Nothing but the best for our Baby

Last weekend we went to Ione, it had been forever since we were there! Bryce and Paul were busy helping mom rip out carpet and remove the popcorn ceiling in one of her bedrooms. So I had to find my own project. This is located in our barn, if you have ever played in our barn before, or any barn for that matter, you know that they are dusty, dirty, full of hay and manure! So any guesses on what this item might be?

If you haven't guessed yet, it is a crib! The crib that both my brother and I slept in as babies. I tried to look up the brand and such to see if I could find retail value for it from 1982, but no luck. However, my mom believes she paid around $500 for it, this was of course partly because we lived in a camp in Alaska and had to pay a lot for shipping, but still, it is a very nice piece of furniture. And since I'm trying to be "green" and save some money, we are going to fix this up for our baby!

Don't you just love the stack of hay on here, lets hope the baby doesn't have hay fever like I do!

Oh so dusty!

Here I am working on getting it all dusted and cleaned off so that we can put it in our car.

The crib is in pretty good shape, it was properly stored until about three years ago when Paul decided to organize the garage. He wanted to throw this away! Mom told him to put it in the barn, not on the floor in the barn like he did, but at least it didn't get wet out there, or chewed on by mice!

It's pretty beat up from 10 years of child use and moving it several times. At some point the plywood that was the bottom of the drawers and the part that the mattress sits on did get wet and rotted out. So we will have to replace those pieces, otherwise everything seems to be there. It will definitely need a light sanding and a new coat of non-toxic stain to make it look new and beautiful. Good thing I have an engineering husband to figure out how to put it together without any instructions! You lucky Dads that bought new cribs with all the pieces and instructions...HAHA!!!

It isn't an antique yet, but it's half way there, maybe someday our children will use it for their children, then it will be an antique!

The Deck

Here it is, the one you've all been waiting for. The one that I've given so much hype and lead up that I really hope it's as good as you are all hoping for! The deck is finished! It has been for a few weeks now, and this morning I finally remembered to take some pictures. First, a reminder of what the deck used to look like:



And here is the frame for the new deck, just getting started!
The top of the deck is done!
Now working on the stairs, this was a whole family project, Bekah at the top to help level things out there, Alan and Laurel at the bottom to make sure everything was straight at that angle.
Here are the stairs, finally in place! Thisbe only had one accident running up the half finished stairs and then flailing about as she landed where there were no stairs, a scary couple of minutes, but she was fine...
And ta-da! The final result, with new, up to code, children and dogs can't fit through, railings!

Beautiful! It's the same size as before, but Bryce laid the boards at an angle which looks very pretty and is more sturdy. He put in so many screws and bolts that you can lean on the rail and it doesn't even wiggle! A couple of neighbors have walked by and told us how great it looks, and now we have a nice, pretty place to hang out this fall!

Random From Me

So I really do have a great post about the deck coming up. But I have to take "after" pictures, and for some reason every time I think about it it's dark or I'm at work. And one of my readers (okay my husband) requested that I post something. My two cool cousins Sarah and Denise posted a bunch of random things about themselves this week, and since I can do that from work (and I can't upload pictures of the deck) I'm going to copy them!

I am reading "No Future Without Forgiveness" for one of my Master's classes, it is about South Africa and it makes me so sad to read about how the black people who lived their were treated before Nelson Mandela was elected President, it's like they were not even humans, or dogs for that matter.

My little brother just moved in with us again...I'm not stoked about it but I am hoping for the best. Like please don't leave your socks on my kitchen floor or your pants in the living room (seriously, why did you take your pants off in the living room?!?)

I am 10 weeks pregnant this week! That means I am a quarter of the way! I am so freaking excited! And freaking overwhelemed. I keep thinking, did I really think this whole having a BABY thing over? I mean, I have to PROTECT it and take care of it and I want it to have a perfect little life, but sometimes life really sucks and I won't be able to fix it all the time. How do you do it mother!?! (especially with me because I FREAK out about EVERYTHING!)

My husband likes to sing me little made up songs, like "Keely potty pants" (because I use the bathroom a lot now that I'm pregnant) and songs about me to the tune of "I dream of Jeannie." (Are you glad I wrote a post for you to read now, honey?)

I let the dogs in bed with me, Bryce HATES it. But they make me feel so snuggly and loved. It makes the bedding gross, which I really don't like, but I do really like how I feel when they are near me. (note: this is when Bryce is not in bed with me...mostly)

I am terrible about grocery shopping, I really don't like it and I like to tell my mother that it's because something really bad happend while at a grocery store but I have repressed the memory. I think it's really because living in Ione when you get groceries it takes several hours and hundreds of dollars to stock up. Needless to say, there are usually not enough groceries at our house.

The magic 8 ball on my desk just told me the baby is a boy, we shall see!

Hopefully this motivates me to post about the deck soon! Oh and Shawna's wedding which was last weekend!

Light House

Bryce has been busy working away on the deck, tonight the railing has started to go up, it's very exciting! His goal is to have it done by this Friday, we are having a BBQ with our parents to celebrate his birthday and finishing our deck. I was able to convince him to take a break for a few minutes on Saturday and put up new lights on the front of the house that we purchased with a Lowe's gift card from Bryce's aunt and uncle. Here are the original lights. They haven't worked since we moved in, and we couldn't even get the light bulbs out. Our house was very dark compared to everyone else on the street:

Paul was over helping of course, and if you haven't seen him in a while, don't worry he hasn't grown a crazy mullet, he just found this and a plastic gold pedant that says "winner" in our garage. He decided to wear it around and proceeded to golf like this in the front yard. I'll share those pictures in another post!

Here are the new lights!

Now our house is bright and safe like all the other houses in the neighborhood!

An Addition

Since we purchased this house of ours we have been talking about an addition. It's a great house of course, and we love it, but we have just always felt like something is missing. We know that adding this addition will be a lot of work, but we have talked about it and decided that this is really the best time.

Our new addition will be joining us in April of 2010 :)

It was an awesome weekend! I headed to Helena with my good friend Megan to attend Shawna's bachelorette party, while Bryce made plans to spend the weekend at our house. WORKING. Have I told you how much I love him? :) This pile right here, this is our deck. If you haven't heard about our deck saga, it starts with us planning to paint it, then plans to do part of it, then maybe trex, oh no way too expensive, and now, now we decided to redo the WHOLE THING!!! In beautiful redwood! Can you feel my excitement?!?


While Bryce was working on the deck we were at the bar with this pretty lady...
While Bryce removed the entire top of the deck...
I wore Shawna's bra over my shirt...in a bar.
While Bryce tore down all the railing...
I was out on the town with two of my favorite people...

I CANNOT wait to show you the final product (the deck and the wedding!) but I have been sworn to secrecy (about the deck of course) until it's totally done. Currently we have most of a deck, but no rails and no stairs. Bryce has plans to continue working on the deck this weekend, and this time I will be around to help!