singing and acting. It always amazes me what effort they go through to pull this off every year.

For weeks, the kids and adults have been holding dance, singing and acting practices in their homes. The menu plan was organized and families were assigned items to cook on that morning. A venue was selected and folks were trained on the audio/visual equipment available. Unlike many other Indian functions, this one is specific to a certain region of India where they speak Tamil. So, unfortunately for me, the program was mostly Tamil and Bartee had to do a LOT of translating. Disappointing to my MIL, I still have not learned Tamil. Despite the language barrier, I throughly enjoyed every minute of the program.

For a sample of what went on... check out this video:

Happy Easter

Before it's next Sunday and well-outdated, let me get this post out there.

We had a busy and fun-filled holiday weekend. The Easter bunny brought goodies for the kids, we spent the majority of the day with friends, and the weather cooperated nicely for playing outdoors. This rarely happens around these parts, so we have to be thankful for that. The kids were thrilled with everything except the mother lode of M&M's that filled their plastic eggs. It seems they were hoping for a nice variety of candy to keep their sweet tooth at bay for the next month or two. Of the 100 thousand M&M's Priya received, according to her estimates, Daddy said he'd be willing to take half of them off her hands.

The proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the video that I made of the days events...



Hope you all had a very Happy Easter!

Easter Song

He played this song flawlessly about 10 times before I whipped out the camera. This is how his early piano playing days will be remembered...



I did capture a perfect rendition of "Hot Cross Buns". Not quite as entertaining as this though.

Look A Like

Occasionally the facial expression, the body language, the wrinkle in the nose, the look in the eyes or the silhouette captured in the photo of a child can make you say, "Geez, he/she looks just like his father/mother".

Sometimes I know exactly which photo I'm digging for, but other times I go on a mission in search of the photos to prove it. Most people agree that, with the exception of their hair, Sanjay looks like Daddy and Priya looks like Mommy. I did some scrapbook pages a while back showing the resemblances, and thought I would share them here. What do you think?

Ski Weekend

Soon all the snow will melt and my posts won't focus on skiing, but in the meantime you'll have to endure just a little bit more. :)

The weekend started off a little shaky when, while driving Friday night, more than halfway there we realized that Priya forgot her winter jacket. It would not be possible for her to ski without it even though the weekend temperatures in the mountains were supposed to reach almost 45 degrees. So we scrambled for ideas and called a couple of friends to see if they had a spare that we could borrow. Of course, we don't have too many contacts up there and even fewer that have a 6-9 year old with an extra winter jacket lying around. So, that didn't work out too well for us.

We would have 20 minutes before the Columbia outlet store closed, so we decided to stop there. Luckily for us they were clearing out all their winter stock, so we ended up buying a gender-neutral jacket that fits Priya now and will likely fit Sanjay next year. Disaster averted.

Saturday morning Priya wakes up with stomach pains. Turns out a stomach bug is going around school and she's convinced that she has it. Clearly I can see by the paleness in her face and her unwillingness to play with Sanjay that something is wrong with her, so we stayed back at the condo while Bartee and Sanjay hit the slopes at Keystone. Unfortunately, we have no photos from their day but it seems that Bartee was able to talk Sanjay into several trails that Priya and I would have surely refused, so it all worked out.

By this morning Priya was feeling better and we all went out with Grandpa Bob. It was our (me and the kids) first time up the Imperial Express lift which is the highest chair lift in North America. So, it was a memorable day and definitely the ideal conditions to be up that high. The wind was minimal and the temps were toasty. Oh yeah, and the sun was really, really bright. See Priya's eyes?



I posted some more pictures from the weekend on Facebook... go have a look here.