One of many parental decisions made

We made our first of I know many more parental decisions by choosing a daycare center to take Baby Phillips to after I come back to work. We toured 3 centers last week and the final decision came down to between a great place called Small Blessings at 96th and Zionsville Road and an equally great place called Heartland Hall at 116th and Meridian. Initially we were probably leaning more towards Small Blessings, in that we liked some of the things that applied more to older kids (like not until they were at least 2 maybe even 3), but after discussing our options it just made more sense for us right now to enroll with Heartland. Some benefits of Heartland are that it is literally right across the street from my work which means not only convenient drop-off and pick-up but also the ability to go visit the baby once I'm back to work full-time. Another benefit, obviously not what we based our decision completely on but a nice benefit, is it is at least $2000 cheaper a year plus add in the additional gas of getting to over to Small Blessings and we can all go on a nice family vacation for the difference.

We are excited that this decision is out of the way and as of last week they had openings in March when we needed to start, so hopefully I get a call soon to confirm our spot. If you can't tell I'm just a bit of a planner, so knowing that something is taken care of and moving on to the next thing makes me feel much more comfortable then having something up in the air.

Now it will be moving on to finding a pediatrician. I don't think I was realizing that I needed to start looking quite this early but after talking to a few other moms they said they looked for a pedi about the same time as daycare.

Its crazy how much planning there is for a little person that isn't even born yet :)

Next post: I'm going to try and take a 15 week belly shot to insure you all I'm starting to look pregnant and not just fat!

Other things under construction.....

Wow it has been forever since I posted anything here. I really do need to update some pictures of the house, but thought I would update any blog readers still out there on some other news. We have a little Phillips under construction and scheduled to be completed around December 1st. We are super excited and relieved to have made it this far in this pregnancy after experiencing a miscarriage last fall. We are very thankful for a healthy pregnancy and baby so far, and pray that things continue in that direction.

This news does affect the house, in that there is a definite deadline for completion and it isn't waiting until November 30th, that might result in a really grumpy pregnant lady that would not be fun for her sweet husband. We hope to have most things wrapped up by mid-summer. If we have some random things like crown molding or something like that to do, I don't care, but the big things will be done.

Thanks if you still follow this neglected blog and I will try to be more faithful about updating it, but you might not just get house updates in the future :O)

We finally slept in our room!

So after a year and a few weeks of living in our house we are finally in what was always meant to be our bedroom. I ended up staying in yesterday since our road didn't get plowed until sometime between 10:00 last night and 7:30 this morning, so I actually moved the bed from the other bedroom, and then when Adam got home from work (mind you he leaves so early in the morning we got another like 4 inches after he left) we moved the chest of drawers and armoire. I'll post more pics of the room fully furnished and stuff, but since I hadn't posted in awhile just thought I would get his update on here. You will notice the one item that remains unfinished is the crown moulding, we figured that was not necessary in order to peacefully sleep in our room so we went ahead and moved in and will finish that at a later date.

A staining we will go......

In reality our closets are basically finished but since I am way behind on blogging this was the project that consumed most of the extra time we had over the Christmas/New Years time.




Below is the old closet once we tore all the drywall down, we had contemplated just making 2 openings for the room I am standing in and having a standard closet, and closing off where you see the purple door. But as I posted previously the contractor that did the framing and my husband decided to have a happy surprise for me and make my side a walk-in closet.










Here is Adam's side of the closet after it was reframed with nice new wood that was plumb and square (made drywalling much easier). We made his opening wider so that we could put in double bifold doors, I think that makes a shallow closet much more usable.

And below is my side of the closet, which as you can see is about 20 inches deeper than Adam's, he seriously probably has less than half the clothes that I do, so I think the set-up is appropriate.

Once Adam got everything drywalled, which by the way was made a ton easier by borrowing an electronic drywall sander from his co-worker, we needed to decide how we were going to fix all the missing floorboards due to the reframing. We finally settled on using most of the spare pieces from Adam's closet to put down in my closet, so that my whole closet would have the original floor like the rest of the room.

For Adam's side we tried to go and find something close that was pre-finished but that was to no-avail unless we wanted to spend $3-4 sq. ft, which we really didn't for a closet. We ended up getting unfinished hardwoods in white oak from Lumber liquidators for like $1.50 sq ft and then found a stain that matched really well. For the next couple of days I went through the process of staining the floor, and as you can see below it came out pretty darn well. We used a product by Mini-wax called Polyshades, it has the poly and the stain mixed together so you basically eliminate having to poly it after you stain. We used the stain color of Classic Oak and I put it on with a 6 inch stain brush. I did 3 coats and between them I used 000 (fine) steel wool for a sand/buff process to the poly. In the photo the two floors meet right at the doorway but I don't think you can tell much of a difference!

And here is my closet floor (below), Adam pieced back together all the flooring scraps we had to make this look right and I think he did a great job. We polished it up after this picture was taken so it looks a bit cleaner now.

One final staining project that I did, was that I needed a shelf above my top hanging rack in my closet, so since we couldn't' find anything that matched my organizers (of course) we decided to by some precut pine and stain it. This one I did the old fashion way and went through three coats of staining and then let it dry then 2 coats of polyurethane to seal and protect it. For both projects being my first staining experiences I think the results came out well. Of course all I did was follow the instructions.

Next up.....is completed closets and a finished master bedroom. Of course to finish the master we still need to paint, put up crown molding, moldings for doors, windows, & floor, change out the light fixture, hang curtains, and then move all of our stuff from the other room. Hopefully that is all done by the end of the month, but of course I never predict when we are going to have things done anymore.

A week of Christmases.....

We had a pretty busy Christmas week this year starting the Saturday before with my Mom's side extended family, Christmas Eve & Christmas Morning at my parent's, Christmas Day at Adam's parents and then we finished the week with Adam's mom's side extended family on the Saturday after Christmas. Here are some pictures from 3 of the 4 gatherings, at the final one I brought my camera but never got it out my purse to take any pictures.


What is more entertaining at family gathering than watching 2 year olds color and fight over toys, guess not much since there were about 6 adults in this room.



This cracks me up.....my niece is trying to eat cherios with a fork and has reindeer antlers on her head. I do have to say she looked more Christmassy than the rest of us.


Camryn trying to hold herself back from tearing into her presents, especially since they were wrapped in Dora Christmas paper. And her at the end of the night all ready to go home and go nigh night so that Santa could come. I think the little robe is pretty darn cute.



Uncle Adam with Nolan our nephew from his side of the family. This was Nolan's first Christmas and he was all decked out in his outfit. He loves to jump/bounce on your lap so he was getting passed around a lot because we were all out of shape and our arms would start to hurt.

Man down....Man down

We have officially had our first encounter with medical attention needed due to a house project gone bad! It really wasn't that serious but did require a few stitches and an update on the tetanus shot. If you haven't guessed, it wasn't me it was my beloved husband that had to endure this bit of immediate care madness to get his finger sewn up. If you don't know Adam's history, his childhood and even early college years had many trips to the ER and I think getting stitches is second nature to him at this point.

In our married life we only have had one ER run and that was due to a cat bite at the clinic he worked at for awhile. We felt a bit silly going to the ER for a cat bite, mind you it was a small little tiger I think that bit him or a really ticked off male cat, but the ER doc on call said you should always go to the ER for a cat bite due to all the nasty in their saliva. Your hand or arm can swell up huge in a very short time if not treated properly, who knew? Anyway I'm tangenting, you probably would like to know how this little incident occurred.

The story goes as follows, I was having a fun night out with some of my good friends that I grew up with and we were out to dinner. I knew Adam was going to work on removing a door casing for a portion of a door in the current closet so the door could be drywalled closed. That seems easy right? Not so much when your door casings are metal and you have to do a combo of using the reciprocating saw and a pry bar to get it out. So I look at my phone when I'm leaving the restaurant and I have 3 missed calls from Adam on my cell and 5 missed calls on my blackberry, that is usually not a good sign! I call to see what is going on and I get the following "Looks like I'm going to have to get a few stitches, OK got to go they need to check me in and told me to get off my phone." That is not a nice way to leave your wife when all she knows is that you have been using a saw on metal and your getting stitches.

I got a call back a couple minutes later and he said he was removing the last piece of metal casing and was using the pry, his hand slipped and hit the mangled metal and he looked and saw a hand full of blood. He mostly got his left index finger but a bit of his middle finger as well. On his index he hit the vein so he had to apply pressure quickly.

After about 2 hours at immediate care and a trip to CVS to get an antibiotic and some vicodin, if he need it, he made it home with a few stitches and his two fingers wrapped in gauze and other stuff. So needless to say I think his home construction duties might be on hold for a few days since he is left handed and probably shouldn't really be applying a ton of pressure to that area of his hand. It's OK he has finals next week and needs to study for those anyways, now he has no home items to distract him. I think he could find an easier ways of getting out of me nagging him to get something done next time :)

What's been going on?

Holy cow that might be the longest break I have ever taken from blogging! We have been doing stuff, I just keep forgetting to take pictures and work is really busy this time of year so I haven't had my few extra minutes at work or in the evenings to post anything.

Things that have happened in the last 6 weeks:

We got the closet framed in the master bedroom, now just waiting for Adam to start drywalling so we can finish that room.

We knocked out the wall in the 2nd bathroom that we will be moving to make the bathroom bigger and able to handle a stand up shower.

Put in some recessed lighting above the fireplace, we felt like our living room was dark and didn't want floor lamps everywhere. I've decided cutting the hole for this is a skill and Adam definitely was better with his circles this time then last, you live you learn.

We got rid of 2 1/2 tons of trash, I'm not exaggerating, it was literally 2 1/2 tons, you have to pay by the ton when you take it to the junkyard. I finally don't feel like the neighborhood blacksheep since there aren't windows, doors, and a bunch of other random stuff all over the place inside and out. Adam actually moved about 6 tons of trash over a 2 day period, ask if you want the full story. Lets just say junkyards aren't open on Saturday afternoons and Sundays and it is a good thing to find this out before loading a moving truck with 2 1/2 tons of trash when it had to be returned by 5:00 that day.

We were wanting to wait until closer to the end of the year to get a dining room set but ended up finding a sweet deal through World Market and they were having friends and family days this weekend so we ended up getting an additional 25% off. Basically it is a table with 2 leafs so if fully extended it can seat 8 people. We ended up getting the table 8 chairs and an 9 x 6 rug for $400 less than it would have cost to get the table and 6 chairs at the normal price. And to make it even better Adam and I both agreed on the table, it has some contemporary aspects that I like but still has classiness about it so that trendiness doesn't outdated it in a few year.

Here is a pic and it even includes the rug I bought, which I didn't realize until we got home and I was looking at it online: