A poorly photographed week

Poorly photographed in the number of pictures taken, not poorly photographed in the quality of the pictures.

I went back to work last week, but only worked one day, Thursday.  This week I worked Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.  Working three out of four days is not advised and has, obviously, been too much for me to handle.  Starting next week I will be on my regular Thursday and Friday schedule with five day "weekends".  Much more to my liking. 

We started Sunday with Ginger being her normal glorious, beautiful and lazy self.  She has quit laying on both the big chair and the love seat so we took the sheets off of those, but she's still a big fan of the couch.  The sheet remains for now.   

I told the kids that we finally had a toy just for Ginger.  Nobody was very amused.

Elisa was doing an airport run that afternoon so she came up from Tucson early and had brunch with us.  I got to see baby Theo again and everybody else got to meet him for the first time.

Here is a comparison of baby Theo at two days (on the left) and two months and two days (on the right).  This is also a comparison of me with freshly washed and styled hair and a full face of make-up (on the left) and unwashed, unstyled hair and no make-up (on the right).

On Sunday afternoon we let the kids play Mario for way longer than sane parents would have.

We were going to start working on replacing the liner in the pantry, until we realized we only had enough for this one little strip.  We did it though and it looks great.  Which you'll have to take my word for, because there is no "after" picture.

On Monday night I made this gourmet salad for dinner.  I mean, really, look at this thing.  It belongs in Bon Appetite.

After dinner and before bedtime on Tuesday I was walking towards Spencer's room when I heard him reading to Elliott.  It is so rare that they are not trying to murder each other that I had to capture the moment.

They caught me and did not react well.

I saw this when I dropped Elliott off at preschool on Wednesday.  Good thing the kid has an occupational therapy evaluation coming up in a few weeks.

He wanted his picture with Ginger when he came home that day.

I worked today, as I stated above.  I took my yearly security clearance test and passed with a 97%.  My school is a Bureau of Indian Education school, which falls under the direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which falls under the  US Department of the Interior.  We have to take this ever so ridiculous and boring on-line "class" and test every year to be able to get on the internet and use email.   

I also got my new ID badge, that I edited all of the confidential information out of to show you.

What in the H-E-L-L is going on with my swollen face?  Did I dine on a salt lick last night?

It's going to be awesome to wear that thing around my neck for the next 12 months. 

And now, I will enjoy the start of my much deserved 6 day weekend.

The lower kitchen cabinets

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I'm doing ANOTHER post about staining the cabinets in my house.  The good news is that I totally lost steam and interest in photographing the whole process by the time I got to this part of the kitchen after doing the island and the bathroom. There are far fewer pictures. 

I started the process the second week of June.  It was very poorly timed with the heat.

These are all of the before pictures.

The during pictures.

I can't believe I hosted a pool party with this mess in my house.

We all remember when I nearly died from overheating in the garage doing the doors.

Once all of the cabinets were done it was time to put in new liner.  This was just days before we left for Vermont.

Under the sink was totally disgusting.

It looks so much better with peel and stick tile.

I reorganized all the cleaning stuff.

And, hooray!, the after pictures.  I bought a new towel and floor mat to celebrate.

The flash makes this look really brown and much lighter.  I promise it's the same color as the rest in real life.

Unfortunately, while I love the finished lowers, they just make the uppers glaringly light.  October, when I plan on finishing the rest, cannot come soon enough.

Some side by side comparisons.

I'm not always the best at getting the same angle. 

I'm still not 100% certain what I'm going to do with the upper cabinets.  Since the counter tops are so dark it will make the kitchen way too dark to do java on the top too. 

I'm thinking about Candlelite, Brown Mahogany or Georgian Cherry.

Opinions?

The rest of the first week of school

I had grandiose plans to take a picture of Spencer each day of his first week of school.  It lasted through Tuesday and then my plans failed.  Oh well.

Tuesday  

I found this shirt at Kohls for $4.  I'm kind of obsessed with it.  I kind of want one for myself.

Elliott and I had a lazy day at home.  I think we went out at some point.  Maybe to Target?  Maybe to the grocery store?  I don't even remember.  NOTE: I remembered 15 minutes after writing that.  We actually went to Mesa to visit our sitter, Dorothy, because she had surgery on her eye and can't come back to work yet.  We brought her flowers.

I found him like this after I was done working out.

Our friends Kara and Mike and their kids Kaitlin and Rachel were in town from Reno last week.  They came over for dinner on Tuesday night.

I wanted to get a picture of everyone together, but this certainly was not what I had in mind.  Holy moly, bad exposure!

We decided to set up the camera and use the timer for an actually decent picture.  I just had some issues with the centering.

You know, a lot of issues.

And Ginger's butt.

That'll do.

A quick dip in the pool before they had to leave and our kids had to go to bed.

Two Mikes in the water.

They left this Barbie.  So we now have exactly one "girl" toy.

Wednesday

Elliott had his second day of school on Wednesday.  He loves it so much.

I had gotten this email over the weekend and thought that this story time sounded really nice, so after I picked Elliott up from school we went to Mesa again, specifically to go to the IDEA museum, specifically to attend this story time.

The story time was to begin at 1:30.  Elliott and I showed our passes to get in and the nice ladies at the front desk reminded us that story time was just about to begin.  I told them that's why we were there and then we walked over to the story time area.  We sat down at exactly 1:30, just as the author closed the book and thanked everyone for coming and everyone got up and frickin' LEFT.

I was so confused.  I asked a woman next to us if that had been the story time and she said yes and that it had started "a little early".  So, I went back to the front desk and told them that it was now 1:32 and the story time, that we drove to the museum for, was OVER.  And that the author was gone.  They were not pleased.

The end of the saga, with a lot edited out, is that we were offered free passes, which I declined because we have a membership, and Elliott and I got our own personal story time.  Which lasted 2 minutes....the exact length of time that the other story time had been.  I don't think we'll be making any more special trips to what the IDEA museum considers story time.

We ended up spending most of our time in the tea party room.  I was wearing a dress from Old Navy.  Whatever the white fabric is that Old Navy uses in their clothing, it looks fabulous under the black lights.

Thursday

I had my first day back to work on Thursday.  It was a looooooong day.  That night my cousin texted me and said he had a new app on his phone that did funny and weird things to pictures.  He did this.  It's equal parts horrifying and hilarious.

Friday

On Friday Elliott had school in the morning.  He spilled his milk during lunch and instead of wiping all of it up I let Ginger lick most of it up first.

Preschool has done exactly what I had hoped for Elliott, meaning it is wearing him out and he is napping again.  He had no interest in waking up that afternoon and ended up sleeping in my arms for a good 15 minutes after I picked him up out of bed.  

Even a big boy three year old reverts back to a baby when he's snoozing in mommy's arms.

Oh, and Ginger was cute and old looking that day.

Elliott played pirate that night.  He ran around saying "shiver me timbers" over and over and over.

Saturday

On Saturday I went to lunch with some of my friends from when we all worked in the Tempe school district about a million years ago.  We are all speech language pathologists.  I love being among my own kind.