My heart just melted.

January means redecorating because there sure isn't much else to do!

I've already lamented about January. The weather here can't decide between warm and frigid, wet and dry. The outdoors are far too volatile, so we spend most of our time inside. Frankie spends about three-quarters of his days at home riding around on his truck:


We're also mostly ignoring the outdoors for the inside of our house. Since Christmas just passed, we had a bit of cash, and boy, did we ever spend it! Behold our new couch:


The fireplace visible below still screams desperately, "refinish me!" But alas, it is not high on the list. We've also got to put some sort of leather guard on that couch or Bridget is going to rip it all up with her little puggy claws. She's not allowed on it right now, and she might never get those permissions.


Our 'retro metro' backsplash is finished! It looks fantastic with our cabinets and countertops (Silestone Stellar Snow, for those who wonder.) Now to put on the cabinet hardware and finish the trim (ahem, Juston.) :)


The guest bath still isn't complete, but we did buy a deeply-discounted wine cabinet that doubles as towel storage, pictured to the right of the tub.


My Christmas present, the one and only change to the outside of the house:



January's been gray, but certainly not dull. I've completed two freelance jobs and my classes are already a bit overwhelming - I have some very smart students that are going to put me through the ringer if I'm not careful! (This is probably a good thing.) We've closed on our house, been to the zoo a few times, played with Abe & Jay, and I've started working out with one of my neighbors and she's going to whip me into shape! Oh, and preschool registration is this Saturday at 9 AM. I'll be in line starting at 5 AM, and I'm sure I won't be alone. We're going with the hippies-in-training program at The Children's Garden, that is, if we can get him in. It's first come, first served. Keep your fingers crossed!

Save your $10.

For all of the haters out there, here's a little video about the complete lack of originality in this year's snooze-fest, failed epic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

The Curious Case of Forrest Gump - watch more funny videos

Thirteen Oscar nominations? Seriously?

Underwear and Outerwear

Today while I was getting ready to go to the gym, Frankie slipped out of my room (he usually likes to hang out within close visual range of myself.) When I left the room and went to find him, I was greeted by this:

Yes. He had stolen my bra and placed it on the dog. I don't normally post pictures of my underwear on the internet, but he was just so darn pleased with himself (and it's pretty standard underwear, anyway.) I even made myself late for my aerobics class because I had to snap some pictures.



And Grandma Chrys, we're finally getting good use out of your knitted hats because brrrrr it's cold outside!

Hardcore Excitement!

This is all about a whole bunch of nothing.
Frankie loves cooking. He constantly asks to bake things. Here we are, in action, making the most delectable of all food delicacies....pigs in a blanket.


Bridget in foreground, child in background playing with the Play-doh.

House Before & After

I created a photo album on Facebook of the house from before, during, and after the renovations. It's not complete, but if you're curious, you can head over and check out the way things are shaping up around here.

Atlanta preschools - let the madness begin.

Have any of you navigated the wild, wild world of preschools in intown Atlanta? Wow. I've done two tours and I'm scheduled for two more. Most people start their children in preschool at the age of one in order to guarantee them a spot when they get older. I've found two with openings, but one of them wants $600 up front to enroll Frankie, along with tuition. Oh, and it's a co-op, so it requires parent work days. Um, I get paid to do that now. I'm not against parental involvement in the schools, but for that price, you can hire a classroom assistant and I can go work at home on my other job. (Plus I only want him in school three half-days a week, so it's not like I won't be spending time with him anymore.) But if I don't enroll him now, I run the risk of not getting him in anywhere for the fall. One other preschool (with no openings right now, but probably about five new spaces in the fall for the three-year-old class) usually has a long line on registration morning and is first-come, first served. I only know people that have been wait listed there, but most of them also get their kids into the school after waiting awhile. Oh, and you register in January - nine months in advance. Does anyone else think all of this is a bit crazy? Has anyone else successfully registered their kid in an affordable, in-town preschool that isn't five days a week and pretentious as hell? And been happy with the result?

Big Time Splurge!

I bought one of these today. :) Am I officially an adult now?


P.S. I'm sure we'll update you when it arrives, in approximately two to three weeks.

Excited Face

This is self-explanatory. You had to be there.

Fri + Sat

For the sake of blogging, I'm going to narrow the weekend down to Friday starting at noon and ending Saturday evening. This weekend, we became homeowners twice over as we *finally* closed on our loan for the West End house! Thanks, Ken, for all of your help up to this point. And a note to anyone who wants to get a loan out there - make sure you have at least 20% down or no one will give you the time of day. It's a sad market reality and it took us awhile to finally accept that we'd have to part with almost two times the cash we initially wanted to put down. Now we're broke and it's time to start building up the savings, once again, so we can go out in a few years and get another house to renovate, or in Juston's mind, an industrial building to convert into a loft.

This week, I looked at my house and decided I was ready to be an adult and actually have some furniture in my living room. Thanks to some Christmas disbursements, we're in the market for a couch. I've had no luck with Craigslist thus far, but I did find a great pair of vintage chairs that I bought on Friday.


After the chair buying frenzy, we went to the zoo and met up with our friends for some animal gazin'. Frankie absolutely *loves* going to the zoo and asks me several times a day to go and see the animals. (On a sidenote, if we're related to you, he might call you up sometime to talk about the animals. And if you live here and want to go to the zoo, we have a pass so give me a call!) No trip to the zoo is complete without a ride on the train and carousel (which means we make many incomplete trips to the zoo.) This time, I splurged.


William, Anna, and Frankie.


Frankie picked out the peacock.


Since I haven't found any used couches that are both cheap and attractive, we're probably going to splurge on a new one. It will be a first for both of us and be yet one more piece of furniture tying us down. We went to Ikea to check out their options on Friday night, but Frankie was so done. We ended up testing out the beds, since our plan is to get Frankie a low-to-the-ground double bed this year so that we can kick him out of his room and give his bed to visitors (initially we wanted a sofa bed, but we think this is a more practical option.) He was ready to nap on the spot.


I think he's ready for the big boy bed - we haven't been very quick to get him out of his crib.


On Saturday, Juston went all "Weekend Warrior" and put up our tile backsplash. We got this fantastic glass tile from Susan Jablon Mosaics and once it's done, it's going to make the kitchen really classy. It's definitely a 'mod' look and I love it. Go, Juston, go!


We'll have more photos after grouting and sealing later this week. It was a busy weekend and we even passed up the chance to go to a movie last night because we were exhausted. On to more work during the week!

The Speedway

This is a video of Juston and Frankie cruising through the house and it probably lacks appeal for those not directly related to us. Chrys, Juston says to make sure that Ken sees it because he's supposed to shake his head in disdain at his grown son's behavior.

On a more positive note...

Yes! The pedestals are finally out of my living room and into my laundry room! And as an added bonus, the pedestals make the washer and dryer tall enough so that Frankie can't randomly push buttons and dry my clothes four times in a row.

How do you deal?

The past few days I've been struggling with what I call the 'January slump.' Christmas is over, there's no vacation in sight, it's all back to business and work, and the weather is gross, at least in Atlanta where it's been in the 60s and constantly rainy for several days. What do you do to get through this time of year? Last year it wasn't as much of an issue because we went to Hawaii in January, but this year? Bleccchhh. I'm trying to keep my eyes on the prize: a couple of good movies are coming out soon, the Monster Truck Jam is this weekend (yep, I said that), but I'm struggling. I need some motivation; I'm pretty sure I can't just wallow in Super Mario Galaxy and ignore the real world much longer. How do you deal?

P.S. The rest of the pictures are coming up soon. When I get to it.
P.S.S I'm not complaining about the warm weather (you snowed in people, you) - it's more like a warm, yucky, humid and foggy soup here, which is just kinda gross in general. If it's going to be unseasonably warm, at least we should be able to go out and play!

Juston in Happy Land

Juston's favorite place in the whole world - Hot Dog on a Stick. Yeah. I don't get the fascination either. He went there three times while we were in Utah.


And for fun, nice snowsuit!

Cute Toddlers + Heavy Machinery = Bliss

I know I'm doing the holidays all out of order and that I haven't even done Christmas day yet, but that's just the way things are this year. I've gotten way too spoiled not working or doing anything all that productive since getting home and I've spent too much time playing Super Mario Galaxy. I also apologize to those of you who've seen these photos on Facebook - Juston's ahead of me on uploading things to the internet.

Frankie absolutely loved Grandpa's heavy machinery. Ken owns a construction business and keeps all of his diggers and plows at the farm, so there were lots of things to attract Frankie's attention. Every morning he would wake up and first thing he would say, "I wanna ride the digger now, please!" Luckily it snowed every day, so there was plenty to plow and many opportunities to ride machines. Frankie still asks for diggers now that we're back in Atlanta - he sure misses Grandma and Grandpa's farm!
Getting ready to go outside...



Waiting impatiently...


Let the fun begin!

Happy Boxing Day!

Juston is fired from making our annual Christmas card since it didn't happen this year. And since I'm not going to hire anyone else to make one, there won't be one. So instead of one day late season's cheer, check out the pictures of our trip - so far.

Okay, so this one is from our house, pooped from all of the pre-Christmas madness.


In the airport, snacking on some pizza during our layover in Phoenix.


While helping my brother-in-law pick out gifts for my sister-in-law, Frankie chose to entertain himself by playing hide-and-seek in the ladies's pants.


That quickly devolved into Juston dropping quarters into the 'fun bus' and other assorted rides to entertain Frankie and his cousin Charlianne just outside of the store.


It's snowed - a lot - since we arrived a week ago. One afternoon, we took Frankie out in full-on snow regalia to ride the 4-wheelers and pet Grandpa's horses.


You'll notice the timidity, but he is actually *touching* the horse.


We built our very own Frosty the Snowman! And it was cold outside, can ya tell?


Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Much love to all, XOXO.

Hair surprise

Don't worry mom, it's not permanent. But you must admit, it's festive!

Forgotten Photos

Jumps with See-yer (that's what Frankie calls his bud.)

Festivities - Church Par-tay

It's been a long day of traveling, so don't expect much in the banter department. Although I'm in Utah and it's a reasonable 10:45 PM, my body aches because it thinks it's almost 1 AM and we got up at 5:30 AM to catch our flight. So take it for what it is.

Last Saturday night was our Ward Christmas Party. For those of you not in the know, Mormons have congregations called 'wards' which are composed of people within a certain geographical area. Our ward happens to include the inner city of Atlanta, along with a couple of southern suburbs and up north a bit into midtown. It's an interesting mix. Every year we have a Christmas party that is a sort of potluck/talent show/Santa fest and this year was no exception. The food was good (although it's always kind of a 'pray for the loaves and fishes miracle' at our potlucks), the talent was adequate (I decided to branch out and sing something out of character - probably not a good idea, but hey, a couple of the kids were diggin' it), and Santa was a South American man. There must've been something to that, because Frankie actually liked this Santa and now asks for Santa all the time. I think we may have some trouble weaning him off of Santa and Frosty once the holidays are over and I can't take it anymore.

Eating and staving off hunger as well as the momarazzi (or poparazzi, in this case. Yes, a lame joke.)


Santa, bring Frankie a fire engine!


Eating the requisite candy cane.





I hope that everyone out there has a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays or Winter Solstice or whatever you choose to celebrate. I'll be huddled up inside, trying to avoid the snow (I walked out of the airport and remembered why I moved south - it's too cold!) I'll also be enjoying the family, eating too much and loving every minute of it, last-minute shopping, trying to hit a couple of movies while we have lots of willing babysitters, and reading my semi-trashy novels.

Oh and I have a hair surprise once I take a photo. Don't stay up at night wondering, but it was a sudden and unexpected change that I allowed yesterday in the stylist's chair. That's your teaser.

Festivities - Botanical Gardens Style

Last weekend, we thought it would be a good idea to take Frankie to the 'reindog parade' at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. It was a good idea, but as usual, the execution was a bit sloppy. Frankie was acting quite the grump, especially when it came to Santa Claus. We managed to walk through the gates just as Santa opened up for daily business, so we walked right up and tried to plop Frankie on the big man's lap. Santa thought Frankie was a girl (surfer-punk hair starting to backfire?) and Frankie wanted nothing to do with him. I ended up in all but one photograph, as if my presence would somehow coax cooperation from the tot.




Trying to get away from Daddy, amongst the poinsettias.


The 'reindog parade' was actually a costume contest for pooches dressed in Christmas finery. This little wiener dog was our favorite.


Frankie had a bit of fun with the dog agility course.




After making Frankie suffer through dogs on parade, we took him to the children's garden, where we watched a kid poke his eye out somehow on the slide. Of course, Frankie then spent the next thirty minutes going down said danger slide and came up with both eyes in tact at the end. Whew!



After all of that fun, we were all beat and needed some food. After a delicious lunch at Dakota Blue (a restaurant that wisely provides half-broken toys for children to throw while waiting for the meal,) we all took two-plus-hour naps. Success!