Finally

For all of you who have visited and posed the question..."umm...are you growing weeds in there?" I FINALLY have proof after 14 MONTHS.....that it is not, in fact, a weed:



I have to admit, I had my doubts too.

a lot going on...

Between being stressed out (I tend to do that very easily) and having no internet for over a week, I regret to say I have to do another catch-up post. Here we go:

We have officially MOVED. hallelujah! All went fairly smoothly thanks to a lot of helping hands (thanks you guys). We managed to not fully complete any of our remodel projects. There are a couple that just need a few finishing touches, so I won't post pictures just yet....

Almost a week after moving in this happened:


Poor kid. It's pretty much my fault too. I had swept the floor and left the pile of dirt to clean up once I found the dustpan and she decided it'd be fun to twirl in the dirt pile. She slipped, landing on her hands and knees. Truthfully it didn't look like a bad fall, so I didn't even go to help her at first, but then she started screaming and clawing at her leg and I knew we were in trouble. The x-rays appeared normal, but the doctor was bothered by how swollen her leg felt. He thinks that it's either a hair-line fracture that the x-ray didn't pick up, or a bone bruise. So it's 2 weeks with the splint on, followed by another x-ray to see if they can see anything the second time around. I'm hoping and praying that it's not a break because we are both sick and tired of the splint. We've developed a pretty nice system for getting around the house though...


It's her baby "wheel-chair." Thankfully she loves it and asks to be put in it. I guess she figures that its either that or drag herself around on her belly. It makes me SO sad to see her in the splint, that I regret to say, she pretty much gets whatever she wants. We ended up getting her a cheap little baby doll, which she was SO cute with...at least for the first 24 hours. Then she figured out that she could dangle it by its binky and have her stroller run over the poor thing, which she finds hysterical. I hope this is somewhat normal for a kid her age.



So things are somewhat calming down in the Gardner household and thank goodness! I'm ready for a little less on the "to-do" list.

Nursery girl!

Eva is now an official nursery girl! We actually snuck her in a few months ago, and she's been loving it. She's already made an enemy of a little boy about a year older than her, who for some reason thinks she's out to steal all of his toys. I brought her in once and he started yelling "NOO! DON'T PUT HER DOWN! DON'T!" It made me chuckle. She's also VERY serious about snack time and if the other kids don't pay attention to their food....she's quick to add it to her pile. That's my girl! :)

Catching up!

Thanks Megan for the inspiration to do a little catch-up!

Easter was spent in Tucson, and it was a lot of fun hanging out with family. Megan pretty much sums up the events, so I'll just include a couple of pictures.

What's with that face??

Megan played around with a picture she took and I thought it looked really cool!

We've been continuing to go over to the house nightly to work on it and have made some really good progress! A whole lot of priming and painting has been going on, and the kitchen is coming together. We've hit another one of those crappy projects in getting ready to lay down the wood floor. We've had to tear out a bazillion square feet of glued down linoleum and have yet to find a way to remove the glue. We've tried everything in the book...hot water, glue remover, chemicals out the wazoo and a WHOLE lot of elbow grease but apparently 30 year old glue doesn't like to come up. Jared's currently over at the house with some huge machine that's supposed to take care of it...I guess we'll see!

This picture is a little dated, but it'll give you an idea of what it looks like.

Eva's still her normal, goofball self. Her favorite thing to do is laugh or make others laugh, followed by a close second of SCREAMING. It's pretty much constant. She screams when she's happy, when she's mad, while she's playing...constant screaming. Which is added on top of inheriting her momma's red-headed temper. FANTASTIC.
She's ALWAYS wanting to help, which I'm sure I'll appreciate some day, but it creates a lot of trouble. She thinks if we're doing something she should too. Due to this she has her own painting clothes and mini roller now. I'll have to snap a picture of that some time. Very cute...extremely messy.
We've been spending a lot of time at the Riparian Preserve next to our library. She thinks the ducks all want to be hugged and she also seems to think that they like to eat rocks. The ducks don't helps this problem by pecking at the rocks she offers them. She also seems to think that turtles like to have rocks dropped on their heads. Poor things. Anyway, I guess that's a wrap! I'm impressed if you've made it to the bottom of this novel!

Raise the roof!

.....or the ceiling in our case. Raising the dropped ceiling has been the project that has REALLY put us behind schedule on the house, but thankfully, it's DONE. The ceiling was dropped in the kitchen, for no apparent reason at all, and in the hallway, which was chock full of all the air conditioning ducts. Thank goodness Jared knew how to raise all that stuff....and that he didn't complain about going over the the house at 5 a.m for TWO weeks to work on it before work...and that he didn't give me a hard time about ME being the one who wanted to raise it in the first place. I'll admit, when he wanted to move the wall between the laundry room and kitchen 4.5 inches so that the kitchen sink would be centered....I complained...and that only took an hour or so! (That was BEFORE he had to spend all this time on the ceiling. I've kept my mouth shut since.)

The kitchen and dropped ceiling before:

The new kitchen ceiling! (thanks for the help Andrew!)
Workin' away on the hall ceiling....

That's my little cheese monger!

If I had to choose a profession outside the home, one of my first choices would be a cheese monger. Those lucky people get to eat cheese all day and get PAID for it. I guess Eva must take after me in that area, because Jared offered her a cube of mozzarella today, which she promptly put back in the drawer and brought out my holy don't-even-THINK-about-touching-this-stuff parmigiano reggiano. Since I wasn't around, he gave her the whole hunk and she was in HEAVEN. Jared thinks 98% of cheeses are too strong, so I'm excited to have a buddy to share good cheese with! Eat up kid!

She LOOKS like she's gagging, but she was saying "MmmMMM!" the entire time.

Look at those bite marks!

The House

ALLLLright....

I have to admit something. I'm really truly embarrassed to show pictures of this house. Don't get me wrong, I'm ecstatic to have it, but quite frankly, it needs a LOT of work. I'm just worried no one will come and visit if they see the before pictures! It's a plain old 3 bed 2 bath ranch style house about a mile and a half from where we currently are. My favorite part of the house is that it's on a 1/4 acre, which probably doesn't seem that big, but it's huge for this area. We hope to take care of the kitchen, hardwood flooring and main bath prior to moving in (in May), along with a slew of smaller fix-ups, but the rest of it will have to slowly be done over the next year (or two). Anyway, here it is! I'll post more pictures as projects get completed.


I insisted on a picture in front of the house, even if it is cheesy. I mean you only buy your first house once right? I hope to get that brick arch thing taken out.....

Here's the kitchen upon moving in:

And here's the kitchen 3 hours later....


Here's Eva telling us all about what the backyard needs. :)


And finally...a picture for my dad. He wanted to see a picture of our oranges! There are two orange trees and a lemon tree in the front yard that have been sorely neglected, but produced some of the best tasting oranges I've ever had.