First Day of Third Grade

Both were excited about going back to school (even though Avery isn't starting school yet) they were in a good mood and ready for the new school year.  You can tell Mallory is still half asleep, but awake!  Our girls are by no means morning people, they are more evening types.  We have the hardest time getting them to go to bed and an even harder time waking them up.  Getting to wear new clothes always helps making getting dress a little more appealing.  Mallory had a wonderful first day and loves her teacher and her class.  She is going to have a wonderful year and are so looking forward to her progress.  She is so smart and we are so proud of her and Avery too...next year will be really neat with Avery starting kindergarten.

Doesn't she look so cute with her new backpack that she picked out.  The night before to chose the clothes she was going to wear.  She also dressed herself and did her own hair.  She has been looking forward to this day all summer, she loves school and loves to learn.

Sod Update

I wanted to update everyone on the sod we laid back in May.  Both sides of the driveway are looking like they have been there for years and are holding up to this heat.  It has been near or over 100 degrees everyday for the last month and half; and during this time we have had 24 days over 100 degrees. This week it will be at least 105 or higher everyday...come on Fall.  Also during this time it has rained only once and that was this morning for about ten minutes and it didn't amount to much, but we will take it.  Our water bill was $177 last month and I'm afraid it's going to be even higher this month.  The price you have to pay if you want thick green grass in August in The Lone Star State.

I need to water!

Watercolor of our House

A lady by name of Ramona Murphy painted this picture of our house that won second place in a art contest held by the Terrell Heritage Society Museum that located in downtown Terrell.  She is a native Texan and reside in Wills Point, Texas.  She began her art career over 30 years ago and has given watercolor workshops and demos at clubs, libraries, and businesses.  She has won awards, ribbons and recongnition of all types for her artwork. These include awards from the State Fair of Texas, local art shows and displays in public, private and corporate collection throught out Texas.

New Sod and Flowers

I had leveled the ground out in median last year and in the process killed the grass because I did it too late.  I was tired of looking at it like this and have decided to put down new sod.  It took the whole day to do, but I think it was well worth it and in a month it will look like it has been there for years.

We also planted Begonias and Caladiums in Mallory's garden.  We also have some pictures of our Hydrangeas blooming and the process of our sod being laid.  So click on the picture above to see.

Spring Cleanup

We have done some cleaning up in and around the house.  We made a big pile of trash in the backyard that we will haul away in the summer on a free dump day.  We put in some new flowers along the drive way and started on adding some steps leading into the backyard.  Also as you can see we moved down the wildflowers (actually I think they are wildweeds) in the backyard.

More Snow...need I say more!

Another foot of snow has fallen this year...I feel like we live in Colorado.  The girls are loving it.  Enjoy the pictures.

New Bathroom Light!

We have wanted to replace the light fixture in the bathroom for some time now, but not bad enough to go out and buy one...it just a light and this one was working just fine.  We had a storage building here in town and a couple of weekends back we decided to take everything out of storage and find a place for it here or get rid of it (I'm all for the getting rid of it part).  We are always looking for ways to save some money and the storage building was a easy decision.  Anyways, we found a light fixture that we were going to use for the closet but chose not to because we thought it hung down to low for a closet, so we decided to use it for the bathroom and get that new light we wanted.

As you can see the light is not centered in the room and it hangs right over the sink. It's almost as if it's a wall light more than a main light source, but it is the only light in the room.

The new light is now centered in the room and has 3 bulbs opposed to the old fixture which had only one.  It's much brighter in the room now, but it's going to take some time getting use to the light source coming from behind us, instead of right above us.  I should say it's going to take Tara some time, she's the one who uses it for her makeup.  Installing this new light was not a snap for me.  For a brief moment (when I say brief moment, I mean a couple of hours), I forgot how electricity works and had a problem rewiring the fixture.  Finally I thought about what I was trying to do and how it has to be done and wired it up right and now it works perfect.

No More Cold Closet!

Back in October of 09' we removed a bathroom that was in horrible shape and decided to replace it with a closet for the four of us.  This is the first "room" in the house that we have completely finished (yes we are calling the closet a room, because any victory over this house we will take) or so we thought.  We forgot to reinstall the vent, which means I didn't think we would need it in such a small space...I was wrong.  Last winter that closet was like a ice box, so we decided to add the vent back so we could dress in a warm closet.

So today we decided to install our new vent and we couldn't have picked a better day to do a indoor project.  It's been raining all day and it's not too cold so it made getting up in the attic pleasant.  The picture above is our closet without the vent and the pictue below is with the vent which we're already enjoying...it's nice and toasty in there now.  Getting dress in the mornings will be so nice.

So now we can offically say the we have finally completed a room in our house and can cross this project off our to do list!  Click on the vent to see our installation...it took about 35 minutes to complete, makes me wish we had done it sooner.  Oh well...moving on!





Snowy Sunday!

Today it snowed at the green house...it rained most the night and turned into snow around 10 this morning.  It snowed really hard for about 5 hours and left between 4 and 5 inches on the ground.  The girls have been bouncing off the walls wanting to go play in it.  We finally went out this afternoon and they had a blast!  Click on Mal to see all our snow pics.