Back to the House

We've had a nice little vacation from house work for about a month but vacation is about to be over. Big plans for this weekend and I am excited to see the finished results! We are going to tackle the guest bathroom this weekend and it will look like a new room when we are done. The biggest job will be painting, but it won't be bad because it's not a very big room and about half the wall space is covered by the mirror, vanity, cabinet, shower and the window so really there isn't much surface area to cover. This bathroom will be even easier to paint than the powder room downstairs because there is less wall and the ceiling is much lower. A few months ago I was starting to hate painting but I'm actually looking forward to it this weekend. I've picked out the color and it is kind of a slate gray-blue. I currently have a yellow shower curtain and towels which I plan to keep, but I'm also going to get some white towels to alternate with the yellow. I think the color combination will look very cool.

We bought the light fixture for that bathroom way back in August when we bought ALL our fixtures so that's one thing we don't have to pay for now! After we paint we will get the light up and add some hardware to the cabinets. The cabinets and drawers don't have any handles or knobs and it annoys me. We bought a pack of knobs months ago and used two in the powder room and still have 8 left over, so again, we don't have to pay for those! I will want to get new towel bars and a towel ring for the bathroom so that will be a purchase I'll have to make. Fortunately the ones I've used in the other bathrooms were from Target, looked great in my opinion, and were really cheap so I will be buying those again!

I already have a white curtain for the window leftover from my curtain collection when we lived in Virginia. Score! One less purchase to avoid. I will be buying a few new white bath towels but I should be able to find some that are relatively inexpensive. I don't need many since I already have all the yellow ones, I just need some white to mix with them.

We do eventually want to replace the faucets in the all bathrooms, but I'm not sure if we will do this one now or wait. The faucet would definitely raise the cost of doing this room right now but it would look really nice to get rid of the old crappy one. The cheapest ones we can find that we like are around $80. If we don't do the faucet and you don't include the other supplies that we have already purchased months ago, I think this weekend we can get away with doing the room for under $75. The faucet would obviously double the cost. Either way, it's going to look really good when it's done and compared to our other projects, its going to be relatively easy.

We are going to have a rash of company over the next couple months so the guest bathroom will be getting lots of use! Only the best for our guests!!

Saying Goodbye

Today we said goodbye to our turtle friend. Even though we liked the idea of putting a pond in the backyard, it seemed Mr. Turtle did not enjoy life in captivity. We tried feed him several different foods including turtle food from the pet store, but we never really confirmed that he ate while we had him. If we wanted to do a turtle pond at some point it would probably be good to buy a turtle from the pet store where they are bred for captivity. Andrew, unprompted, said he is still not opposed to the idea of doing a pond in the backyard. We have been wanting to do some kind of landscaping and still think a pond might be fun, maybe a little later on.

We released him in a little creek that feeds into Town Lake. The hike and bike trail goes over the creek by a footbridge and last summer we always used to notice how many turtles hung out there in the shallow water. Today we only spotted two other turtles, but its still kind of early in the season. We are sure he will be happy there and make lots of turtle friends.

Carrying him to his new home

Down under the bridge where we released him

Saying our last good bye

Andrew had to hold on to me so I didn't fall down the slope as I let Mr. Turtle go...

... and just like that he was gone!

He swam around happily for a minute and then came back up to the side to say farewell.

We went back up to the bridge to look down on him one last time... he looks happy!! So long Mr. Turtle!!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle

Well Mr. Turtle is still with us. Here are a few more pics from tonight. He has taken up residence in the bathtub until further notice. He was getting into trouble in all the other setups we tried.

We gave him a rock and put some food on it... I'm sure this porcelain bathtub is exactly like his natural habitat.

This is a pretty good close up and you can kind of see his "red ear." Its somewhat faded compared to a younger turtle, but you can see the red spot behind his eye, where he gets his name from.

This one I took just so you can see his crazy claws. They aren't sharp and they definitely couldn't pierce your skin, but they are really long and kind of scratchy and when he is upset he flails them around.

And a brief video of him swimming. Its kind of a lame video, but its hard to catch him in action and he can only swim so much in a bathtub.





I cooked him some salmon tonight and I think he actually ate some. I know, gourmet dinner for the turtle, sounds ridiculous right? Well I was making salmon tonight for dinner anyway so I just fried a tiny bit plain with no sauce and broke it up in to several small pieces. I didn't witness him eat anything, but it looked like some was gone. He did move some of the pieces around so maybe he just hid them well, but I'm pretty sure he ate at least one piece. I read online that they will eat cooked fish so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

We went to Home Depot tonight and started to look at small pond options. You can buy a hard plastic preformed pond which are pretty easy to install. They come in all different sizes. The one was are looking at is a 40 gallon pond. We have been reading up on the logistics of maintaining a pond, filtration, plants, etc.


We haven' t made up our minds %100 percent yet, but I think there's a good chance we might do this. The weather is supposed to be nice the next few days, the perfect weather for building a pond!

New Pet?

I couldn't be outdone by all my friends. Since everyone seems to be getting dogs lately (see Mel and Chez) I had to do something to match up, and Lord knows we don't need another dog. Well one of my coworkers got to work this morning and announced he had rescued a turtle from the middle of the road on his way in, and it was hanging out in his car. We didn't waste any time in begging him to bring it in and pretty soon Mr. Turtle had made his home in a large cardboard box in my cubicle. I set up a desk lamp to shine on him (turtles like to bask, like they do on logs or rocks) and watched him for the rest of the day. I tried to do some internet research to figure out exactly what kind of turtle he was but I couldn't pick him out from the few I had narrowed down. I emailed two different reptile experts in the central Texas area whose information I found online. I sent them the following pictures and a brief description of the little guy. It wasn't long before I heard back from both, confirming that he was a red-eared slider.



Here is what Carl Franklin, Biological Curator of the Amphibian and Reptile Diversity Research Center at UT had to say:

"The turtle in your photo is a mature/old male red eared slider. As they get old, the colors fade (including the red ear) and dark patches become more noticeable."

I brought him home with me and let him chill in the bathtub for a few hours since they are almost entirely aquatic and he had been out of the water for who knows how long. There are a few small ponds around my work but at a turtle's pace they are at least two day's journey from where he was rescued. Later on we decided to see if he wanted to crawl around in the grass and meet the dogs. He wanted to do neither. He totally retracted into his shell.



We figured we shouldn't torture him anymore so we brought him in and set up a little habitat with some shallow water and a lamp for some heat. He tried to escape several times (pictured below) but just kept sliding down the sides and we would laugh.


...Until he really escaped and fell onto the kitchen table. So we found a new habitat for him. We are confident he won't escape from this one since the sides are much taller and slanted. I knew this apple bobbing bucket would come in handy again one day!!



We aren't exactly sure what our long term plans are for Mr. Turtle but we want to be fair to him. We have considered setting up a little habitat for him the backyard but haven't worked out all the details of it yet. If we don't feel we are cut out for turtle ownership we will return him to a body of water soon. Stay tuned!!

Back From Hiatus

Well I took a brief vacation from blogging the past few weeks. Part of that is due to the fact that we were actually on vacation. Then we returned from vacation and I was sick for about a week so I wasn't up for much of anything. After that, I guess it took me a while to get back into the swing for things, but I'm back in full force. So here is what we've been up to the past few weeks:

On Friday January 23 we got on a plane and flew to Washington DC. We were there Friday through Monday and of course packed all that we could into the short visit. We did get to see a lot of friends and spend time with Andrew's family, which was the goal. Here are a few pictures from our weekend in DC with some explanation.

I ran into these guys in the airport.

Have to have a picture of me and Aubrey every time we go back.

Andrew, his brother Brian, and their other friend Andrew, aka Whitey, being weird.

Shopping in Georgetown with my friend Michael. It was cold. But fun to see him!

Dinner at my most favorite restaurant Hana Tokyo!! It was so good!!

The morning we left to head to Connecticut, Andrew and I with his mom and brother.

Kincaids

On Monday the 26th we rented a car and drove to Connecticut to visit my family. We had not been to Connecticut since Christmas of last year, so the trip was long overdue. My parents have been to Austin to visit during the past year and my dad was here for a few days in September so we had at least seen them. We hadn't seen either of my sisters, brother in law, or niece and nephew in over a year and the kids have grown a lot! Wednesday was the day we had planned to go up to my sister's house for the day and take the kids to Chuck E Cheese for lunch. Mother Nature had another plan and decided to send the snow I was hoping to see. We barely made it to my sisters house and once we were there, we didn't dream of leaving for a while, so we ordered pizza in and watched Cars. We had a fun afternoon with the kids.

Driving on the highway to my sister's house!! Lots of snow!

My parent's house in Cheshire

My parents front yard, full of snow.

Logan is such a smiley kid! He also has A TON of hair!!

Samantha is so grown up now!!

Logan is a little wobbly when he walks but his big sister loves to lead him around and he loves to follow her!




Logan had fun playing with Uncle Andrew! Samantha was not a big fan of Uncle Andrew when she was this age!!

Andrew and I at my parent's house

During the visit we stopped by the new Cabela's that recently opened in East Hartford. We aren't really the outdoors man type, but we enjoyed shooting at stuff in the laser shooting range. Watch out for Load em Up Lois, she's pretty fast with a rifle!!

On Thursday that week we drove to Boston to spend time with some of my best friends in the world. We ate lunch on Thursday with my friend Bethany who I haven't seen in almost two years! She was my maid of honor in my wedding, and even though we hadn't seen each other in a long time, it was like nothing had changed. Seeing her made me miss her even more. We spent a few hours that afternoon just hanging out in the area where her and her husband live, seeing their neighborhood, workplaces, etc. Later in the evening we met up with Bethany, Steven, and my great friend Steve Holt to eat dinner at an awesome Boston seafood joint called "No Name." We had a great time all together, but wished Chrissy could have joined us! After dinner I had to say goodbye to Bethany and Steven and we headed home with Steve. Chrissy had a great dessert waiting for us by the time we got back to the house.


By this point in time, I had developed a pretty bad chest cold and had been coughing quite a bit. It had been coming on for several days but was really starting to hit in full force. I also was close to losing my voice, but when you are seeing friends you rarely get to see, you can't really help but talk. We stayed up way later than we should have, chatting and visiting with Steve and Chrissy. That night I was up coughing a lot and didn't sleep very well. I could barely talk in the morning but we had a few places left we had to visit before we left Boston. My parents lived in Boston in the late 70s through early 80s, and I was actually born there but only lived there for the first year of my life. My dad has a favorite pizza place in the North End that he always goes to whenever he is in Boston. We ate there once several years ago but the last time we were in Boston (August 07) we weren't able to because they have very limited hours, but were determined to eat there on this visit. Disclaimer: the next two pictures were taken a year and a half ago.


Chrissy took the day off from work so we could hang out for a few hours before we had to head home to Connecticut. We ate the most delicious pizza at Galleria Umberto for lunch. We weren't the only ones with that idea, since the line was backed up from the counter to the door. This isn't the kind of pizza place you would ever know about if you didn't already know its there, but the locals know its one of the best. And as if that wasn't already enough, its practically across the street from Mike's Pastry, a famous Boston spot where you feel like you died and went to dessert heaven as soon as you walk in the door. We got dessert to bring home to Connecticut, and a few things for us to enjoy. They have amazing cannolis there, the likes of which could never be imitated by a non Italian. Steve and Chrissy are always great hosts and so flexible with our visits, even when we show up in the middle of the week. We really enjoy the time we get to spend with them.

So Friday afternoon after lunch we drove back to Connecticut with me hacking up my lungs the whole two hour drive back. As soon as we got back to Cheshire, we went to a walk in clinic so I could see a doctor. He told me I had bronchitis and gave me a prescription for an antibiotic which I was very glad to accept. This was to be our last night before we were heading home to Austin, and I was really starting to look forward to my own bed again. Being sick and not being at home is kind of miserable. We had a nice dinner with the ENTIRE family which was some kind of miracle that we all were there at the same time. Again, I couldn't talk too much because my voice was close to non existent, but I made the best of it. Here is a picture with almost all of us, Leigh Anne had not arrived yet and by the time she did there was no way the kids were going to sit still for another picture.


We got home Saturday afternoon and I was feeling pretty miserable. I had so much congestion in my head, nose and chest and no medicine seemed like it could help. My ears were so plugged up and I was in a lot of pain after the flight because I could not pop my ears. It was also kind of scary because it really impaired my hearing for several hours and that was an uneasy feeling. It took about 12 hours before my ears finally opened up and I was feeling pretty lousy for a while there. I'm really glad we came back Saturday afternoon because I had a day and a half to recover before I had to go back to work. I still didn't feel great on Monday, but I felt much better than I had a few days ago.

Well I've probably given more details than you really cared to hear but in case any of you were dying to know everything about our trip, now you know! I will get back to house stuff on here soon enough. We have lots going on coming up soon so check back!