New Year, New Projects

Kevin and I have been a little slow to start on our home improvement projects since we moved in, what with the weather being freezing, Kevin being out of town, and then the holidays hit! Well, yesterday we decided to bite the bullet and get working on a project. When we had our inspection done, it was recommended that we fill in some of the holes in the grout in the shower where it had come out. Seemed like an easy project to start with, and we could feel good knowing we did something that will help maintain the integrity of the house structure.

Easy, right. Well, when we started really cleaning and inspecting the tiles, we noticed that the wall underneath the window in the shower moved when you pressed on it. That didn't seem good. We are assuming that the caulking around the seam of the window had come loose, and water had gotten inside of it, and now the plaster or dry wall is water sodden and likely covered in lots of mildew and mold.

The Main Suspect: Missing caulk around the window
There's a lot of mildew in these here parts!

Using a hairdryer to maybe dry it out a little. We don't really know what we're doing! :)

What were just a couple little areas to patch has now become an entire wall that we need to take the tile off, cut out the old wall, put in new wall, and then retile. Retiling the bathroom had been one of my projects that I had hoped to do, in like 3 years. After we refloored the rest of the house, painted all the rooms, got our landscaping done. You know, later. Well, looks like we'll have to do it sometime soon now. We're thinking we'll probably just get all new tile and spiff up the bathroom, which will be nice to pick out our own style. We also discovered that some of the floor next to the tub has become lose from the subfloor, so we'll probably that to put in new floors, too! Yikes! Our tiny little bathroom just became the big focus!

So, yesterday we got started on a stopgap measure to not allow any more moisture to seep into the wall. I cleaned the whole shower tile area really thoroughly, then Kevin scraped out the old caulk around the rim of the tub. Then we went to Home Depot for our weekly trip (funny since we haven't done any real projects, yet we have literally gone every weekend since we moved in!) and got our supplies. Then we got busy caulking the tub and the holes in the grout between the tiles of the wall, and around the window. It was a bit of trial and error, but we pretty much got the hang of it by the end. It only took about an hour of actual caulking, so if any of you have any holes in your tile grout or gaps in your caulking, fix it now, so you don't have to redo your whole bathroom! :) Which will be very interesting for us to do, since we only have one bathroom. Oh, let the adventures of home improvement begin!

I have a caulking gun, and I am not afraid to use it!

Okay, maybe a little afraid, but we'll do it anyway!

Smoothing out the caulk, so fun.

We feel we did an impressive job, considering how not handy we both are! We are trying though, getting our feet wet, and trying not to be afraid to making mistakes. It can always be fixed later, right? :)

Today, Kevin attempted to make our bathroom fan more effective, but discovered it is basically worthless because it doesn't pull any air out, and what little does get pulled out doesn't actually have a vent to escape from. So now we are thinking new fan, plus building a new vent pipe through the roof. Fun! We also managed to pick up about one million paint chips yesterday, and have been agonizing over colors for different rooms. We think we have the bedroom picked out, and possibly the kitchen. Progress! Looking forward to a year of learning about all this crazy house stuff, and getting some work done around here! Next up, cleaning out the garage and cleaning up the garden area.

Babysitting Corbin!

Kevin and I had been feeling like we don't get enough Corbin time what with living 90 miles away, so we offered to go up to Bellingham this weekend to babysit him. Adam and Erin got some much needed alone time, plus baby-free shopping, dinner, and a movie! Kevin and I got to hang out with our littlest nephew, and he is so much fun!!! We had a blast with him, playing with his trucks, drawing, tickling, learning all kinds of words he knows, eating yummy food, and getting a good love in with him. We even put him to bed, without a single cry!

He pretty much calls me "Mae Mae" which is what most little guys call me, although several times we got him to say "Meghan" after we said it to him a few times. But I like being called Mae Mae, so its great either way! He calls Kevin something like "Kahkee." It sounds a lot like "daddy" which we thought he was saying for awhile since Kevin and Adam look so much alike with their beards, but we finally figured out that he was trying to say "Kevin." I bet after Christmas, he'll have a lot better annunciation. But he definitely knows who we each are, which is really exciting!

He knows so many words, I couldn't possibly list them! He knows things like alligator, octopus, and Santa! Such a smartie!

Busy coloring, he likes to draw lots of circles!

What are you doing with a monkey around your neck? :)

Blueberries! Doesn't he look like such a big boy with his new haircut? :)

Helping Dad make pancakes for breakfast this morning!

We hope to make these trips a more regular thing, he's growing up so quickly, and we love being apart of his life! Thanks for loaning us your kid, Adam and Erin!

When we left, it had just started snowing in Bellingham, and continued to dump until we got to Marysville. There were lots of accidents and cars that had spun off the road, so it took a really long time to drive down, but we made it home safe and sound!

It took so long we actually had to go to a rest stop for a bathroom break! Photo op for snow accumulation!

We got home, had some lunch, and immediately headed off in search of Christmas lights! We got a fancy ladder from Kevin's parents last week, and finally had a chance to put them up today. It took many, many, many stores, but we finally got what we needed, and got them up on the house! We still need a couple strands on the tree at the front of the property, but we are pleased with how it all turned out!

It's Christmas time in full swing at our house! Music going all the time, starting to get into the baking spirit, presents getting wrapped and put under the tree, and enjoying finding little ways to decorate our home! :) Can't believe it's only 12 days away!

Babysitting at our house!

We've had a busy week of visits, starting with my parents coming for dinner last week, Matthew, Terri and the boys on Thursday, Kevin's parents on Friday, and today we babysat for Jackson and Nate while Matthew was off at a wine tasting party and Terri was home sick. We love having people over here, there is so much more room to enjoy company, and we can actually sit at the dinner table instead of on the couch and floor like we did at our apartment!

We've made a lot of progress in the house unpacking, putting up pictures, and figuring out how we want to live in it! We've got a pretty good list going of all the things we want to change and fix and rip up and replace hanging on the fridge, and I am looking forward to getting some projects under our belts! For now though, we are just loving being in our own space, and really loving having people over all the time!

And now, some gratuitous nephew photos. Nope, you don't get to see the house yet, I haven't gotten around to those photos! :)

Jackson loves this puzzle I got him awhile back, and is starting to figure out lots of the animal noises. Today we worked a lot on pig and cat sounds!

My handsome boys! Nate and Jackson are so much fun together! They just love each other so much!

We headed out to the park for some whiffle ball, and while I tried to play on the playground with Jackson, he was much more into playing ball with the big boys!

Awwww :)

The Reason I've Been So Quiet Lately

We bought a house!!!

For the last month or so, we've been waiting for everything to be finalized, and today we closed on our beautiful new home in Shoreline. It's a 3 bedroom on an 8000 square foot lot, really sunny and we are so beyond excited to be moving into our very own house! We are moving on Sunday (Thanks family!!! You are the best!!!) so I will have more photos up later with our own things inside, but here's a little peek from the photos that the selling agent had posted. Can't wait to have all kinds of visitors!