New & Improved

Painting
I guess this is my first post of the New Year. It is almost the beginning of February. Geez....what a slacker! And now, of course, the weekend is gone (when I should have been blogging, when I fully intended to blog). It's Monday morning and I have a date with the treadmill, but my fingers have other plans. The treadmill will be there in another hour.

Takin' a silly break

 

Jedi Knights...



in training.....

....quickly comes to an end.  Oh, I think that hurt!  :(

Obi-Ben, using the force.

 I didn't get any actual pictures of the popcorn being scraped off, but I did get some great painting pics. That might have been helpful to illustrate what a complicated process it is, but it would have gotten a little messy since the camera could potentially be ruined by blobs of popcorn dropping from the ceiling! I don't even have any "after" pictures. Basically, we Chi has the process down to a science. The whole room, including the floor, is encased in protective plastic sheeting. The textured ceiling is then sprayed with warm water and allowed to soak in. Then, Superman dons his protective breathing apparatus before beginning to scrape the crap off in a single boung. What a man. He's fearless. I am really just the clean-up crew/go-getter/company-keeper, but I don't mind that. It's kind of cool to watch the whole process, and I really love that he has done every room in this house (except the bonus room) on his own. Although I know it's hard work, it sure makes sweet memories and it means so much to me that he has invested so much of himself in order to make our home a place we love.

Ready to roll
The Little Nguyens have learned to pitch in with home improvement tasks. They help on and off, and they like it. But they can only take so much, and after awhile usually run off to build with LEGOs in the bonus room. I love that they have a hand in helping out, too, because our home then becomes part of who they are. For instance, when Chi ripped out all of the old built-ins in our great room, we measured the Little Nguyens and marked their height right on the drywall before putting up the new shelves Chi had built! They drew on the subfloor after we pulled up the old carpets, too, before laying the wood flooring in 2009. Little pieces of them are everywhere, buried deep inside the "bones" of our house. I hope one day that the Little Nguyens will be just like Chi, and I think he tries really hard to pass on his skills to them. One thing I love best about Chi is that if he doesn't know how to do something, he researches it and learns how to do it. As he says, "The web knows all."  We have saved so much money in renovation costs, and in the process have made so many wonderful memories in making this our family's home.



Working hard...

I can remember moving in eight-and-a-half years ago with an 8-month old baby Benjamin. I can remember how, for weeks, I would bring loads of boxes over right before his naptime. I would close us both into his sunny, empty bedroom and unpack his boxes of things, watching him work so hard to crawl all the way across the floor of that room so he could pull himself up on the windowsills to look outside. He would wear himself out going back and forth across the room, and then would lay down for a nap in his pack-n-play while I went to work on another room. He got used to his room this way, and when he spent his first night there, he slept so soundly. I can remember bringing our fuzzy-headed pumpkin, Thomas, home from the hospital on that warm Halloween afternoon in 2004, too. He seemed so small in this big house. Of course, he grew faster than we ever could have imagined, and before long he was running around our first floor rooms like they were a racetrack created just for him. This house we used to think was so big now has walls that often seem like they are closing in around us. The boys are growing bigger, and I am sure their days of sharing their beloved bedroom are numbered. We love listening to them talk in there at night, snuggled up in their beds. Sadly, it wont' be long before they will want their own space, and we will have to split them up into separate rooms. I can't imagine ever leaving our house, but one thing is for sure. This home has pieces of our lives scattered all about within it. Each one of us is a part of it.