First Day

Well, the day has come. Nora's first day of Kindergarten was Wednesday. She was very excited leading up to Wed, and luckily, that excitement continued. I'm so glad. The story my mom tells about my first day of Kindergarten is that my teacher sent home a note saying "She had grape juice this morning, didn't she?" (As in, my breakfast came up for all to see). I still remember looking out into the hallway and seeing my mom & dad silhouetted as they walked out toward the double doors of the school. Mom, feel free to comment if I have some of these details wrong.

Anyway, Nora had a GREAT first day. She absolutely loved it, and when Kris went to pick her up at the end of the day, she asked "Can I come back tomorrow?" Thursday and today seem to have gone just as well.

Round Two

Well, here we go again. Nora got another stomach virus on Monday night. She stayed home on Tues and Wed. She was fine Wed, but had to stay home 24 hrs after her fever went away. Kris was already planning on staying home Wed because I had a momentary lapse of good judgement when I made Charlotte's checkup appt for 9am. I realized a few days later that it wasn't particularly nice of me to take her to get shots in the morning and then dump her off at daycare. So K volunteered to stay home that day. Then Charlotte got a fever that evening (most likely from the shots) and couldn't go to school all the rest of that week. So from now on, checkups will take place as late as possible on Thursdays (our doctor isn't in the office on Fridays.)

So Kris and Nora went to Oceans of Fun by themselves on Friday. I was REALLY disappointed, not only for having so much money go to waste (I bought the tickets in advance to get a good deal), but because Nora was SOOO excited about going and I really wanted to experience her happiness first-hand. This was her "prize" for doing a good job of going to bed 10 days in a row. So that is why I have no pictures of this event-- Mom, the picture taker, stayed home with a fussy baby. Kris said Nora had an absolute ball and went on tons of water slides, even going under water a few times. Of course, the ones that she went under water on, she never went down again. Anyway, the important thing is that she had a great time. I'm sure we'll go again next year.

Done!

Well, here are photos of my favorite windows (sorry about the color, I'm on Kris's computer so I don't have my fancy-schmancy Photoshop and can't adjust the colors. The close-up photo is the closest to the real thing). These are the only "woodgrain" windows we got because these are the only windows in the house that don't have painted trim. We like these so much that I kinda wish we'd gotten them for the dining room too. It would've been worth it to strip the trim there. Oh well. We'll have enough to do with painting the new trim pieces they put on some of the windows (since the new windows are square, but most of the window holes weren't, there were gaps on many of the windows). You can see what I'm talking about in these photos-- we'll have to stain the light-colored trim. But the important part is done, and as I said before, we LOVE them!

Going, going... gone

Well, our windows were installed on Friday. So far, ... we LOVE them! As Kris pointed out on Sunday, "it's 95 degrees at noon on a sunny day, we don't have any curtains up, the house is comfortable and the air conditioner is not running!" It was a very exciting moment. We've even decided not to put curtains back up in the dining room. Previously, if we didn't have the curtains closed by noon, it became an absolute oven in there. Now, the sun streams in during the afternoon and we don't notice a change in temperature. I'm going to try to find the most minimal window covering I can find-- some kind of nice roller shade perhaps-- so we have something for privacy when we want it (and to keep the rug from fading too much).

The installation went really smoothly, I thought. They did have some major trouble with the bay windows-- cracked one of the new window frames, as a matter of fact-- because the openings were so slanted. They ordered a new frame for that one. It was a really hot day (August, what else can you expect?) and I got quite a workout running from room to room taking down curtains, moving things from in front of the windows, etc. Why we didn't do more beforehand, I don't know. I did manage to take some photos-- it was kinda cool because they took all the windows out on one floor before they started installing. So in our dining room and "parlor," it seemed almost like we didn't have any walls (each wall is mostly a bay window.) It was also fun to stick my head out of the huge holes in the walls.





And then I spent most of the day Saturday and a half day Sunday vacuuming & wiping down as much as I could manage. Major dusty mess.