House Renovation Continues & Wellington's Antics

Since our picture program is still not up and running, I thought I'd update you on the progress of the house. Hopefully soon, I have a ton of summer pictures to upload and share.


Above is a picture of what our new color scheme will look like. It's the original 1930's color palate popular for the Craftsman Bungalow. We lack the cool porch but Mark wants to eventually put one on. We also have original wooden shutters that will be painted and put on. Now it's just deciding what will be green and what will be red.



I contacted our painter to see what his schedule was looking like. He's a little behind but informed me that the feds passed a law a week after giving us an estimate stating that any house built before the 60's or something has to follow all these painting procedures under the assumption that there is lead paint involved. These new procedures include, 10 feet of plastic, not one speck of paint can be left on the ground while stripping the old paint, caution tape must be up at all times and ALL his gear must be cleaned up and packed away every night. Homeowners can sign a waiver to not do all that, unless children under 6 reside in the home. Oh fun! So he will spend twice as long on our job and invest a lot in extra equipment. But he's honoring the original estimate cause he's a nice guy. I'm looking forward to the constant questions I'll have to deal with because of the caution tape around my house! Small town you know...


Many of you wanted to know about Wellington, our resident "spirit". I guess I've always believed in ghosts. I've just experienced too many weird things not to. When we moved into the house we had some odd things happen as though he was just making sure we were aware of him. Twice now the bathroom faucet has turned on full force in the night. Once I awoke to find every kitchen cabinet and drawer wide open. Teddy will sometimes stare at nothing and growl. Not just us but other people have seen shadows move down our hall. Teddy sees them a lot and draws our attention to them.

The funny thing is, we always assumed it was a male because the doc died in the house, but for a few years now, Z has talked about the little lady in black that visits him at night. We once showed him a picture of the doctor and asked if he'd ever seen that man before and he said no but pointed to his wife and said he'd seen her. Kinda creepy huh?

Grandma Fifi

Christmas 2006 - Holding Z (6 months ) and Cousin S (3 months)

The minister who performed the funeral said that Grandma Fifi was a quiet "salt of the earth" kind of person who just went about life without making waves. I don't think he could have been more wrong.

On June 25, Mark's grandma died. And let me tell you about the real Grandma Fifi. No , her name wasn't Fifi, it was Elda. She earned the name by being pulled on stage at the Renaissance Festival as Fifi the French maid and it stuck. Cousin S, who was just a toddler at the time started calling her Grandma Fifi and all the other great grandkids did too. And it fit. She could be goofy. She felt the only foods you needed in your kitchen were popcorn and ice cream. She was gifted at knitting and cross stitch and loved just about any form of art. And what I liked best about her was her spunk. She was stubborn at times too and from what I can see, all her great granddaughters take after her just a little, if not a lot.

She lived to a ripe old age, she lived long enough to see her grandchildren grow up and get married and she got to hold and enjoy all 10 of her great grandchildren. May we all be so lucky. I'm happy my kids got to know her and that Z will have memories of her.

And should we ever think we'll forget her, all we have to do is look at the her sassy great granddaughters that look and act like her to remember that she was anything but quiet and ordinary.

I thought vacations are supposed to be restful...

Sorry for the long pause in updating, life since I walked out of OHS has been crazy to put it mildly. I must first warn you that I will have to post pictures next time. Part of the delay has been lack of computer. A lovely little virus infected us courtesy of facebook and we lost it until just this week. So I have to wait until we reload our photo program. And if you think of it, please send us a little email. We lost all our email contacts and are slowly rebuilding our address book.

Hard to believe summer break is half over. The first two weeks were some intense work on the house. Thanks to my co-worker Troy, the upstairs is gutted and awaiting remodeling. We think the roofers finally fixed the holes (knock on wood) Now we sit and wait for the painter. Funny story there as well but I'll put that in the house update.

On June 25, Mark's grandma, Grandma Fifi, passed away. She was slowly fading after a few hospital stays and a broken hip. More about Grandma next post.

That Friday after the funeral, we headed up north for vacation. Both kids did well, a sprained ankle, poison ivy and a little boating incident didn't ruin any of the fun. We'd been home a week when Mark cut his hand with a circular saw building a deck for his mom. Pretty nasty cut and he may need surgery yet. So that puts a halt on any house work for awhile. So somewhere I blinked and it's mid July already. I'm ready for some quiet...

Pictures coming soon, promise!!!!!