Garage – Phase 2

They have been working on the garage again.  This time they had to dig a water line from the house to the new garage.To test this water line they rigged up something in our basement with a water hose and a clamp and Maggie’s water dish… and then they left and went to the hardware store.  I’m upstairs in the house and hear a door slam.  I go investigate and here our utility door in the basement just closed because they left the door open that goes into the garage.  I look and see that they have this water hose coming in from the basement window and it is hooked up to another pipe with some sort of clamp… and where it hooks up is resting in Maggie’s water dish.  I think to myself – hm, wonder if they meant to leave this running while they were gone.  Should I call them?  Na, they know what they are doing… they don’t need me to bother them. 

About 15 minutes later Jesse shows up and starts yelling – It broke!  Here the water hose popped off and was spraying water all over our basement!  Where they are doing this is just our utility room and it has concrete floors – however the water was starting to leak into the rest of the basement and getting the carpet.  It just got about 2” of the carpet – whew! 

Now the only reason Jesse came home was to check on this water hose!  He was headed to another stop and just came back before he went because he had a gut feeling this could happen and he wanted to come home and check on it.   Thank goodness he came home, because I don’t think I would of went into that room again and we could of had a huge mess on our hands.  Jesse says, I could of been home sooner except Dad needed to stop at A&W and get a rootbeer.  : )  After the water line was dug and tested and re-filled in – they moved onto the retaining wall.  We had to build the garage up so much that we needed to build a wall to keep it from all washing away.

Jesse’s Dad wanted to make sure I had a picture of the “Forman”.  This is Grandpa Frey.  When I would walk by him he would say – I should go over there and help them guys.  : )

Then I looked over here and I use to have a fire pit!!  I leave to take Mallory to the park and come back to my fire pit missing!!  

Don’t worry, they just moved it under our deck steps!  

Even though we spent an entire weekend putting in that fire pit and waiting patiently for the grass to grow in so we could use – when it was all said and done – we didn’t like it.  So I knew we were ripping it out and starting over.

Today I took Mallory outside to play in the huge sandbox.

Here is the retaining wall. 

Look at how much fill we had to bring in!   

They even ripped out the patio back behind our house garage.  Mallory had spent many afternoons out on that patio riding giraffe and coloring with chalk.  We have to build another retaining wall here too – see the big drop off.  They had some thing there when we moved in – but it was ugly and starting to fall in and down.

This is a look from the back yard.  Dirt.  Dirt.  Dirt.  Because we had to build up so much we had to level out the rest of our yard.

One project leads to another leads to another… 

McDonalds

I was feeling antsy today and needed to get out.  I texted my sister to see if Mallory and I could come visit.  Of course she said yes.  I ask Mally if she wants to go to Auntie Shannon’s house and play with Ellyn and Garrett... no joke – she starts squealing and jumping up and down in the chair that we are sitting in.

We get to Shannon’s house and she says… want to go McDonalds.  What?  Really?  McDonalds?  She looks at me like I’m from another planet.  Yes Lynn, McDonalds.  Sure, I guess.  I don’t go there unless I’m forced.  I’m not a fan of fast food – I’ll eat it, but its not my favorite and its not a place I’ll pick to eat.  Off we go to McDonalds.  Mallory hasn’t experienced McDonalds yet.

We pick a table in the playland and I go to fill up our cups with soda while Shannon organizes the kids.  I come back and her & Elly are on one side of the booth Garrett is on the other side and Mally is at the end in a high chair.  I climb into the booth next to Garrett.  Shannon was trying to feed Mallory a french fry and she doesn’t want anything to do with it.  I break up a chicken nugget for her and she is making this horrible face and wants nothing to do it and is pushing it away.  I swing my arms back to take bite of my sandwich and WACK!  I tip over my full glass of soda!  I haven’t even taken a drink!  It’s full!  It is now spilling all over Garrett and I.  I’m in shock because it is so cold and all I can do is make big eyes at Shannon!  Shannon is laughing her butt off!  Garrett is starting to cry because it is COLD all over his legs.  The soda spilled over ALL of our napkins and the napkins are on the other side of McDonalds.  Shannon grabs Garrett from the booth because he is crying and wet.  I’m soaked and have nothing to wipe myself or the mess up with.  A lady just walked in with her son and gave me their napkins.  While I’m cleaning up Mallory has caught hold of entire box of chicken nuggets and is starting to throw them on the floor! 

Shannon brings me more napkins – giggling the entire time because she is not the one walking around looking like she just peed her pants in McDonalds! 

I’m cleaning and cleaning and cleaning.  Ellyn says to me “Tia, at the end of the day they clean this place.”  Hahahaha!  I think she just wanted me to sit down and eat.  Then I head under the table to clean up the soda under the table and a guy (from our church nonetheless) says, “Man I don’t think this place has been this clean before.”  Then he turns on the fan and says, “We gotta dry up all this soda.”  : ) 

For the rest of the day I walked around looking like I peed my pants and and my left flip-flop was stuck to my foot.

Oh and you want to know what Mallory at McDonalds?  The pickles I picked off my burger.  My first bite of the sandwich was all pickle.  Gag!  Pickles are made to be eaten separately not on a sandwich!  She spots my pickles and starts saying “pa. pa. pa.” and pointing.  I didn’t think she would like them because they were covered in ketchup.  She ate it right up and asked for more “pa. pa. pa.”  That was all she ate.  Three little ketchup covered pickles.  Yum!

Then Elly took her in the playland and our first trip to McDonalds was complete.  Whew.  I think we are good for another 12 months!

Pouty Lips & Hand Me Downs

Thursday afternoon Mallory wanted to go outside.  When we go outside she loves to ride her giraffe.  She rides up and down the driveway and if I’m not looking she will attempt to ride across the street to play with the neighbor’s grandkids. 

She didn’t make it to the neighbor’s this day.  The crack in the driveway had her giraffe stuck.  However this is how Mallory deals with being stuck.  Push and push and grunt and get angry and push harder and harder until… BAM!  Flips over the handles and lands right on her face on the concrete!  I’m watching this all happen and her back tires are coming up off the ground and I’m going to assist her and I was too late. 

I pick her up off the ground fearing the worst.  Blood is dripping from her mouth.  We come into the house to see the damage and get a wet wash cloth.  She won’t let me look her mouth.  I assume all her teeth are intact.  She keeps sucking on her bottom lip and all the blood is going in her mouth.  I keep trying to give her a drink of water but she doesn’t want anything to do with it.  She wants to go back outside.  Tough kid!

Here is my pouty lip girl a couple days later!

The only way I could get a picture is to put the cows on.  Otherwise she doesn’t sit still and she comes at me and climbs all over me looking for my lens cap.  When she finds it she has to put the cap back on my camera.

However, when the cows are on.  She has no idea that I am even in the same room as she is!  : )

 

Hand Me Downs…

My Mom and Sister are up in my parents garage and come across a tote of Elly clothes.  I get the tote this week and I’m going threw it today and come across so many shoes!!  I mean tons of shoes!!

I now have a small shoe store in Mallory’s closet!  The best part is that Elly had chubby feet too so a lot of these shoes are wides!  Yay!

Three pairs of sandals!!!

Pink Boots!!!  These boots are 2 sizes to big yet – but I still tried to get them on her today and um… I can’t get boots on this kid!  Her foot won’t bend the proper way to slide it on.  Don’t worry, I’ll keep trying. 

Don’t even get me started on the clothes that were in tote!  A huge stack!!!

I can probably count the outfits I have bought Mallory in the last year on one hand.  Everything she wears is Elly’s or it was gift.  Elly just doesn’t wear out her clothes.  My sister has totes until Mallory is in a size 7!!  Mallory on the other hand – wears out the clothes.  Her knees are permanently brown on some of her leggings/pants.  Shirts and dresses have stains from dirt, food and who knows what else.  The toes on her shoes are all rubbed off from all the crawling.  Mallory is rugged – however her Mommy dresses her like she is a girly-girl.  : )

Check out this skirt!!  It still had the tags on it!!  Granted it was an old navy clearance tag for little over a $1!!

This little corduroy jumper!  Makes me excited for fall with some cute leggings underneath! 

  Of course she is even ready for when hunting season rolls around!  : )

Now I must go build another dresser & closet to house all these clothes!  Thank you Shannon & Elly!!  : )  Wait… maybe I should go tell Jesse to add onto the garage that he is building – I need a room just to house all these clothes that she is outgrowing!

Refreshing Vacation

*Warning: this post is super long.  I have to do it all now because I will never come back and finish.  However, I will try to keep you entertained throughout the post.*

We took our first family summer vacation.  It was heavenly.  We took a trip up to the U.P. of Michigan.  We even invited Jesse’s brother and his wife to come along with us.

Packed, loaded, and ready!  Some how we packed everything we needed for all three of us, food, coolers, pack ‘n play, Maggie, and a dirt bike. 

I don’t go anywhere without my bug spray!  They have been so bad this year that I have to put bug spray on just to go to the mailbox!  I wasn’t running the risk of running out so I brought two bottles  of it!

Mally’s ready to see what vacation is all about!

Oh yeah – did I mention that even Maggie got to go on vacation?  She was actually so good.  I’m not sure that I have ever seen Maggie so good.

We rented this little tiny cabin.

Our first day there we decided to go on a little adventure and go be a tourist.  We went into the next town and they had glass bottom boat tours of ship wrecks.  FUN!  We go and get tickets and hope on a boat for um… THREE HOURS!!!  Three hours with a wiggly 14th month old.  Three hours that runs right over your lunch and nap time.  Three hours.  Long story short – I didn’t see any ship wrecks.  So I can’t tell you about them.  I was up on top of the boat trying to wrangle a tired hungry 14th month old and feeding her so many goldfish crackers I thought she was going to turn into one.  Do you ever have those moments of… what was I thinking.  I’m a parent now.  I need to start thinking like one.  Why in the world did we think Mallory would want to sit on a boat (on our laps) for 3 hours!  Oh silly Mommy and Daddy!  Anyway – they told me the ship wrecks were pretty neat.  : )

I probably need to have a lesson with Jesse on the proper way to hold our baby girl for photos.  My goodness.  ; )

As we are taking off everything went well.  She stood here and looked over the edge and watched.

Then we had to start getting creative in keeping her occupied.  Jesse taught her all about belly buttons and let her play with my camera.  Sorry Mom – don’t look at this picture below.  He kept telling me she wasn’t going to hurt it.  I cringed!  So I looked away from my baby girl who had my precious camera in her hot little hands and saw this!  That water is such a pretty blue!

While everyone was down below looking at ship wrecks Mally and I were looking at sail boats.

After this outing it was a must to end the day with one of these…

A little cherry limeade mixed with a lime margarita.  Steph needed one too – we cured any desire that her and husband every had for children with this trip.  ; )

After the first day – I decided I wasn’t leaving the cabin on the second day.  Mallory was going to get all her naps and all her meals on schedule.  It doesn’t take me long to learn.  : )

The guys took lots of dirt bike trips.  At the end of the day they would hope on their dirt bikes and ride off into the distance.  This place was a dirt bikers paradise.  Lots of trails for them and they could ride on the road – so they didn’t have to trailer the bikes to the trails.

We took an afternoon trip to the beach.  It was chilly and reminded me of the Oregon coast. 

  Pay attention to how Jesse walks Mallory down the beach.  Hey look a ship wreck!  I actually got to see one.  : )  

Now look how I walk Mallory down the beach.  She loved it!  She would giggle every time the water would crash into her feet.

After the beach we drove up to this look out point.  Mallory had fallen asleep and I wasn’t real keen on waking her up so I risked it and let her sleep in the truck while we went to look.  It wasn’t hot out and we opened a window… however I feel like everyone is watching me leave my child in the car.  That someone will be standing there waiting to see what kind of person would leave their child in the car and give me a big lecture.

Looking down.  How clear is that water?!

Guess what?  No one was standing at the truck waiting for me to give me a lecture.  Whew.  She was also still sleeping.

We ended every night with a campfire.  After being with each other for a few days our campfires got kind of quiet so Jesse made up a game for us to play. 

You make up this fictitious person and pretend to be them.  The rest of us get to ask you a million questions and try to catch you in a lie.  So they ask you questions like how old you are, and then they ask what year you graduated high school and you have to answer it on the fly and if you get it wrong – game over!  However, I didn’t make up my people – I pretended to be the Pioneer Woman.  Hahaa!  I know!  But these guys don’t read blogs!  And she tells her whole life story that I was on a roll and could answer all the questions… except when they asked me what my husband name was and I busted into a fit of giggles and said “Marlboro Man” and I was busted and lost.

Here we are all relaxed and enjoying our vacation.

That is how we do a vacation!  We are ready to go next year!  Except next year I would like a little bigger cabin with less spider webs.  : )  Granted when we got home both of us kept saying our house feels so big.  our house feels so clutter free.  our house feels so clean.  That was a good feeling to come home to.

Caws go Mmmm

Mallory loves her cows.  She calls them caws (with a long ‘a’ sound).  I’m not sure where she picked up her Brooklyn accent, but she sounds like she is from the East Coast when she says car and cows.  Mallory what does a cow says… Mmmmm  

Do you see the ponytail I got?  : )  Do you also notice how her little baby rolls are melting away?  She is looking more and more like a toddler these days.

Oh and acting like one too.  We are starting to have melt downs.  She even got her first timeout yesterday!  She kept playing in the garbage while I was cooking supper and I told her no so many times by face was about to turn blue.  I slapped her little hand.  I moved her into the living room with her toys.  I asked her to find things from her kitchen.  I tried everything.  She would come back to the garbage and yells “Mom!  Momma!”  with this little shit-eaten grin (that she totally gets from her daddy) and puts her hand in the garbage can and messes with the lid.  I finally thought, okay maybe it is time to introduce a naught-spot.  I searched the living room and well – I don’t have a good spot (without distractions) so I just plopped her in front of the couch and told her she was naughty and she had to sit here.  She started crying.  I’m not sure if she knew what I was talking about, but I finally got the point across to her that she was naughty.  Of course she didn’t stay there for longer then 3 seconds and comes crawling into the kitchen a sobbing crying mess and clinging to my legs.  I kept putting her back in her naughty spot to which it made her an even bigger crying sobbing mess.  I felt like Super Nanny!  : )  However, she didn’t go back to the garbage can.  After it was all over, she hugged me and I made her say sorry.  LOL.  Okay, she can’t say sorry yet, but she put her head on my shoulder and snuggled for 1.2 seconds… and in Mallory World that is a big snuggle. 

Mommy = 1    |     Mallory = 0

: )

Garage – Phase 1.5

Saturday dump trucks were coming and going by 9am!  Now we look like this from the front.

With all the dump trucks going in – our real driveway took a beating and now we have to fix our real driveway!

Here is what it looks like from the back yard.  I’m not even showing you the massive dirt piles to the right and three big pieces of equipment to the left.  The neighbor drove past me and yelled “Looks like you have a construction business going on here.” 

We had to bring in a lot of fill and build the garage up so we don’t have water/flooding problems.  But it is so high now that we have to build a retaining wall back here so that it doesn’t wash away.

One project leads to another project leads to another project…