Summer birthday

I just realized this has been sitting in my drafts since early July...oops..I want to get it posted as soon we'll have some vacation entries (I hope)...


We had our first true party at the new house, and it was a success!

Our goal was to be ready to have people over by Kevin's June birthday, 2 months after we moved in, and we did it.

Decorating is still a work in progress, I could say it is because we've focused on the additional furnishings we needed and that is true but also because decorating just takes me a long time.

In time for the party we added:

real patio furniture -- we shopped all over and Kevin finally found this one online, magic words *no assembly required*  (pillows and end tables were HomeGoods finds)

a guest bed!       Frame is new, the mattress is actually our old one, but its still a nice one -- and though I was skeptical at first a king really fits in the space and lets us use our previous comforter, which I still love.    We gave ourselves a deadline for this one since my brother came in from out of town for the party, and we wanted to have a guest bed to be able to host in the future.

The part was great fun -- it poured rain all morning so we were a little worried, and some folks weren't able to make it due to the weather, but we had a good time visiting with all who made it and the kids (5 total) played well together in the pool.

We chose a Mexican fiesta theme -- catered fajitas was the best way to go.  I was able to just pick it up that afternoon and we didn't have to worry about cooking.  We kept it in the oven and got it out when it was time to eat.  It even came with all the fixing - the chips and queso were used just as much for nachos which I'd have never thought of but our guests enjoyed.   We thought we over ordered food but not one piece of meat was left; we also had margaritas (with marg glasses!), beer, sodas, and waters; and the grocery store cake was a hit too...I'm still not sure where the birthday candles I bought ended up.  I think birthday boy was relieved to not have to blow out candles.

Kevin spent his actual birthday (Sunday) resting from too much sun, drinks and not enough sleep so we've had to postpone his birthday dinner, but we'll do it another day -- as he recently said he'll get to have his birthday in July.

We are really excited to be able to have people over again.

wall of jasmine

It has taken about a year, but our wall of jasmine is really filling in.  when we moved in it was just a blank black fence, but we wanted some greenery and privacy.  I'm still trying to thread the jasmine to fill in a few holes, but it looks (and smells) great!

I do not claim to have a green thumb at all, but with this we really just plant it and go -- and try to remember to thread it as it grows....hard to keep up with as its had so much rain this spring....

easy leveling

My new home hack --- using yarn to make sure that staggered art work ended up even with each other.....way easier than learning to use a laser sight, and one less thing to keep around the house.

Taking this photo also helped me to have a 'during' and an 'after' photo.    For the before, just imagine a very empty wall....

I did not take photos of all the calculations I did to make sure that I had them mostly evenly spaced along the wall.....woohoo math!  Anyone who says they don't need fractions isn't thinking of how often they are used in everyday life.

Kitchen hardware

We are loving our new place and did a fairly easy project in January that we can enjoy EVERY day.    We put in kitchen hardware.    Some cabinets had hardware we didn't like and others had nothing at all.  We were hoping to complete the project over the holidays but to get what we wanted we had to order it online, of course.....it was worth the wait, having only 3 large drawers we wanted substantial handles for them, and we got that -- they are each 13" long!     I am glad we have only 3 drawers since the pulls with 2 holes are tough to install, lots of measuring and it has to be exact.

All in all we got them all installed in one day, and are so happy to have them.  It really improves the look of the kitchen and its so much easier to open the cabinets.....

moving day fail

Today was to be our move in day...or so we thought.   Early this morning, we went to the house expecting to have a busy day with the movers getting our belongings all in place.   We are both so excited to finally get to stay in the house!!

The movers were confirmed and they came to the house about 9 am, but the weather was not working with us...we thought we could still make it work, but the sky opened up and it was just a deluge and with so much water coming down and so much already on the ground we were concerned with how it would work.    Ultimately the movers made the call to see if we could postpone, and while we were sad to agree to it its probably the best choice --- make sure our belongings and brand new floors don't get soaked, and possibly ruined.

We did accomplish a few small things --- we fixed a running toilet and set up our shower rod and shower curtain.

Here's hoping we have better luck tomorrow!!!

BIG WEEK

This is a big week for the Tucker family!

Not only are we attending the first Texans game of the season today(!), we will also close on our new home later this week!!!!

Any other year the Texans game would be the big event of the week, and while we are excited about it -- woke up thinking GAME DAY! -- it pales in the excitement we have towards getting one step closer to being in our new home.

Just yesterday we were talking about how its more exciting than Christmas as a kid and is agonizing to wait as we know there is a lot we need to do and we want to be able to just get started on it!

We have bought several items for the home, and they are in a pile in the dining room in my in-laws' house - ceiling fans, thermostats, a garage door opener and a garbage disposal.

The wood flooring we ordered also came in earlier than expected, thankfully we can let it stay at the store for a few days...

We also went and got MORE paint samples yesterday, there are so many colors!    We now have 9 samples to pick 4 different colors (2 yellows, 2 blues, 1 white (ceiling) and 4 cream/taupe variations).  Choosing paint is so hard to do, there are such subtle differences...one we liked last weekend now looks too pink, never saw the pink it in before,,,

labor day

The first week of the semester is under our belt and we could not be happier!

It was even busier than most years since we moved and closed on our house during the first week of classes -- I would NOT recommend that for anyone who works in higher ed, but it couldn't be avoided.

We made it through the week and celebrated with pub night at Saint Arnold's on Friday - it was set up as the kickoff event for LSU fans for the LSU/Wisconsin game taking place the next night -- I've never seen so much purple and gold (and in so many varieties) - we even saw a diaper with the LSU logo.

This weekend has been wonderful and relaxed -- we were concentrating so much on getting through the week so never even stopped to put together any plans for the long weekend, just knowing we don't have to do any packing has been a great way to spend the weekend.

We are fortunate that we are able to stay with Kevin's parents while we are between houses, and even Smokey feels at home, we can tell when he started eating normally again.  Knowing we'd be between houses for a few weeks made packing difficult as we had to keep out items we'd need, but send as much as we could with the
movers.  The best item we kept out is a new toy for Smokey -- we used that to put him at ease, crazy critters are his favorite!

We've also been able to spend time doing some shopping for the new place (the fun part about moving).....we saw the home on Friday and are even more excited getting to see more about our new home--- the master bath has TWELVE drawers for storage (our previous home had NONE)

2013 -- another year of randomness

So far (we're not even a week in), 2013 is a wet year...considering we're in a drought I'll take it!

I've had several ideas of things to blog about but when I sit down to write I can't think of any of them - I should remember to WRITE THEM DOWN when I think of them.   you're not missing any gems, they were just funny stories..

This weekend is going to be full of football.  K's alma mater plays for the championship today Go Bearkats! and we're going to the Texans' playoff game  Go Texans!!!   If you're having a case of deja vu you're not alone...these 2 games were on the same day last year too.   I was able to attend last year's Texans game only because they were on the same day and his aunt and uncle decided to go to the Sam Houston game instead. I was at the better game last year - first playoff game ever for the Texans (we literally felt the stadium move) and the Bearkats lost.    I hope they can both pull out wins today, must say K is not confident in the Texans' chances (no one in Houston is really)  and yes, I'm probably the only person in Texas who doesn't care about last night's Cotton Bowl game.  I forget how many Aggies I know until a game is on and my facebook explodes into maroon.   I'm happy for them, though still a bit peeved they took UH's coach.

While the rest of the state watched football last night we watched a baseball movie, Trouble with the Curve.  Cute movie even though I'm not a big baseball fan.  I love Amy Adams and Clint Eastwood plays a grumpy old man like no one else.   Between netflix and redbox we could probably watch a movie every night (don't worry we won't).  I knew the movie premise, but was surprised to see macular degeneration (condition of the eyes) represented and had to think of our close family members (on both sides) who live with it.

side chairs with hidden reclining

We have a much more comfortable space to watch tv and movies now.   As a belated gift to ourselves we got new living room furniture.  Our furniture was falling apart and not comfortable to sit in anymore.   It was long overdue and we took advantage of the time off over the holidays to make it happen.  We are so happy with it.  We'd debated what to get and thought about a sectional and other layouts.  Ultimately we decided on a reclining love seat to replace our recliners - we are actually closer together! - and a sofa that has 2 recliners in it to replace the sofa we had.   Where we'd had the love seat previously we wanted 2 chairs to fit the space better, we also realized 2 people never sat there because it was too small a seat, and you really do need to love the person to sit together in a loveseat.   Looking online we found the perfect solution - side chairs that actually are recliners...It makes a great reading space and is a surprise when you tell someone they can recline.  So yes, that is SIX recliners in the room, we spoiled ourselves.  We were able to make great use of tables and lamps we already had and only bought 1 table.   We had it all delivered right before we went to Galveston.  We joke that my brother-in-law (who Smokey sat) enjoyed it before we did, though we'll enjoy it for many days and years to come.

Sometimes Smokey wakes me up during the night.   It may be that he has to potty thought sometimes I think he gets bored.  He'll whine and wake me up (never K, always me) and I'll let him out, then back in, and back to bed.  Last night he wanted out not once but twice...it'll be a long day for me.    Kevin jokes he's working on a project, too bad its nothing that constructive, but it is funny to think of S having a project he has to get back to.   We joke that he's the only freeloader and needs to get a job.  Kevin and I both work and do chores around the house and even the fish has a chore - eat algae - but not S, though he does entertain us with his antics.  Its a good thing he's cute.

house annoyances

Our house is annoying me.  The weekend before last it rained really hard and I got back from the store to be greeted with water dripping from the ceiling.   We thought it was something wrong with the roof, turns out its not the roof but a pipe connecting to a vent that comes out of the roof that is leaking. It should be an easy fix but is so far back in the rafters that it is tough to get to, and its the part of the ceiling that is two-stories tall so its way up there.   We were hoping to get it fixed before this week's rain but weren't able to so we spent a good part of Saturday trying to find a way to do a temporary fix.  We had 2 options - put something over the vent to prevent water from getting in or put something under the bend in the pipe (in the attic) to catch the water.  We looked at both options and finally decided we couldn't do either - we had the ladder out and climbed up to look at the roof but just couldn't do it.   Even if I can get myself onto the roof (at the garage), I don't think I could get to the house roof -- too short, little upper body strength - and K is not good with heights so there is no way.   We went to the attic and looked at that option, I thought about it and tried to balance on the rafters but way up front is a big A/C tube that I couldn't seem to get over or under and could just picture my foot (or worse, all of me) going through the attic floor - ceiling of the house. I hate to admit defeat but we realized the likelihood was that we'd make something worse, and might not only have to fix the pipe (and possibly other things) but fix one of ourselves too....so we just had to hope for the best with the rain this week and got it scheduled to get fixed later this week.  They'll also have to repair the ceiling since there are water stains.  While we're dealing that issue...I come home from work yesterday, and K has a lamp on the kitchen table.  It turns out that one of the breakers won't stay put so most of the kitchen lights don't work, neither does the living room fan which we use all the time.  It worked that morning for each of us, I know I didn't eat in the dark, but when he went to turn on the light in the kitchen for dinner it went out, and he went out to the circuit breaker but every time he flips it it flips right back.... I know these are very minor things and all part of home ownership, I just can't believe they both happened so close to one another.  I wonder what other fun awaits us...really annoying part is that our house is not old at all. I do thank my lucky stars that we are able to get someone in here to fix each thing and just have to make arrangements to do so.

Last of the curtain projects complete!

This past weekend, I finally finished a project I'd had in mind for the last 6 months and had started working on a couple of months ago.

Our media room has french doors with glass panels. We've been wanting to get curtains for the doors both to block out some of the light when we watch a movie and to give privacy since it doubles as an extra guest room when my family comes to visit (a queen size air mattress fills up most of the room).

We thought about buying some but quickly saw they were more expensive than we were willing to spend, so we had the idea to make some.

I took measurements, picked out fabric (and then I made a second trip to the store since I'd bought only enough for one panel, not two). I do not own a sewing machine nor do I know how to sew very well (my experience is with sewing on girl scout patches and those didn't turn out too pretty), so I was lucky that I was able to get my friends Jay and Gwendolyn to help. Gwendolyn is the craftiest person I know, and the two of them made a beautiful art car so Jay is crafty in his own way.

I went to their house on Saturday and got their help to make them (read: they made them for me). Their experience with sewing (and her mom a phone call away) was invaluable. I had the fabric pinned, but they gave great suggestions of making another fold so we had finished edges, and so we pretty much started over, with the ironing board and a bunch of pins. Jay can sew!
Added bonus: I got to spend much of the day with both of them and their 2 cute kids. Advice to Stella - find a man who can sew and who will kill bugs, just like your daddy!

That night Kevin and I hung the curtains - they are on tiny cafe rods and they block the light really well for the movie watching and really make that corner of the room look much more complete.

Thanks Jay and Gwendolyn!

Here is a before and after shot (I actually remembered to a take a before picture!)

Texas Exhibit and more

Its been a VERY busy weekend! My side of the family came over to visit and stayed with us the whole weekend. We love having the space to have my entire family stay - my parents get the guest bedroom, my brother and his wife take over the media room and sleep on our queen size air mattress, and my sister takes over the library on her smaller air mattress. Its a lot of people for the house, but makes it possible for us to see each other for a longer period of time.

Friday was a work day for most of us, so we didn't do a lot, just went out to eat (and waited for my brother to get there...making the trip from Austin he got in pretty late).

The real fun was on Saturday. We went to see the Texas exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. It was a great exhibit - we saw the actual cannon that started the "Come and Take it" slogan. There were a few places where I'd go into the room and not be sure which sign I should start reading first to follow the chronology. After I read a few I'd realize I'd started in the wrong place (further ahead in the history of Texas then other information in that room was) and have to backtrack. I learned quite a bit - and saw some names I recognize from street signs and buildings around town (Travis, Lamar, Beck to name a few). It was amazing to see how many places the items are on loan from and I have to wonder how (and how long) this exhibit was organized. I also could've done without the random costumes from the 20th century, but must admit a dress made with turkey feathers and tape was quite a sight to see! Thank you Groupon for the HALF-PRICE tickets!!

There is a new dinosaur set up in the lobby which was impressive to see, a flying one with a 30' wingspan....good thing for us they are extinct. This is the musuem that we'll have a membership to soon (won at the casino night), cannot wait!! I'm also excited for a NEW wing to open in Summer 2012!!

Later in the day, we introduced my mom to Thai food. She and Kevin stuck with peanut chicken, but did enjoy it and the rest of us had various curry dishes...yummy! Thai and Indian food are what my brother and his wife crave after their extended time in Nicaragua, unfortunately for us we haven't found Indian food near us, but do have some good restaurants of other kinds near us.

After that (told you we were busy!) we went to pick blueberries. Laura and I had been earlier in the season. Our first trip was a scouting trip to see how the crop was, its been so dry we weren't sure if they'd have a good crop this year. It was slimmer pickings this weekend - more moving from tree to tree to find ripe ones. The person who updates their website (owner?) had said he thought NEXT weekend would be better but we were committed to this weekend. We still had a good time and picked over 18 lbs of blueberries in about an hour and a half. I needed to replenish my supply (about half of the ones I picked two weeks ago have already been eaten, and made great muffins!), but I think Mache was on a missions, she filled her bucket completely! We brought some towels this time to put between our neck and rope for the bucket, it was more comfortable and came in handy to wipe our faces. I do think twice in one season is my limit for blueberry picking, but had a great time - and it was my dad's first time to go.

Today's plans changed when we realized that bugs Kevin had been seeing around the house were coming from our pantry. They'd gotten into some of our food - even Smokey's! - and so today was taken over by that project. We tossed some of our food and took EVERYTHING out of the pantry, sprayed it down with bug spray (after putting both of our creatures outside) and then re-organized it as we put it back. This was something I'd wanted to do, but not today.....

New Friend

Kevin made a new friend today - a parakeet showed up in our yard! Thankfully Smokey was inside the house when the bird showed up.

Its very domesticated and a 'people-bird' because it came right up to Kevin and wanted to go into the house.

We'll have to try to track down the owners, but for now we have a bird at the house, and lucky for me - a lady at work has a cage that I can borrow and since she has parakeets she's able to tell me exactly what we need to feed it and keep it healthy until we can find the owners..

A neighbor told Kevin he should tell me its a St Patrick's day gift, it is green, and pretty cute.

Artwork search success!

You really do find things when you aren't looking for them. We'd been looking for artwork to hang in the dining room without success. We'd been wanting to find something since we got the table, back in July. It is a HUGE wall and so we wanted a really large piece to hang there or several coordinating pieces, but had not found anything we liked that was large enough and at a price we were willing to pay.

Yesterday Kevin dragged me to the mall. We were looking for a Texans sticker for his truck (which we found) and some other sports stuff (which we did not find). We walked into the mall and realized we'd parked on the opposite end of the mall from the store we really wanted to go to. I was annoyed we had done that, but we wouldn't have found the artwork if we hadn't done that - one of those 'happy accidents' or dumb luck as my dad calls it. It was in a close-out store, it looks like its going out of business, but the signs are just to get your attention because they are also hiring. We looked at all of the artwork, and finally decided on one we liked.

My sister stopped by later in the day, and we put her to work helping us put it up on the wall. Good thing she was there, because we needed an extra pair of hands. the painting is HUGE, over 4 1/2 feet wide. Using all of the tools we have - stud finder, level, T-square, stepladder, hammer, nails - and some improvised tools, a mop handle to test whether the hangers we'd put up were level (now I see why people own yardsticks), we got it up on the wall, and it looks good!

No more huge, blank wall....and now we can start to think about accessories and curtains, now that we have some colors to plan off of.

Dining Table

We got our new dining table!

The saying that you find something when you're not looking for it was so true in this case. The weekend before last we went to a few furniture stores looking for a small table for Kevin's study. We decided to stop into a consignment shop to see if they had anything. While there, we were talking to the owner and mentioned that we were also looking for a dining table. She said that a man had come in recently wanting to bring his table there and she had photos of it.

We looked at the photos and both thought that it looked like what we were looking for. We talked about it more on the way home and called the woman back to find out more about it (dimensions, price). She gave us the owner's phone number and we contacted him to find out more about it. We made arrangements to go and see it on Sunday and liked it even more! It was just what we wanted - classic style, seats 8, and with cushioned seats. Even better than that it looks well made, with cherry wood and designs inlaid in the table and patterns carved on the chairs. It is gorgeous. We decided then and there that we wanted it, and made a deal with the owner.

Arrangements were made for delivery and we got the table on Saturday. Just like the day we moved into this house, we just beat the rain! On the drive back to the house (with the delivery truck following) there was lightning and lots of wind, but the table and chairs were safely in the house before it started to rain.

We plan to have lots of dinners and game nights on this table!

More pictures available here.

I was thinking about last summer as compared to this summer and am so glad we are finished with selling and moving out of our last house, and choosing and purchasing this house. Last summer was so busy with keeping the house constantly clean for showings, and grabbing the dog and leaving when someone wanted to see it (often on short notice). It was also busy with decluttering the house and moving items to the storage unit and getting ready to move.

This summer is also busy, but its a FUN busy - spending time with family and friends - which is a much better way to spend the summer. We are both glad we made the move, but don't plan to do it again any time soon.

Our latest house project is almost finished. We had the back patio pre-wired for speakers when it was built, and we finally chose some outdoor speakers and installed them in the ceiling of the patio. We worked on it early Sunday morning to avoid the heat of the day (even in the morning its already hot). We make a great team because each of us can do some of the tasks the other can't. I am hopeless with electric screwdrivers, and so I get the screw started with a regular screwdriver and then Kevin uses the electric one, he's also a whiz with a drill! I can strip the wires for the speakers, which is something he's not as good at.....none of the tasks are easy at the top of a ladder, but we got them done. We were able to get each of the speakers installed and they look great, one is a little crooked (my fault), but other than that they look really good. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any sound to come out of them. The wires at the receiver don't look quite like the wires that we hooked into the speakers (each speaker has a red and black wire, the wire at the receiver has 4 wires (we'd expected 2 sets of red and black wires)), so we had to hold off until I could talk to the installers.

It turns out we were just about right in our thought of what might've happened. They wired it to have a volume switch by the back door, and so we either need to add a volume control or splice the wires to complete the connections. We were so close! We even took that face plate off to see what was there, but thought the wires were for a security system.. We should be able to knock it out tonight, and then our patio will be even more relaxing when we can put on music out there, much better than our tiny boombox...

Project Complete

We finally finished our decorating project, and it looks great! Earlier in the fall, we had the kitchen and living room painted, got curtains made for the living room and over Christmas we put stuff up on the walls in both rooms (thank you Hobby Lobby 50% off sale!). The only thing we were missing was curtains for the windows in the dining area of our kitchen. After a lot of searching, I found some I liked online. We ordered the curtains (and some for our bedroom), and bought a curtain rod. Yesterday we tackled the task of putting up the curtain rod and the curtains. With a great deal of help from my dear hubby we were able to get the curtain rod put up, and hung the curtains. I'm always anxious putting holes into the walls, afraid that we won't be able to finish the project because we run into something we hadn't expected (studs in unexpected places, etc.) or it won't end up looking as good as I envision it, but with the right tools - drill, screwdrivers, anchor screws, a level, a step stool, a chair, and some patience - we were able to do it, and now have the kitchen and living room just how we want them.

We'll have many other projects in the house - already on my list is to find a curtain rod long enough for the bedroom windows. For now, it feels very good to look around and have this project finished and love the results.

Draperies

I got a photo of the drapes, and you can see the new wall paint color. I forgot to take a before picture, so this photo of the living room that we took the weekend we moved in will have to do:

As you can see it was plain white walls and windows. We wanted to warm up the room and so we had the living room and kitchen painted a 'honey' color, and we love it. The wall color looks a bit different depending on the time of day, much warmer than the white walls we started with. We'll eventually paint other rooms in the house, but this is a great start, especially since these are the rooms where we spend most of our waking hours at home. The crown molding is also new and really completes these two rooms, now I just need to find a large wall hanging for behind the kitchen table and a window treatment for the kitchen and we'll consider them complete! Houses are always a work in progress, and with this house I want to make that effort, I never really did with the other one.....

New Smoker

Today we put together a new smoker for Kevin. The one we had before had rusted out and finally gotten to be unusable, so we got rid of it and decided to wait until after we moved to get a new one (one less heavy, awkward item to move). We'd been wanting to get a new one, but just hadn't made the time to do it...until last night, we went to HEB and found the one we wanted. We need to get it so we can break it in before smoking a turkey for the family Christmas gathering in early December.

Purchasing it was an ordeal - it always is for us. We found the item out front and were told we could just go to the checkout and they'd have the item number there. The checker looked through his booklet and didn't have it. He sent a bagger out to find it, no luck.... While we waited they checked other people out, we didn't want to hold up the line entirely. They finally had to have a manager help us - after shutting down our checkout line. At least they would sell it to us - when we got the grill, Home Depot wouldn't sell it to us at first because of some kind of recall.... It could be a joke, how many people does it take to sell us something? We were finally able to buy it, and even had a couple of guys who work there help us load it in the car. Its a big, heavy box.

We just left it in the truck last night (and treated ourselves to concrete mixers at Culver's - the pumpkin pecan one is so good, better than pumpkin pie!), and tackled assembly today. The gate in the back of the fence came in handy, Kevin was able to drive the truck behind the fence and we unloaded it (piece by piece) onto our back patio. Much easier than bringing it through the house. It took us quite a while, but we got it put together and it looks great! We are a good team, when one of us is frustrated the other one keeps us focused and plods through to get it done....so we now have a fully assembled smoker, ready to start using next weekend! cannot wait for the good food we can make with it. The smoker even has the Texas star on it in several places, goes well with our door and other decorations..

We also have a painted living room and kitchen!! We hired a local company to install crown molding and paint these two rooms, they look great! We chose a 'honey' color, gives the house a Tuscan look. We'll have pictures soon - after our curtains are installed.

SIGH of relief

that is a BIG sigh of relief.

We signed all the papers today to close on our old house, so once its funded we are once again the owners of only ONE house....

for extra fun, I followed the directions I'd found online and didn't see the title office...so I called them (thankfully I'd gotten their phone number just in case) and they actually say "its not that county road 94", because it is BRILLIANT to have two roads with the same name really close to each other....ughhh

Labor Day weekend

3-day weekend! I am so glad we moved LAST weekend and not Labor Day weekend like we'd originally planned. It gave us this 3 day weekend to get really settled in. We've re-arranged a few things in the kitchen to make it more usable, and spent this weekend finishing up with unpacking.

Kevin organized the garage today - we are now able to put our cars in the garage (yay!) and I concentrated on upstairs - the built-in desk and finishing up the guest bedroom. Most of the wall hangings are in the room but it is ready for guests! With all of the stuff unpacked we both feel more settled, and really feel like HOME.

We also completed the media room, taking advantage of Labor day sales to get a new tv and stand. It took most of the day to get the tv and stand, assemble the stand, and then troubleshoot the speaker wires...now it is ready for movie nights!! This is Kevin's favorite room in the house.

Today we grilled fajitas from a nearby carniceria, yum!

One year ago this week was Hurricane Ike...here is hoping for a calmer September!