Merry Christmas

This is probably our last post until we get back from home. Our suitcases are almost all packed, just waiting for tomorrow for our bathroom stuff. Gotta cram the cameras and other things into our carry-on bag and we are all set. 3 Christmas presents are sewn, 1 more is cute out and needs to be whipped together. I'll start it in the morning and finish it on my mom's sewing machine on Thursday. Then off to the store for a couple presents we're buying up there (cuz there certainly is no room in the suitcases) and then it's visiting and seeing friends and enjoying our vacation.

Tonight we had our family Christmas next to our beautiful Christmas tree. Peanut wasn't so interested after he got about 3 presents opened. He just played with his new toys and Mike and I exchanged gifts. My husband is the best, so very thoughtful and always gets me exactly what I love. And Peanut got me a beautiful sewing basket with 2 bundles of fat quarters inside that Mike says he picked out all on his own. They will make some very cute pillows for Peanut's room and for the floor for playing. He loves pillows. Loves to lay his head BRIEFLY down on them and then sit back up with his huge handsome smile on his face. This he does over and over.

I wish everyone that we won't be able to see on our visit or over the holidays a safe, warm and wonderful Christmas. Please don't drink and drive.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

~Crystal

Busy before Christmas

Well, we are only 2 days away from our trip "home" to the pacific northwest. I know this is our home now, but for some reason I can't stop calling it home up there. We are very excited to get to see people we miss, that's a given, but why can't Christmas have fallen in the warm months? We are going to freeze our butt's off! I'm still considering wearing shorts up there, til I talked to my lil brother yesterday, and he told me the high was 35! I've gone out to head to work in the mornings and had it be 35, but usually it gets up to high 60's in rather short order (no punn intended) so thats ok, but if that's all the warmer it's going to get, no way am I wearing shorts, I'll freeze my twig and giggle berries off!

I decided to try and get the garage cleaned out of peoples stuff I've been working on, so Friday and Saturday afternoons I got some serious work done in the garage.

This is 2 tables from a lady I did an inspection for way back in October. Sometimes when the Insurance companies send us out to do these inspections, they don't give us permission to do the repairs, they just want to know how much the repairs would cost. Then, they will either call us back and say "go fix their stuff", or you just get your check in the mail for doing the inspection and thats all you hear about it, when that happens, they send the shipper (thats the person whose crap they destroyed) a check based off of my report telling them how much it would be to fix their stuff. Once in a great while, people actually want their furniture fixed and will call us to come back and fix it. This last week was the first time someone actually called me back. Of course it would be one of my shippers that is at least 4 cans short of a six pack. She is a bit of an odd duck, shes alittle older, probably in her 60's, and I think a bit of a hypochondriac . She walks around in her house all bundled up like she is going to go climb the rockies or something. Anyway, she had a couple tables that got trashed, her moving truck had a leak in the roof and so alot of water got in and ruined quite a bit of her stuff, some could be fixed, some could not, or at least not for as cheap as it would have been to just buy new. Anyway, this first desk, its pretty cool. Tiny for a desk, but as best as I can tell, thats what it is. It has 2 drawers on it, one is concealed on the underside, and in fact, the shipper didn't even know the drawer was there, to bad it wasn't full of money, finders keepers! ha!

Anyway, here are the before shots:

2 Drawer desk




And now, the after:



She also had a sofa table. Cool table, not very well taken care of, but the leaking truck did it in. In this first picture, notice that the legs are black? Well, I re-did the table in black, even called her before I did it and told her I was going to redo the entire table in black so that it looked the way it used to look. "ok, whatever you think is best" was her response. Boy, I'll never trust that one again. When I got it to her house, she hated it. Cooky old bird! She then says to me "I didn't realize when you said it would be black, that it would actually be black".....is there a black out there that anyone know's about that once you apply it, it turns green or something? Holy smokes lady!!! Whatever, anyway, before and after again, you know the drill.





In an effort to get the garage even further cleaned out, I pulled a table out of a house this week to be re-finished, and am now waiting for my leather repair lady to call me back and tell me when she is headed up to this gals house so I can meet here and pay her after shes done with the work, and bring the ladies table back at the same time. So, here again, before/after.


So, that's what I did the last couple days. Now it's back to the grind, well, for a day anyway, taking Tuesday off to pack and work on cleaning up the office. Last night before Elliot went to bed, we were bringing in some still unpacked boxes from the garage and moving them into the spare room to be unpacked, its all mostly Crystals books getting unloaded onto a bookshelf. Thats the room we've moved our DVD's too until I can build us a cabinet with doors on it to keep out the boy. He got in there and went to work on the rack. It does my heart good to see him go straight for the video games, I'm going to really enjoy it when he grows up alittle and I can kick his butt at them, until he turns 5 at least, then his eye hand coordination will catch up and I'm screwed.


Well, thats it for now. Gotta hit the shower and then it's off to my next cooky old birds house. Did an inspection for her last week and got authorization to repair already. Hopefully I can get it all done today and never have to go back! I won't get that lucky. Oh well, at least its a pretty drive down to Sahaurita Arizona.

Poop

Today is a poopy day. Peanut is sick, I am sick and can't take anything because I'm nursing and all the good medicines diminish milk production and we're just not ready for that. So, all I can say to that is POOP. Thankfully, Peanut doesn't seem as sick as I am, but it's still very difficult to watch him try to nurse with his cute little nose all stuffy and not able to breathe.

I did get some sewing in this weekend. I made a couple purses for a friend of Joy's who bought one. She wanted a blue one so I made 2 different ones so she could have her pick.


Our house is as decorated as it's gonna get for Christmas. We tried to not have a Christmas tree because we'll be home for Christmas, but it's just wasn't working for me and after a meltdown, Mike went and bought me a tree as a surprise. He's such a great guy. It has a handful of ornaments on it. After seeing the cat try to play with them and Elliot try to use the tree limbs as something to stand up against to reach the ornaments, I decided it's not going to have more ornaments. Too many of mine are too old and irreplaceable so I don't want any to get broke. Especially since we leave next Wednesday for a week and Blackjack is going to be one pissed off cat. I'll be surprised when we return if the tree has any needles on it and if it's still standing up.

I saw this on Shannon's blog, a friend of Steve and Ronda's and thought it was so cute and festive that I copied the idea and decorated our dining light in a very similar fashion. Peanut's first pony ride. Well, not really a ride since he just sat on the pony and the lady took our picture, but I guess it can count as his first pony experience. I can't wait for him to be 3 years or so old so we can start him riding. Yeehaw!

Our development had a Santa celebration going on and they had pony rides for the kids. The lady was so nice to take a few pictures for us. I think Peanut was more interested in our shadows or something than the pony but that will change soon enough.

That's all for now. I'm off to try to get my sick baby into bed so I can follow right after him.

TTFN ~Crystal

Nothing special...

The other day I had a job to do down in Vail, Arizona and on my way back decided to stop at a tool store and get some router bits. So I took a detour and took a road I haven't driven on yet. As I'm driving along, I see airplane tail fins sticking up in the air in the distance, "wth is that?" I wonder, then it hits me, I'm about to pass by the extreme west end of the Davis Monthan Airforce base. They have a rather large airplane graveyard (if the link doesn't do it for you, up in the upper right hand corner, hit they hybrid button) there full of all kinds of military jets and other aircraft. Being the plane freak that I am, I had to stop and take a look. So I parked the truck on the side of the road, and climbed up the 30' embankment to a chain link fence that was plastered with the "U.S. Airforce installation, no tresspassing, violators can be shot", well, I think we will just take our pictures from the safe side of the fence.











They lose something through the chain link fence, and its sad seeing them all covered with whatever it is they use to patch them after they take that part off to keep another plane in the air, but still pretty cool to see up close like that in person. I can't wait for big Mike to get down here so we can go to the Air and Space Museum, thats going to be awesome. They have the planes set up there so you can go right up to them and check them out, they even have an SR-71 Blackbird there, if you don't know what that is, here's a pic from the web for reference:


Yes, it might not be pretty, but it hauls serious ass. In fact, its the fastest plane ever built. 50% faster than the Concorde cause I know you doubted me and thought there was no way it was faster than that thing. This sucker set a speed record once with a flight from L.A. to Washington D.C. total flight time....68 minutes!

Anyway, that's enough geek talk out of me for today. Elliot is growing like a weed! I swear in the last week he has grown an inch, maybe more. His 4th tooth has finally popped through, and if his sleeping schedule last night was any indication, he has another one coming right on its heels.

Business could be "alot" better. Things have really slowed down, stupid holidays! Hopefully they will pick up and soon. I've put off getting a 2nd job for as long as I can, but I think that ship has sailed and its time to seriously start looking for something, which means I'll have to find something at night, or something that starts in the middle of the night and gets me off work by mid afternoon so I can still get jobs done for the business. Should be fun trying to find something like that. Well, its time to get the day started, hope everyone is doing well. Crystal should be posting new pix of Elliot any day now, the camera is ready to explode she has so many photos on there.

Oh, and we will be up in P-Town December 20th thru the 28th, so if you want to get together, call us, email us, send us smoke signals, something.