A Day in the Life » House

Houseguest

Andrea — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:40:24 +0000

Last weekend we had our first visitor! Nick, Zac’s freshman roommate, came to Dallas to interview for medical school and stayed with us for a couple of nights. We had a great time showing him the town, or as much of it as we could with a 2 month old baby in tow. I was worried that Adelyn would keep him up at night, but surprise! She slept through the night while he was here! 9:30pm to 7:30am. The last time she slept all the way through the night was in December, but she hasn’t done it since. I, of course, woke up at 3:30am expecting her to get up then, which is when she normally wakes to eat. I went back to bed but woke again at 5:30, sure that NOW she would be waking me up to eat. She didn’t, but I couldn’t sleep, knowing that any minute she would start fussing and wanting to eat. So I laid there for 2 hours, halfway conscious, waiting for her to “wake me up”. Has anyone else ever done this?

We took Nick to the Coppell Deli for a Stubb (best breakfast sandwich in the country, according to John Madden), Market Street for some Bluebell Ice Cream, and to our house for some Mario Kart fun. Nick doesn’t own a TV, so we had to show him how much fun the Wii is. We hope, for his future patient’s sakes, he continues his studies as usual, despite the excitement that the Wii may have caused. If you want to play Mario Kart with us, send us your license number, we like to play with friends online!

Happy Martin Luther King Jr day! Did everyone but Zac get work off? He said there was absolutely no traffic going downtown today, because apparently, people don’t work on MLK day! Maybe he gets president’s day off…

Okay, now for what you really want. Pictures of Adelyn from the last couple of weeks:

Nursery Progress

Andrea — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:02:19 +0000

Some projects are so much more involved (and frustrating) than you think they are going to be. In our experience, MOST projects are more involved and take more time than we think. Painting the nursery was no exception. I’ll spare the details, but here’s the basic story. Zac and I found a paint color we loved at Lowe’s, had a sample made, and painted it on a poster board to make sure it was the right shade of green for the baby’s room. I LOVED it. So the next day Zac went back to Lowe’s, bought a gallon of the paint, and with my dad’s help, painted the room. When I saw it, I knew it was not the same color I had picked out, so we decided to go back to Lowe’s and see if they could get us the right color. Well, after 7 cans of paint and a trip to 2 different Lowe’s stores, we FINALLY got the right color paint. It was weird, none of the employees could tell us why the machine made the sample one color and the gallon another. They had no idea. But they finally got us the correct color, we went home and painted it, and here are some pics of the process. We aren’t quite done, but we’re pretty proud of it so far!

Wrong color

Painting the right color!

Crib Assembly

Crib and changing table

Cute border on the wall

Crib (I made this quilt)

Baby's closet (she is so spoiled!)

We Moved In (finally)!

Andrea — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 01:45:41 +0000

Wow, this has been such a busy few weeks! First of all, we moved into our house on Saturday, October 4th! It has been a long wait, and we have a lot of work left to do, but I am very happy and excited to finally live in our own house! We are now in the process of unpacking, organizing, and looking for furniture. It seems our “apartment furniture” may not quite cut it. For example, the bookshelf from Target that I was planning on using in my living room looks like dollhouse furniture compared to the size of the room. So…I guess we’re gonna have to upgrade a few things.

I had my baby shower this weekend, and am so excited because I got pretty much everything I need, and lots of other stuff as well. And no one is going to question whether my baby is a girl or boy, because almost all of her clothes are pink! Thank you everyone! Zac and I set up the baby swing and stroller/car seat travel system yesterday. We are going to put the car seat base in the car, but I feel a little silly doing that 3 weeks before the baby is supposed to be born. I guess you can’t ever be too prepared.

We went to our new ward yesterday, and loved it! Everyone was so nice and welcoming, and I think we’ll make lots of friends and be strengthened by the people around us.

Here are some pictures of our activities:

Zac Painting the nursery

Our stroller

Zac and the swing

36 weeks

House Training

Zac — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:28:47 +0000

Not only did I break my parent’s lawnmower, there was another near death experience that we encountered. A few days before Andrea’s parents returned home, we were watching the Olympics. As I sat there and watched Michael Phelps kick some serious butt I noticed that the there were some plants on the fireplace that needed some serious attention. As you can see from this photo, this plant was in ROUGH shape. I jumped up and poured about a half gallon of water onto the plant to try to revive it. I was amazed that just a few days later the plant was back and looking as good as ever, except for those brown spots on the leaves of course.

I killed some plants

This experience once again made me question if I was really ready for the house that we bought. I know, it is a little late to be learning these lessons, but I guess it will make it easier to move in some day. This brings me to another point. Unfortunately for our tenants they did not qualify for their mortgage by the time the got to closing. Due to rising interest rates and presumably poor credit, they now need to search for a new house. We decided to allow them to stay in our house for another month. This actually helps us out because I will be out of town 4 out of the 5 weeks in September Once again, if you planned a trip to stay at our new house you will need to make other arrangements, but on the other hand, if you just want to hang out with Andrea this might be a great time! Therefore, we will move in the first weekend of October and it could not be any sooner we are so excited.

Broken Lawnmowers and Armadillos

Zac — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:58:51 +0000

So I yesterday I was trying to be a good son-in-law and mow my in-laws lawn while they were away on vacation. I woke up early because it has been so hot here lately that mowing the lawn after work might just kill me. When I got outside, I was amazed at how wonderful the weather was. It was about 75ish degrees, which is quite amazing since it was 106 just a few days ago. I thought to myself “this is going to be great!” I can get the lawn mowed, get cleaned up and get to work, and I won’t even be that late. So I started mowing. It was going great but then all of the sudden the motor seized up and stopped working. I tried to clean up the lawnmower but it still would not run so I gave up on getting it done. As I went to put the lawnmower back in the garage, I thought I saw a large lizard scampering into the garage. I did not want to go see what it was; I just thought it would resolve itself. So I left the garage door open and went inside to get ready for the day. I eventually closed the door and went about the rest of my day.

I had one of these in my garage...

Later in the evening, I came home and opened up the garage. I was about to walk in it when I saw an armadillo walking between the cars in the garage. So when I thought I saw the lizard slithering into the garage it was actually the tail of an armadillo. It totally freaked me out. The armadillo was not huge, but it was large enough to make me very nervous about walking into the garage. So I stood there in the dark of night waiting for the armadillo to leave the garage. After about 5 minutes of crouching down so I could see where it went. I decided that I had to make a run for it. I did not know anything about armadillos at the time. I did not know if they were dangerous or if they had diseases. As one might assume I was very cautious. Once I confirmed that the armadillo was in the other corner of the garage I made a run for it and got into the house. I left the garage door open so that hopefully, it would find its way out. I went upstairs did a little Wikipedia research and found out the not only do that often care diseases like leprosy, they can also jump or hop about 2 feet high. Well that is enough to freak anybody out. However, against all better judgment I went back out to see what was going on. I took my camera hoping to get a picture of the armadillo. I was very cautious and used walked along the floorboards of my father-in-laws suburban trying to stay off the ground. I was quiet for a few moments and tried to listen for the sound of its feet. I eventually heard that it was just outside the garage. I climbed around the back of the car and onto the bumper and used my camera’s flash to see the ground in front of me. Much to my surprise as I pressed the shutter button and the strobe flash started going off me saw two armadillos running away. Then I looked at where they were going and saw another one. That makes three armadillos in total. I do not know how many I locked up in my in-laws garage all day, but apparently, there were a lot of armadillos around.

This was a strange day. I not only broke the lawn mower, I also locked one if not more armadillos in a garage. I do not know if I am ready to have my own house. I cannot even take care of someone other people’s houses. Wish me luck…

Home Update

Andrea — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:50:27 +0000

ATTENTION: those of you who have already booked tickets to come stay at our new house, postpone your trip. We will no longer be moving in this weekend. It just so happens that the sellers love our house too much to leave, so we have conceded to let them stay one more month. Actually the story is a bit longer and more boring, but we don’t need to go into it. We will definitely be in the house by September, or else me and my pregnant angry temper will come down on whoever wrecks my plans. Because by then I will be 7 months along and HUGE.

By the way, if you’re ever in Dallas, you are welcome to come see us! Just not yet.

Homeownership

Andrea — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:29:42 +0000

I am just starting to realize how big of a deal this home ownership thing is. There is so much to think about! There’s setting up utilities, carpet cleaning, pest controlling, lock changing, moving in, unpacking and organizing, buying new furniture, some repairing (luckily we don’t have much of that), and updating (not much of that either). And I’m sure there’s hundreds of things I haven’t even thought of yet! It is so exciting, but a lot of work. Plus we just started our baby registry, and I pretty much spend all my free time on BabiesRus.com now. They just have so many cute things. Except for I’m realizing there IS such a thing as too much pink. My cute husband was so good to go with me and set up the registry, and he was actually excited about it, which was really fun. By the way, here’s me at 5 1/2 months along…

Another thing that’s on my mind is teaching. I’m starting a private voice studio in my home, which makes it necessary for us to have a piano of some sort. We’ve been doing some major piano shopping lately, and I’ve pretty much narrowed it down (based on our price range). But it’s still such a big purchase, that we are kind of waiting to see if that’s what we really really want. So we just keep going to new stores and trying new things. We went to the Steinway store yesterday, and it was quite an experience. If any of you didn’t know, Steinway pianos are a big deal. They are the only pianos in the world that are handcrafted (so they say), which means that only .001% of the population of the world can afford the $70,000 price tag. Needless to say, we won’t be one of those people. But it was interesting to go and play one just to see the difference. Frankly, I couldn’t tell too much of a difference between the Steinway and the noname brands. But that probably just means I’m not a serious enough pianist. Which I admit I’m not. So I think we’ll go with a lesser known brand that will look and sound good in our home. I’ll post pictures as soon as we decide.

So happy

Andrea — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:45:19 +0000

Well, I don’t know if anyone reads this anymore, because I haven’t written in a while, but if you’re interested in the details of what has been going on in our lives for the past few months, I will try to sum it up.

We found out in late February that we are expecting a baby! We have been married just over two years, and are excited for this new stage in our lives. Zac graduated from BYU in April, and we have since moved down to Dallas, TX to start work. He works for Grant Thornton in Advisory Services. Basically he does IT audits and some other stuff. He is at clients almost all the time, and does travel some:( But he will be in Dallas a lot of the time as well. I am working for a property management company until the baby is born, and then I will be starting my voice studio. Actually, I’ll probably start teaching in September, and the baby is due November 5th, so I’ll be working full time and part time for a while! We found out last week that the baby is a girl, and we have already spent quite a bit of time looking at baby girl clothes…we’re just trying to keep ourselves from buying too much of it.

Also, we just bought a house! We move in on August 1st, and it is in Lewisville, TX. Here are some pictures:

There are 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, and a yard! We love it and can’t wait to make it our own.