May Flowers

All sorts of emotions are surging through me at this moment! I'm excited about the summer because we are actually going on vacation TOGETHER! Plus, summer always brings lots of fun things to do with the Dendys! We're going to the Scarborough Fair in Waxahachie on Memorial Day! I've never been before and I'm sure Gracie will get a kick out of all of the guys dressed up in crazy outfits. The Dendy fam will be on vacation for a few weeks this summer, so I'm going to take advantage of that time Grace will be gone. I planned a trip to San Antonio and Austin! I've lived here for 7 years and have never been south of Corsicana. We just got Six Flags season passes so we're going to go to the Six Flags park in San Antonio, do the Riverwalk, see the Alamo, etc, etc. Then in Austin, we're staying with our friends Heath and Adrienne. They know how to show visitors to Austin a good time, or so I hear ;)

Our living room is SLOWLY making it's way back to normalcy. The priming took twice as long as we thought. It's so thick it was just a pain to roll on. Now we are onto doing the texture and then we can (FINALLY!) paint. I think our couch and love seat are feeling neglected in the garage. Forest's friend from work came to help us last weekend, we were so grateful for that. Another friend of his is moving to the apartments near the rec center. I know Forest is really happy about that, it seems his closest friends are all on the other side of the Metroplex.

My year with Grace ends on the 31st of May. She had her evaluation about two weeks ago and they still haven't called back to let Jennie know if Grace has been approved for another year, which is causing me some stress (because I love to make myself stress for some reason!). Everyone who knows Grace will probably say a collective "WHAT!?" when I tell you that it's possible she may be rejected. The program she is in currently is the Medically Dependent Children Program, or MDCP. Medically, Grace is pretty healthy. Some of the things that got her into the program are no longer an issue, but others are still there. I really have no idea why I am worrying so much, because nothing has changed since her last evaluation, but the women who did the evaluation seemed a little more "business" and I think that has psyched me out a little bit. It would seem to me that if nothing has changed or gotten better and she is a year older, that would make it seem worse. The biggest and older she is, the harder it is to take care of her. I *really* wouldn't enjoy losing my job, but Grace receives so many more benefits from this program than just me. I wouldn't want her to lose them either.

Moving Right Along...

We are making "some" progress in our living room. Some of the plans have changed though and has caused a few hiccups along the way. We had to remove some drywall around our fireplace and realized that the flume is broken and not opening. The stone also has cracks in it and is just old and definitely not safe to use. So, for the time being, we have put drywall over it! The ballet is still out in my mind as to where the furniture will go now. I got a new hutch and storage cabinet to put in there, both very cute.

Pictures of this lovely little project can be see here in our photo album or here on Facebook. You must be logged in to Facebook and be my friend there to view the photos that way though.

Living Room Project

I just added the "before" pics of our living room to our photo album, if anyone is interested!

If you are wondering why we have already arranged the furniture differently before we started to paint is because my husband is a geek. We have a home theater system and he needed to make sure the new furniture arrangement was going to work with speaker placement!d

Grabert Demolition

Tonight starts a process that will probably take a month or two to complete, updating 2 of the "worst rooms" in our house. To give you a little bit of a back story on our house:

Our house has 2 bedrooms, two full baths, a living room, an entry way and a kitchen with dining room attached. Every room has a problem with the paint, the two biggest offenders being the guest bedroom and the living room. Every wall in the house is covered in texture, texture that was not applied right and needs to be completely redone. This is some what of an involved process, we need to sand everything off of the walls down to the drywall. After getting the walls smooth, we'll prime the walls and depending on what the walls look like after sanding, possibly texture the walls and then (FINALLY!) paint.

The guest bedroom project started last summer. Forest and our friend Bryce tried to blend the uneven texture, but it was pretty much impossible to do. They also didn't realize that the previous owners painted right over the wallpaper! That absolutely needs to be removed. After that is done, we'll clean up the giant mess it will make, then move all of the furniture from the living room into the guest bedroom. Then we'll do the same thing in the living room. The texture isn't as thick, but the room is about 25X15 and has 12 foot ceilings! We are also going to replace every door frame and the baseboards. Home Depot has these nifty miter-less door frame kits that actually aren't any more expensive then doing it the old fashion way, and they fit right into my decor! Between the entry way and living room, we have 9 doorways. 6 of them are in the entry way! After we get the living room painted, we're going to move all of the furniture back into the living room. We'll then paint the guest bedroom and then install laminate flooring in the entry way and guest bedroom.

I know, it sounds like an insane amount of work. It kind of is, but thankfully we have a good idea of what we are doing now. Forest's major concern in this project? Where we were going to put the speakers for our Home Theater when we arrange the furniture. Since we are installing new baseboards and door frames, it will finally be easy to hide the wires somewhere other than under our rug. The TV is blocking the fireplace at the moment and when this is all done, I'll actually be able to show it off! I won't EVER use it (I live in Texas, after all!) but for some reason everyone loves having them down here.

The only problem I am worried about at the moment is color. Colors for the guest bedroom have been picked out for almost a year now (I know, sad right?) but Forest and I are debating for the living room. I want to do a beige color with country red trim, something very prim. He, for some reason, thinks the trim should be white, which is of course, very boring. So, I'm asking for ideas!

I am super excited about this project. It'll be a HUGE under taking but I am willing to deal with a few weeks of madness to finally update that living room. I'll post pictures as we get the project started!

Insomnia

During certain times...of my life...I suffer from severe insomnia. It's not in any pattern and comes sporadically. Thankfully it's usually before my days off or on a day where I can get some extra sleep if I ever do fall asleep. I was tired all day today, so you would think I would have crashed hours ago. It's nearly 5 now. Getting pretty tired of this, no pun intended (or maybe it is...I can't think straight).

I am taking this time to work on my new photo album. I suggest looking over to the left of your screen and checking it out. 2009 was a good picture year. We had some pretty fun adventures and I even helped delivery my friend's baby. How many times will I get to do that in my life? I'm going to finish this up and then HOPEFULLY get to bed!

New Year's Resolutions

Wow, I can't believe I haven't updated this in 6 months! It's been a struggle even reading my friend's blogs because almost everyone with a blog is also on Facebook. It's taken over as the method for pumping information out to the world. For the sake of my family, I should update so you don't have to hear about things from just my Mom! I suppose it should be a resolution, even...

Things have been going well for us in the last few months. Forest was laid off in October for one day before they came to their senses and realized things would crash and burn without Forest's keen knowledge of the Library's network (at least that's how I see it!). Unfortunately he is doing the job of three people all by himself now. He is down in a room all by himself and it was kind of taking it's toll for a little bit. Thankfully now he has someone helping him a few days a week and they get along really well.

Gracie is doing really well! She seems to love her new class at Lakeview and is still a joy to take care of. In November I found out I was chosen as "Attendant of the Year" from Disability Services of the Southwest (or DSSW, the firm that takes care of Grace's respite care account) The following is the section of the DSSW newsletter that I was featured in! I love the letter the Dendys wrote, it made me feel really appreciated. Working with Grace is the best job I've ever had!

And since the scanned picture didn't come out so great, here is the original!

I've been really busy with my calling at Church the last few months (I'm the Activities Chairperson), we had two dinners in three months! Our Chili Cookoff went very well (and since we live in Texas, Mormons actually know how to make Chili!) in October but what I was really gearing up for was the Ward Christmas Party. We had "Tex-Mex" food with some really fun country Christmas decorations. The food was so fantastic but we had so much left over that I am still even sick of mexican food.

We had a very quiet Christmas! It was just the two of us and our dog. Your dog, you ask? Yes, we actually got a dog! I'm sure everyone already knows about this because he was featured in our Christmas card, but to give you some of the details...a friend of ours, Laney, put a post on FB asking if anyone would like a 2 year old Bichon Frise that her neighbor needed to find a home because her son was having severe asthma. I told her I would love to give him a good home and it all fell into place. We got him on December 14th so he was the perfect Christmas present! His name is Pippin and we just adore this little dog. I've taken him over to Jennie's to play with their puppy and both of the dogs just love having someone to romp around with. Here are a few pictures with our cute little doggie!

One of our Christmas card pictures:

Playing in the snow:



After we got him groomed for the first time:

You may have noticed all of that snow - we finally had a White Christmas! While the rain was pouring in Michigan, we had a good 5 inches of snow fall on Christmas Eve. It was snowing hard enough that it soaked my camera and I only took a few pictures when it was actually still snowing. The first picture is from when it was snowing and the second two are when it started melting. Pippin enjoyed running around in the snow and we bundled up to go play with him in it. The weather has been one big yo-yo, going from the 30's to the 70's, down to the 20's and it's supposed to be in the high 50's early next week. Right now it's in the 20's and we're not liking that too much!

Things are good for us and we hope everyone around the country is having a wonderful New Year so far!

The Best Kind of Update - Full of Pictures!

So much has been so much going on the past few weeks!

Our windows are being installed on Friday!

Our guest bedroom looks like a warzone!

Okay, it's been cleaned up since then, but we haven't started painting because we can't open our old crummy windows.

Speaking of war zones, we have had some interesting weather. Last Wednesday the Alliance Airport area was hit with a massive storm that rocked the community. Our street was littered with tree branches and our house took a slight hit. One of our turbines flew off of the roof! We have a little bit of water damage in our living room ceiling, but other than that we fared pretty well. I cannot believe that neither of our trees were touched. It doesn't even look like a single leaf is missing. We lost power for almost 3 days. It finally came back on Saturday afternoon. We are so thankful for the Wrights who let us stay with them the first night (until they too lost power) and the Dendy's for letting us borrow their mud room refrigerator and also their guest bedroom. We'd be out an awful lot of food and money otherwise!

Also last Wednesday, a city-hired contractor started digging holes on our street. We weren't notified and we didn't find out until today what they are doing. Wednesday they hit a gas main which I didn't know about until after the storm settled (which I am grateful for because storms stress me out enough as it is!). We came home from the store this afternoon and found a freshly dug hole in our front yard! I don't mind the hole so much now that I know they are installing street lights (that are MUCH needed), but none of us on the block knew what was going on. For some reason they felt the need to drive a tractor on my lawn though, which I am hoping they will fix. They apparently "fixed" it today, but as you can see from the following pictures, it still looks pretty terrible. As far as I can tell, we're the only house's lawn they did this to.

Looking at that picture makes me think our lawn is kind of scary. Forest mowed it last Monday. We got so much rain though, I'm not surprised it looks so wild!

A few weeks ago, Grace graduated from Kindergarten! She was so cute getting her diploma although she looked pretty confused about all of it. Next year she is off to Lakeview Elementary! She thankfully has stopped having seizures recently which means she has lost some benefits with MDCP. This doesn't affect me too much, I'll make a little bit less this year but work a significant amount of hours less than I did last year. It's worth it for her not to have seizures anymore!

And here are some random pictures of Grace that I think are adorable!


We broke down and got a new camera. We got a Canon SX10 and it is HUGE. Thankfully it's pretty light. I love that the view finder is "flexable". I took the picture below of Grace and I and Grace is looking at herself in the view finder. It takes amazing pictures, much better than on our old camera (which you can see in the shots of Grace above).

And because it's just so darn cute...

I guess that is everything for right now...it's been a really crazy week, we spent most of today catching up from not doing any laundry or housework for 4 days. It's amazing the things we can take for granted. Not having power impacts your life in every single way. I hope we don't have to do that again anytime soon...