Vacation

Well, Chris finally took some time off work! After I got over my brief panic that maybe hell was freezing over or Armageddon was coming.....we settled down to do some work.

See, our (my) big plan is that we use this week to get a bunch of home improvement stuff done...plus do some fun local things later in the week. Jordan has school through tomorrow afternoon, so we have some time to kill around the house.

Yesterday went really well. I got the ceiling painted in the new bathroom, he put up some of the lights. I got a LOT of weeding done and cut back my daisies. I have some new flowers to show you. I know some of you are wondering why I only give close ups...well....while I have some really nice individual flowers, the big picture is still a work in progress. I'll take some large shots and share with you the sad shape of of my gardens overall soon. My big problem in the backyard is that the daisies are in the front of the bed (they are too big to be there, I'm moving them next year) and the peas have grown too big for for the cute little tee-pea I built. I just couldn't fathom them being so big when they were seedlings, so I went with the 4 ft bamboo. Should have gone for the 8 ft!

The front is just kind of unorganized chaos.....which isn't a total bad thing except there are spaces of nothing but mulch, and spaces of total flower overpopulation. Give me a few years and I think it will look nice. Luckily my neighbors aren't all uppity about things like curb appeal!

Today I stuck Chris with the nasty job of removing grout from tiles. I've been working at it a little each day, but it's a messy job. Frankly I'd like to take a shower today and stay clean for awhile.

Here's my aside on laying tile. It's pretty easy. BUT, don't, under any circumstances, let that grout dry on your tiles. Start wiping right away. That's what I did with the floor (you know, after I learned on the walls how fast it dries!) and it came out beautiful. But the walls, we were too slow. And now the grout won't come off. I've found the best way it so scrape at it with a wooden shim (won't damage your tile like metal might). I've got most of the grout lines themselves looking pretty good things way. Chris is not fond of this method and is trying ti remove anything left in the center of the tiles with a grout remover. Hydrocloric acid. Very stinky. No thanks.

We did take the kids our to the rail-trail again last night and walked 2 miles on the MCTrail. It includes a really nice tunnel. Celia actually walked (okay, ran) over a mile of it! Anyway, I forgot the camera, but I promise (PRO-MISE!) that I'll take it next time to share with all of your the beauty of the northern WV rail-trails.....or more likely, the beauty of my kids playing on the rail-trail.