Kristin Graduation Pics

Sorry for the delay K, but here are your graduation pics, highlights at least. Congrats girl!!!

Mother's Day/Basement Cleanout

Ahhhh....we are done! At least, for now...thank goodness. :) This week my brother Luke came into town and helped us knock off quite a few additional projects that needed to be done before the final dumpster loading day. And on Saturday we had a few other people come over to help us and we filled up the dumpster and finally got the basement all clean and organized. Here are the final pictures (we also go the garage cleaned out and organized as well):

Early Saturday Morning -

Trash pile 1

Trash pile 2

Trash pile 3

Small trash pile 4

Overall trash in basement

Trash in garage

We had almost half the dumpster packed with stuff already from the basement by Saturday morning

Then around 9 am we had David, Ellen, Chuck, Russ, Andrew, Charlie, Debbie and Matt were also over to help us load up the rest of the crap from the above trash piles into the dumpster. Overall with all those people it only took us 45 minutes to get the work done. Amazing! Thank you so much for all who came and helped!

Here are the after pictures...from Saturday afternoon/night:

Main basement area - seating area and work out area

View of under the basement stairs - used to contain a lot of 5 gallons of food storage

Cleaned out tool area

Laundry area


Storage shelves for my stuff - where food storage used to be

Angle 1 into boy's old bedroom now (food) storage room

Angle 2 into storage room - in plastic bag is our wheat grinder

Angle 3 into storage room - rest of food storage and emergency/camping supplies

We also cleaned and organized our garage - those trash bags wouldn't fit into the dumpster so we'll get them out later this week.

Entrance into house from garage - no more metal shelves!

New garage storage area - there will be no more big pile of junk in front of my car yay!!!

Final side of the garage - that big box is full of cardboard boxes we will be recycling this week

Pic of full dumpster!



YAY!!!! We done! Party time baby!
(can you tell I'm happy?)

Here are some videos/virtual tours of our cleaned out areas so you can get the whole impression. Now I get to play catch up on my blog with other pics i've taken during this time. Sigh. :)


Basement Cleanup:




Garage Cleanup

Time Flies

I behind, I behind, I know. Sorry. Life has just been way busy lately, and barely any time available. Sigh.

So lately the thing taking up most time and weekends is our basement. Yup...our basement. The dumping ground of old and/or pointless items has finally gotten to us. Who knew almost 20 years of junk and cobwebs could take so much time to clean up.

So for a Mother's Day gift us local kids have decided to help out. In a couple of weeks we will get a dumpster so we can throw away the stuff trash won't take, or we don't want to have to put into bags. :) But in the mean time for the past month every Saturday my sister-in-law Debbie comes over and she, Mom and I go at cleaning, organizing, throwing away, breaking stuff down and just overall exhausting work. Matt has come a few times here and there to help out with the heavy stuff we can't handle or don't want to handle. We then get 'homework' for the next weekend that we work on throughout the week...or on Friday nights...hehe.

So far we have gone through the food storage...most of which was showing dates from the early 80's. A few years ago...and we are wondering if not recently as well...we had mice in the basement. So they had gotten into some of the food storage...and some had just gone bad. The old shelves my dad had built in 1982 or so we broke apart...took some serious hammering...go Debbie! We have new plastic shelves that seem to work great so far, and that has cleared out tons of room.

The next weekend we went through all the old camping stuff, the leather collection from my Dad's old work, cleaned out part of the boy's old bedroom in the basement and threw away the old stuff by the laundry area and put in new shelves and plastic tubs for organizing laundry.

Weekend after that Debbie was out of town and I thought we'd get a break. Nope. :) We cleaned up the area at the bottom of the basement steps. We even got Debbie and Matt's kids involved as we watched them for the weekend while Debbie and Matt were out of town. The kids got to collect all the stuffed animals down there...most mine from childhood...and help go through those and the toys we had upstairs for them. Not too much we threw out cause 3 kids finding new toys or ones they forgot about they were just so excited. But some I just had to sneak into the throw away box just to get some more room going on.

So this weekend, Charlie, Debbie's step-dad came over to help as well. Debbie and Charlie finished tearing out the carpet from the boy's old bedroom...that was glued to the concrete floor, tore out the drop ceiling tiles, framing and mice tunned home insullation. They also tore off the dry wall from the bedroom walls that were also glued to the concrete. Mom and I worked on the tool area getting stuff cleaned and organized...we didn't finish but got quite a bit gone through and surfaces cleaned off. I think we had the easier end...I okay with that. :) Though now the basement smells like mold...something else for us to clean up.

Still left: finish cleaning tool area...which Matt may come and help go through, finish scraping the liquid nails 'glue' from the walls in the boy's old bedroom area, get some kind of adhesive remover to get the rest of the 'glue' off the floor from the carpet as well, paint the basement walls with dry lock (after we clean off the mold), clean out that last corner, get rid of all the old paint supply...tons of that going on. Kitty litter here we come (to soak it up so we can throw it away in regular trash, had to look up disposal options online). And put up shelves we have so far and get more if needed, clean out the garage as well, reorganize that junk, oh and possibly reorganize the basement and we may create work out area. I'm thinking that's all, but that's generalizing a lot.

So....

Saturday's spent getting dirty cleaning junk - 4
Shelves broken down - 4
Room torn out - 1
Bed's dropped off at good will - 2
Trips to Lowe's for stuff - 4 I think
Eww's heard - too many
Stank faces made - several from all involved
Mice bodies found - 5
Trash Bags used - I lost count after 35
Mom's pleasure of a clean and hopefully mouse free basement - Priceless

And more is still yet to be done. I forgot to do before pics, which Mom may have gotten mad if I posted cause she was quite embarrassed about our basement; but I will do after pictures once it is done. Which may not be for at least another month. Ahh winter with your lazy Saturdays...how I wish for you. Oh well, no time for wishing, onto more spring cleaning!

Dating Catch 22

So...time for honesty. Interesting concept when it comes to dating huh?! Guys here are literally having guy conversations and going and telling girls...the only reason you aren't getting dates is because you are fat. Guys do not want to date girls who are chubby.

Yet, girls who are chubby want to be liked for who they are as well as how they look...actually it was my understanding that is what all women want. Chubby girls are still cute/pretty/etc. and I'm not talking about just personality. And actually, most chubby girls when they get into a serious relationship that is good for them end up losing weight...without a guy harping at them about it.

I know of a guy who told his girlfriend he could never really get serious about her because she was just to fat for him. They later on ended up getting married.

But seriously....women in America are so sick and tired of the view that you have to be model thin in order to be worthy of any ones attention. This pressure to be 'perfect' causes anorexia, bulimia, depression and a wealth of other mental and emotion problems in women....starting when they are children. Seriously.

So when I hear these guys saying they don't date because there is no one 'worthy' of their attention because of the way they look. I just think....so when they have kids....if they do procreate....and their daughters or sons go through a chubby phase where kids may make fun of them; I wonder if they will support and comfort their kids or sit them down for an honest chat and tell them that no one is going to like them while they are over weight. Yup self esteem booster right there.

Sigh. So...sound off....what is your opinion. Should we appreciate men's honesty in telling you that you are not loved cause you are fat because you just need a reality check as a wake up call to lose weight, or am I just surrounded by shallow men who need to learn humility? Or am I missing another perspective out there? Please help me understand.

Cruise Day Four

So our final day of the cruise had us 'At Sea' all day. We finally got to sleep in! So when we finally got up we headed up for breakfast.

So we decided for our day at sea to be lazy, lay out to get some extra sun and just hang around with no real plans. So after breakfast we stopped to get temporary air brush tattoos. Here's a pic of our ankelets we got on one of the islands.

Here is my temporary tattoo...Froggy!

Dominique's tattoo - Pretty Butterfly!

After that we went to a seminar where they gave us information for the next day deboarding, customs procedures, what to do with our luggage, etc. We then wandered around the gift shops to see if there was anything interesting to buy. We didn't really find anything but there really were some deals on jewelry. :) After that we went to an art auction on the ship, the papers said we'd get a free piece of art if we attended. Never realized how boring an art auction could be. :) I couldn't sit through it so after a bit I left and went and laid out to get some sun.

Here's another Carnival ship that was heading the same direction we were. Don't know where they ended up going. But there were tons of people on our ship who kept coming and blocking my sun to have their picture taken with this ship in the background. :)

After a couple hours I decided it was time to go and try to find Dominique. :) I tried the auction room, that was cleared out, stopped by the casino, she wasn't there; I finally found her in our room. I thought she'd be napping but she was actually talking on her cell phone. Her phone now had reception, mine didn't though. She finally got through to her sister so she could finally check up on her puppies. :) Found out after the auction she did hit the casino slot machines for a bit, but then headed back to our room for a short nap, but found her phone was now working.

She had an appoinment to go and meet with the art dude to get her free piece of art. We went and picked it out, then wandered around the ship for a bit.

Finally it was getting to around sunset time and I still hadn't gotten a picture of the sun almost on the sea....finally got it. :)

We asked a lady passing by to take our pics with the sunset in the background.

We headed off to dinner in the dining room and then went out to catch the moon shining off the sea. Here's D looking at the reflection.

I was trying to get the reflection to show with different settings on my camera. This one came out the best...the moon looks a little bit funny but it's a long shutter and my hands aren't totally steady.

When we finally headed back to our room here was our towel 'animal' for the night.

We had to get our 'checked' bags ready before 11 p.m. and outside our room door for the ship staff to collect and take to shore first thing in the morning. After that we then tried to get to bed at a deceant time as we were to dock at 7 am. In the morning we deboarded on the general boarding group where most of our luggage was in the building. We quickly found our bus that would take us to the airport. The luggage check in line was forever long, but we still had time to take a detour to the Disney store where I could get a new Vinylmation set:

Then it was homeward bound. Hope you enjoyed seeing my vacation!

Cruise Day Three

The third day of the cruise took us to Nassau. Here's a welcome sign from the 'customs' building we had to go through to get between the ship and town to do our shopping and excusion.

View of the port/customs building from the ship

How we got off the ship

Our ship:)

D posing in front of the ship, our ship is the one in the middle

We had to meet our water ferry at 8:30 to head out for our excursion...which was power snorkeling. Our group walked past while we were waiting on the dock and let us to our boat:

There was also clear kayaking on our boat as well...clear kayak boats so they could see under the water as well. Below is a picture of our motor we used for the power snorkel. When you push down both the little thumb pedals the motor goes and I don't have to kick. :)




We had an hour to snorkel. They warned us on the boat of two poisonous things to avoid. One was coral with white tips that would have you burning like you had stepped on a fire ant hill. The other was in the picture below. It's called a King fish...it's fins almost look like wings. If you look below it's the thing by the big rock in the upper right corner....brown with white tips on the fins. D missed that warning as she was going potty on the ship, so when she was taking pics of this fish she kept getting closer and closer and I kept trying to motion her to stop getting so close. Luckily soon there after they called us back to the boat to head back to dock. :)

After awhile they started to throw fish food off the side of the boat, which happened to be right where D and I were at that point. So all of a sudden we turned around and there were walls of fish. Here are some pics of all the fish...they are really this close...no zoom on these underwater cameras. :)



















See how close they are getting to D?



Me on the boat afterwards as we are heading back to the port.

When we were almost back I saw a bar called Senor Frogs. Had to take a picture! We didn't go inside but it looked pretty cool from the boat.

After we were done snorkeling we headed back to our ship and showered off the salt water. :) We grabbed a quick lunch and then headed back to shore to do the shopping and exploring around Nassau. We then headed back to the dock area to catch a water taxi over to Paradise Island where the Atlantis Hotel is located. Most of Paradise Island has no road between homes where lots of stars live....they have to get there by their own personal docks. Here's a pic of one portion of the Atlantis Hotel from the water.

The little building on the right is the casino and the bridge connecting the two buildings is actually a 10 room suite that we were told costs $25,000 a night with a 4 night minimum reservation requirement...and is now booked solid for the next 5 years. Crazy oppulant!








Here's a Chihuly glass artwork piece that was at an interior entrance to the casino at Atlantis.




Here's one waterfall on the outside of Atlantis near the pool area.

Another waterfall and their private beach/pool area for Atlantis...we couldn't go there...only guests of Atlantis can get access to it.

Atlantis also has a huge aquarium inside of the hotel. This portion in the next few pics also has an upper access outside the entrance...where some guests can even snorkel in.

Sharky!

Stingray

After we toured Atlantis we took a water taxi back to Nassau...those were way cheaper than taking an actual taxi, and faster as well. :) We then wandered around the Straw Market there and jewelry stores where our ship shopping expert got us deals for free jewelry. Cute little pendants, it was pretty fun. :) The straw market was another intense journey into intense sales women. We got what we were looking for for souvineers and then headed back to the ship.

We dropped off our bags and headed onto dinner. We tried to catch a later show, but were just too exhausted. We stayed for 30 minutes or so and couldn't take it. So we walked around the deck outside for a bit then headed back to our room where we found our new towl animal for the night:

Here's D reading the boat itinerary in bed.

After awhile I got a bit slap happy, so I took a video of our new towl animal....froggy!!!

I made D pose with Mr. Froggy hehe. :P

I was kind annoying....here's D and I laughing for no good reasons. :)

We quickly fell asleep. Our ship actually stayed in port in Nassau till 6 a.m. the next morning. We so slept through the take off. :)