Guest Bedroom and Bathroom

Here are pictures of the guest bedroom and bathroom (all shiny and clean in anticipation for Grant's visit).

the guest bedroom is the door to the left

bathroom

Speaking of Grant, he arrived Thursday afternoon, and we've had a great time so far. We rented a couple of movies ("The King's Speech" and "Fair Game") and saw "Water for Elephants" at the theater yesterday (Sydney was at daycare). We grilled burgers last night, and today plan on going to the beach. Here are Grant and Syd having fun:

Surgery Update

Chet is doing very well post-surgery, although we make sure to stay on schedule with the pain medication. We were allowed to take off Chet's bandage today, and he was happy for me to scrub off all of the gummy stuff that the bandage left, as well as the ink and the iodine. (It took forever, and it's still not off!) He has a physical therapy appointment tomorrow morning. Despite his condition, Chet is still very helpful around the house!

Feeding Sydney

Bandage

Before Scrubbing

After Scrubbing

More House Pictures

Since I posted pictures of the living room and family room/Sydney's play area a couple of days ago, I'm motivated to finally take and post pictures of the rest of the house (it's about time, Ashley, you've lived here seven months already!). As I look at these pictures, I notice how WHITE our walls seem! I mean, they ARE white (we live in base housing, so unless we want to paint and then repaint the walls before we move, there is no point), but they look so much WHITER in the pictures! Oh, well. I promise things look nicer and less correctional institute-ish in person. Also, when we moved into this house, I decided not to hang any of our window treatments since we would be here less than a year. The blinds are nice, so it looks fine, but I think the lack of window treatments makes the pictures look a little more drab. One more thing, I chose white frames for the majority of Sydney's pictures that are hanging on the walls. Since we will be moving into a different house every 2-3 years for the next 15+ years (gulp), I was very adamant about choosing frames that best fit the picture itself (and not matching it to the furniture, because who knows when furniture will be replaced, and not choosing colorful frames just to balance out the white walls). This is another reason our house seems so white, but there are bigger issues in this world than white walls and frames and absent window treatments (although you wouldn't think so the way I went on and on about it).

front door (that's Chet's hospital robe hanging on the coat rack)

ominous-looking staircase

bookshelf at top of staircase

the door to the right (with the picture hanging above it) is Syd's room; the door to the left of Syd's is the guest bedroom; the door to the left of that is a storage closet; the bathroom is to the left of that, but you can't see it from this angle

standing in the "door corner" you just saw, looking back at the staircase

Syd (the fish in these pictures was added later via Photoshop)

Syd's room

sorry about the flash

hallway headed toward master bedroom

I am not super happy with the quality of these pictures. I need to stop procrastinating and read the owner's manual. And, yes, I know we have lots of pictures of Sydney hanging on the walls.

Surgery Update

Chet's surgery went very well today. We had to check in at 6:00 a.m., and the hospital is nearly 40 miles away, so it was a VERY early morning. We left the hospital a little after noon, and Chet got sick in the car a couple of times on the way home (probably too much information). Thankfully, one of the nurses armed us with "seasick" bags for the ride home. Chet felt much better afterward, and has not felt sick since. He has been sleeping most of the afternoon. The time spent shopping for the recliner and the lack of joy I had for rearranging the living room was worth it as long as he is comfortable.

Speaking of sleeping, I won. Against Sydney. She did not nap long at daycare today (she rarely does, even though she takes TWO two-hour naps a day on the weekends), and that combined with getting up over an hour earlier than usual made her a cranky baby when I picked her up from daycare. Situations like this arise fairly frequently, and I always plan to get her in bed earlier than usual (her bedtime is 7:30, give or take 15 minutes), but it never works out the way I want it to (Sydney always convinces me to keep her up until her normal time...even though I KNOW she needs more sleep...which makes her the winner). But tonight...I put her in bed at 6:30, and she was asleep 15 minutes later. Woo hoo!

Here are a few random pictures of Sydney playing in the back of Chet's truck. These were taken about a month ago.

I like this one.

Reaching for me and shouting.

Rumpled.

Surgery, "Tiramisu", and Living Room Furniture

For those of you who don't know, Chet is having shoulder surgery tomorrow (Monday). He has a partially torn rotator cuff, and needs to get it repaired before we move to Mississippi. The surgery is routine, but he will be in a sling for four weeks, and will begin physical therapy six weeks post surgery. I took the entire week off of work so that I can take care of him, and, coincidentally, to entertain Grant when he flies into town Thursday (Grant planned the trip before we knew about the surgery, but we'll still have fun). Please pray that Chet's surgery goes well and that he has a speedy and uncomplicated recovery!

Chet went to his pre-op appointment last Monday (I didn't go), and was sent home with two iodine surgical scrubs. He left them on the counter, and when I got home, I thought they were slices of tiramisu that he had picked up at the convenience store (not that they even sell those; I'm sure tiramisu is impossible to preserve). Don't worry, I didn't try to eat them or anything, but I thought it was pretty funny that my brain could only fathom tiramisu, and nothing else.

Our living room furniture consists of a couch, chair, coffee table, end table, and TV stand. We've always had small living rooms, so we've never needed a big couch or a second chair. However, Chet needs a recliner to survive this surgery (it will allow him to rest and sleep comfortably for the first few days). So we went recliner shopping this weekend. The shopping part was successful, but I'm not super happy with the rearranging the living room part of it, but I'm sure I'll get used to it (and hope that our next house has more living space for living room furniture than our current home).

Here are pictures of the living room, pre-recliner. The first picture is the view of the living room as if you had just walked through the front door, to the left. (To the right of the front door is the staircase.)

Here are the "after" pictures (I think the chair corner looks dark and weird now, but oh well...):

You might have noticed that there is no longer room for the original chair, so we had to move it to the living area in the back of the house. This area is right next to the dining area and near the kitchen, and butts up to the back of the house.