Yesterday our countertop was installed in the bathroom! The sink that’s shown in the picture isn’t really plumbed yet; it’s just sitting in the hole. It looks good, though:

Our brother-in-law offered to install the tile today if we had everything ready, so we had yet another Home Depot trip yesterday. I should have floor tile pictures soon! He also started setting up for the work on the master; of course it won’t actually start until the hall bath is functional, but that should be this weekend. It’s very exciting!

It was a really busy weekend for Tom; in fact Saturday was the first one of Luke’s soccer games that he missed all season. This is what the hall bathroom looked like before I left the house for soccer (not sure why the photo quality is so bad):

And this is how it looked when I got home:

We’ll be going to the granite place tomorrow to buy the counter; we’re going with a pre-fab  granite slab because it was surprisingly cheaper than we were expecting. We had originally planned to do a tile counter, but decided grout and blue kid’s toothpaste probably are a bad idea together. Hopefully the fabricator  can install the counter same-day or within a couple days. Tom is planning to tile the bathroom floor this weekend, then all we have to do is install the sinks, faucets, toilet, and other fixtures (medicine cabinet, towel rods, etc). We now have permits AND the home owner’s association’s approval for adding on to the master bath, so our brother in law will be over this weekend to get things started. Of course we can’t do too much until we have the other toilet installed, but he has some planning to do and we have to figure out how we’re going to deal with the construction (ie, what we have to move out of the master bedroom).

Thanks for the kind comments about basketball. I’m still really pissed at the 4S Ranch Boys and Girls Club. The lady there said she’d call me “either way” on Friday and didn’t. Luke had evaluations in the other league on Saturday, and I managed to talk two of his friend’s parents into signing their kids up too…so hopefully they’ll end up on the same team! Luke is okay with it now that his friends are playing in the other league too; we had a melt-down about it when I first told him, but all is well again.

I’ve been stitching on the pirate map some more but don’t have enough progress to take another picture yet. I’m really looking forward to going out on leave in another 4.5 weeks and having a little more free time for a bit.

It has been a LONG week, and even though I only have five more weeks until I go out on leave, right now it seems like an eternity. Normally I like the time change at this time of the year. I know it’s an unpopular stance, but I hate getting up in the morning when it’s still dark out. I’ve managed to get up a lot “earlier” this week, but I’ve been staying up later and I’m exhausted. Luke has still not been quite 100% this week; I am thinking he must have had the flu after all, from comparing notes with other parents. I managed to avoid catching whatever he had, so that’s definitely fortunate! It’s been a busy week, though; Tom (and Luke…who was desparate to help) painted the hall bathroom, a coat at a time each night after work. I made dinner and cleaned the house and made sure Luke got his homework done, in addition to the regular weekly commitments. I also typed up 75 adopt-a-family wishlists (just 40 or so left for tonight/tomorrow and I’m done!). None of that would be a big deal, except at seven months pregnant I’m pretty darn tired most days. Thankfully Luke’s soccer game tomorrow isn’t until 1:30, so I can sleep in and recover a little, I hope.

I took “Hanky Pysanky” off the q-snaps the other day so that I can go back to SamSarah’s “Twenty Five Days” for awhile. Here’s where my progress was when I set it aside for now:

Well, that’s about it for now. Well, almost. I’m also really pissed off at the 4S Ranch Boys and Girls Club, who shifted their winter youth basketball season by a month, so they completed sign-ups mid-October instead of mid-November like the last two years. Despite the fact that Luke has played there for the last two years, and we’ve always gotten e-mails in the past, they didn’t send anything this time. I found out from another parent this morning at school…a parent whose husband coached the last two years and didn’t get notified of the change either. Tom is wondering if they’re trying to exclude the Westwood kids on purpose…I don’t know. We may still be able to get Luke in if there’s a cancellation, but I don’t know if it’s worth waiting around for it or not. There’s another league here that is holding evaluations tomorrow, so I may try to get Luke in there instead. It’s the RB league, which is technically the closest one to us, but we’ve never played there before because it doesn’t start until 3rd grade and the 4S league started in 1st grade. I guess the only upside is that there might be other friends of his that got dissed by 4S too, so maybe we’ll know people in the other league after all. I guess I’ll ask some of the other parents tonight at soccer what their plans are.

Thank goodess Luke ended up being well enough to go trick-or-treating! Halloween was alright but gosh, I get tired easily these days. He ended up with SO much candy and had a great time with his friends (we’ve been trick-or-treating with the same group since he was 3 or 4). I realized I never took a picture of JUST him in his costume, so I’ll get him to put it back on. All of my pictures are of him with his friends.

I didn’t have much in the way of leisure time this weekend; I spent the bulk of my free time typing up wish lists for the Adopt-A-Family program run by the school district. I typed up 64 lists…and there will be many more. I usually help with gathering, organizing, and delivering gifts, but it’s too close to my due date this year so I opted for an earlier and less strenuous role!

I did finally take a picture of my pirate map progress though, so here it is:

Click on the picture itself to see a bigger version. I still have a lot of stitching ahead to finish both this AND the Bothy Threads Cut Thru Pirate Ship for the baby’s room, but the house is coming along slowly too. We finally got the hall bathroom textured on Friday and Tom got it primed over the weekend; hopefully he’ll get the painting started tonight. We are thinking about looking at granite remnants for the counter, after his mom made the suggestion since they’ve gotten lucky with that in the past. We were going to do tile but decided grout and blue toothpaste didn’t go well together. I’ll try to get some progress pictures along the way. We got the last of the neighbor signatures for the HOA review comittee which meets on Thursday (for the addition on the master) and we have permits now, so we just have to finish the hall bathroom and move stuff around so we can get started on that one. I can’t wait!!

Otherwise, things are just moving along under the heading of “normal life.” Luke is doing pretty well in school, work is going just fine, and I’m looking forward to having a few weeks off (hopefully) before the baby is born. Maybe I can make big progress on my pirate stitching then. My next “big task” is to get all my Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving…the clock is ticking on that one.

Well, it hasn’t been the best week leading up to Halloween. Luke woke up yesterday complaining that his head and throat hurt, and he had a croup-like cough and temperature of 99.4. The temperature was borderline, but we decided to keep him home anyway. Since Tom can work from home right now and he wants to keep me away from the germs as much as possible, I’ve been at work. I called yesterday afternoon to check on Luke and he was sound asleep. When I got home his fever was up to 101.9 and he fell asleep again while we made dinner. Unfortunately he woke up this morning still with the cough and a fever of 100.7, which is too high to send him to school. He threw a giant fit because he’s missing out on the Halloween party in his class this afternoon. I’m going to go in to drop off his homework and pick up a treat from the room mom for him.

Things are going well otherwise; the hall bathroom will be textured today and then Tom gets to paint it and put it back together. Hopefully in another week or two that bathroom will be done and the “real” work can begin.

I’ve been stitching but haven’t taken any recent pictures; hopefully I’ll get to that this weekend at some point. We did have a nice evening on Wednesday; we went to my brother and sister-in-law’s house and had dinner and carved pumpkins. Here’s a picture with Luke; his pumpkin design is the one on the left:

Hopefully he’ll be all better and able to trick-or-treat tomorrow; that would be such a disappointment if we can’t go, but we’ll have to see how he’s doing.

I stayed up a little later than I should have last night to put in the final beads on Drawn Thread’s “Spring Arbor”. That makes four finishes for the year! I stitched it on the recommended lavender mist belfast linen. Here it is:

You can click on the picture to make it bigger. This was SUCH a quick stitch, and it is so pretty. I have the other three seasonal arbors and I hope I can find the time to stitch them up soon. For now, though, I’m planning to focus on the pirate map, which I have put back on the q-snaps already.

To answer Katri’s question, yes, I will definitely take pictures of the pirate nursery once it’s done; it probably won’t happen until after the baby is born though. We are adding on to our master bathroom so we’ll be sleeping in the third bedroom for the next couple months. Since we’ll have the baby in with us for at least the first month or two anyway, it isn’t a big deal if the nursery is done before he’s born. In general there will be a LOT of house-related photos in the coming months!

Cheryl asked about market purchases…at the risk of self-incrimination I’ll divulge. Here are my market purchases:

“Hootzi Humbug” by Just Nan
“Paradise Lost” by Plum Street Samplers
“Christmas at Hawk Run Hollow” by Carriage House Samplings
“Witch’s Hollow” by The Primitive Needle
“Noel Naturally” by Cat’s Whiskers
“Christmas Toy Box” by Cat’s Whiskers
“Snowflake Ornament” by Cat’s Whiskers
“ABC Christmas” by Lizzie Kate
“The Book of Spells” by The Good Huswife
“Three Pumpkins” by Prairie Grove Peddler
“Spring Social” by Country Cottage Needleworks
“The Library” by Little House Needleworks

The “Spring Social” project is pre-ordered since it isn’t out yet, and I kitted everything except for Christmas at Hawk Run Hollow; I only bought the fabric and chart. As always, I just need more hours in the day to stitch on everything.

I took “Oak Island” off the q-snaps the other day so I can finish up another piece I’ve had sitting around for awhile: Drawn Thread’s “Spring Arbor”. I’ve only worked on it 2 or 3 days now and it’s nearly done; one more decent evening of stitching should do it, but the next 3 nights are busy so I don’t know when it will happen. Anyway, here is the progress on the pirate map:

I ordered the Pirate bedding and room accessories yesterday. I’d put them on the registry, but I’m not real thrilled with Babies R Us and how they are constantly changing availability of items. I went to show Tom the bedding yesterday because we’re thinking about what color to paint the room, and BRU doesn’t even have photos of it online anymore, so I panicked. I found everything at Amazon, and it was a LOT cheaper, so he said to just order it. I haven’t really bought anything yet, so it was fun to have the first “real” purchase!

In news of purchases, I also e-mailed a list to Drema at Needlecraft Corner from the recent market…yes, I have plenty to stitch already, but I couldn’t resist! Now I just need more hours in the day.

I managed to perservere through the french knots from hell last night, and finished Melissa Shirley’s “Chocolate Bordeaux Candy”. Here it is:

So, that brings my finishes to 3 for the year; a far cry from last year. I’m hoping I can finish a few more things this year, but we’ll see how it goes. I’m going through my current works in progress to see what is finishable by the end of the year…maybe I’ll come up with a project or two.

I have been stitching, but haven’t taken any new photos to share in the last few days. I’m nearly done with another needlepoint candy, but it requires a million french knots using 1/16″ kreinik metallic ribbon, and I can only do so many of those before my fingers hurt. I was looking through my pictures the other day and I sure have a lot of those stitched; hopefully I can get them finished by the time I have a place to display them. I’ve been working on Hanky Pysanky again; I have several other things I *should* be working on, but I am enjoying that one so much at the moment that I can’t put it down.

I got an interesting e-mail from my uncle yesterday; this is the same uncle who Tom and I visited a couple summers ago when we backpacked in Olympic National Park, and the same uncle who walked me down the aisle at my wedding. He’s in a band called the Blue Ringer Band; it’s bluegrass I guess. Anyway, his band has been placed on the Official Ballot for the 2010 Grammy Awards, in four different categories. Category 1: record of the year, Category 3: song of the year, Category 16: best rock performance by a due or group with vocals, and Category 41, best country song. How cool is that?! The e-mail included a link to listen; I haven’t checked it out yet, but here it is: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/blueringer I don’t know anyone who is a voting member of the Grammy’s, but if anyone out there does know someone who is a voting member, ask them to at least give them a listen!

In completely unrelated news, we were in the car yesterday and Tom asked if I’d heard about the tsunami that hit American Samoa. Luke got really animated and started talking about it, saying he’d heard about it at school. Apparently his teacher’s son was there on his honeymoon, and he and his wife got evacuated to a different island and then had to climb up to the highest point. Tom had brought up the subject since it’s the location of the new season of Survivor, but Luke’s story about his teacher’s son was a little closer to home. Apparently she has heard from him and he and his wife are okay; they were eating at a restaurant at their hotel when it happened and I guess it was all pretty quick.

And, finally, we are going ahead with the remodel but scaling it back so that it isn’t quite as expensive or involved. It’s about time we get started, though. Tom was home this morning after dropping Luke off because our brother-in-law was due to come over to start taking measurements. About 40 minutes before he was supposed to be there, the doorbell rang. I was still in bed, but it woke me up and I started getting ready for my day, assuming it was him. No, it was a man who didn’t speak any English looking for work. That’s just great. I guess we really need to get our front yard dealt with so we don’t have random people coming up to the door anymore. I’m just glad that Tom was there; it would have freaked me out if I’d been home alone, and I am sure I’d have let him have it (although, according to Tom, he wouldn’t have understood a word I said anyway). So, hopefully the remodel will still be done by the holidays. I’m not really looking forward to the time between now and then, but  I can’t wait to have it finished. We’re adding a walk-in closet and reconfiguring the master bath so that we’ll have a separate room for the toilet, and separate tub and shower. I can’t wait!

I’ve been stitching, but not as much the last few days. We got some network issues sorted out at home and I’ve been playing lotro again, in addition to re-reading the Harry Potter series. I did get some stitching in on the pirate treasure map and on Hanky Pysanky also, but haven’t taken updated pictures of those. The only picture I have to share today is a small one; I finished the chimney last night for the Gingerbread House. Here it is:

The next piece I’ll be doing (which I started last night) is the biscornu, because of how I’ve divided up the fabric, and the next part after that will be the other roof side. I hope I can manage to finish it for this Christmas. I know I’ll have the stitching done with plenty of time to spare, but we’ll see about the finishing.