Evenhouse Christmas

Last weekend we had our Evenhouse family Christmas celebration and gift exchange.  I made really amazing cinnamon rolls, and we had those and a breakfast casserole in the morning, and then commenced to opening presents.  Yay!

Kendall woke up with a temp of 103 degrees.  This is how she looked most of the day.  When Carrie would give her some tylenol, she would pep up for a bit, but then after a couple hours would get really tired again.

Garion definitely enjoyed Christmas more this year!

My Grandma is sick right now, so she had Mom wrap up all her "precious trinkets" that we have admired through the years, and gave them to us for Christmas.  This is one of her music boxes.

I am totally innocent...

After breakfast we had a quick game of Catch Phrase.

We gave Hannah a book she hadn't read before...she is not so sure about it.

This is when Kendall was feeling a little better.

Olivia

Rhea shows off her presents.

Niece Sleepover!

A couple weeks ago I had my annual niece sleepover--I have 1 or 2 nieces over every December, mostly to help me bake Christmas cookies or treats.  This year both Abby and Emily came over.  They did help make one batch of cinnamon roll cookies, but then lost interest in baking (which mean I ended up making two more batches of cookies the next day after they went home).  Instead we played wii, and watched "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."  That was an experience in itself, as Emily spent the entire movie talking at the movie and at the characters in the movie...with a British accent.

Scott missed out on all the fun.  He had been in Portland, OR, for the 2 weeks prior to this, and got home around 3am.  He had been sick the entire last week he was in Portland...in fact, he was sick last year when he went to Portland for work as well!  It has now been declared that he will never go back to Portland again!  Scott woke up Saturday morning throwing up, so didn't get to spend much quality time with the nieces.

Abby cannot believe that I don't have any treats in my Santa treat ornament!

Emily picked up my penny whistle shortly after arriving at my house, and played it the whole weekend.  She is pretty good!

Thanksgiving 2011

This year for Thanksgiving we celebrated with the Evenhouse side of the family on Thanksgiving Day.  Then on Friday Scott and I did all of our Christmas shopping--I hate shopping on Black Friday, but it is usually the only time we can go together.  We did not do any crazy things like getting up at 3am or anything...we left home at 8:30am, got some stuff here in Oskaloosa, and then made it to Des Moines to get the rest of our shopping done.  We were not able to visit with the Platt side of the family this year--one of Scott's brothers had to work over the holiday, one has been in the hospital a lot and stayed home, and Scott left on Sunday for a 2 week work trip to Portland, OR.

Part of my contribution: kolaches, Dutch apple pie, and chai almond cookies.  The cookies were a new recipe, and even though I cooked them shorter than the recipe said, they were hard as rocks and dry as a bone...they went in the garbage.

We all went to church at Third on Thanksgiving morning...and our family took up an entire row!

 We ate at my sister's house, because they have a big enough room that all of us can sit around the table.  I was not able to get a shot of everyone in one picture, even from the very top of the stairs, so it is split between two pictures this year.

All the grandkids from youngest to oldest.

 In the afternoon we all walked over to visit Grandma Evenhouse at the Comfort House and eat dessert.  We treasure every moment we can have with Grandma!  She is the expert kolache maker...apparently I have the thickness right, but did not put in enough apricot filling this year.  I find it funny when she tells me that, since I think I have seen her cook a grand total of 6 different items in my entire life...but she is the kolache expert....

Scott always manages to charm the nieces and nephews by feeding them.  Kendall apparently likes my apple pie!

We saw this door mat during our shopping expedition, and I thought it would nice in front of our door.  

Here is Scott playing with our new toy.  We decided to buy a new digital SLR camera this year--we had the money in the budget, and the camera will be nice when we have our baby!  Right now we're working on figuring out all of the things we can do with it.

Deck

Yesterday Dad planned to put up a new deck at their house...the old one was rotting through, and they had torn it down.  Tim and Carrie (and Kendall) came down to help as well.  Since we haven't seen them much lately, Scott and I decided we felt well enough (we have both been sick all week!) to just go for lunch.  We ended up staying all afternoon and eating supper there as well.  It was beautiful outside, and I felt well enough and had energy to help with the deck, and Scott spent most of the day inside resting, as he was still a little under the weather.

Dad and a friend put together the base in the morning, and made sure it was all ready to go and level.  Then Dad and Tim cut the wood for the cross-braces.

Olivia decided to spend the day at Grandma's house, and even wanted to help out.  She is hammering!

Kendall wanted in on the fun!

I helped drill in the metal braces to hold the decking, and then spent a little time under the deck screwing in all the decking plans.  However, squatting under a 4 foot deck is not an easy position for a pregnant person to maintain for an extended period of time, so I gave that task over to my sister. 

Dad and I made sure the spacing was correct, and Tim and Carrie screwed it all together.  

Scott hung out with Kendall, and the Cutler nieces and nephews were in and out all day...the benefit of living across the backyard from Grandma and Grandpa.

Tim and Dad used the circular saw to even out all the edges, then they tapped in the plastic edges.  Done!  Dad's friend is going to build steps for them, and then they have to put up railings, but this looks pretty good for one day's work!

Leaves and Snow

This post is mostly about leaves and snow, but I wanted to add a couple gratuitous shots of myself as well.   Since I'm usually behind the camera.

This is what my hair looks like after I get it cut and the stylist spends 35 minutes blow drying it and curling it with a curling iron.  I like it!  But I am not willing to spend 35 minutes doing my hair every day...

This is the state of my baby bump...about 1 1/2 weeks ago.  I think it's gotten bigger since then.

 Last weekend our friend Josiah came over for the day to help Scott rake up leaves.  Josiah goes to our church and lives a couple blocks away, and he has volunteered to help a number of times, so we took him up on his offer (we also paid him a little bit and fed him lunch and dinner).  I would like to note that only about HALF the leaves had fallen from the trees at that point.  They borrowed a truck, and made 6 full loads to the dump site.  They worked from about 10am until about 6pm.  It was a Friday, so I was inside doing my regular job most of the day, and then had volleyball practice.

This is the same section of yard as in the previous picture, after the leaves were raked.

This morning we had our first snow of the season!  I think some other areas of Iowa had a little more snow, but it is pretty windy, and it either all melted or blew away before I got outside to take pictures.  Guess I won't be making a snow man today...but I believe the first snow officially means it's time to listen exclusively to Christmas music, and maybe even get out the decorations!  

This is the same patch of yard that was clear of leaves in an earlier picture.  The wind is blowing, and the rest of the leaves are falling.  Having a big yard with mature trees is nice, but the raking is never-ending.

In other news, I have gotten a cold for the 2nd time since I became pregnant.  When you are pregnant, you cannot take any cold medicine, so I am suffering through it.  This one started with a sore throat, 5 days of coughing, tightness in my chest, and yesterday moved into my sinuses as well.  I don't seem to be getting much better.  And I gave it to Scott.

Platt family updates

I apologize on the lack of posts in the last month or so.  Scott and I have both been extremely busy, and really, nothing exciting or picture-worthy has happened.  Here's a rundown.

1. I am the assistant volleyball coach at William Penn University in Oskaloosa.  I enjoy it, and the JV team is really wonderful.  But, it means that I go to practice every afternoon when we aren't playing, and I spend a lot of time in the gym and on the bus going to games.  The tournaments are all Friday/Saturday, so I end up being gone quite a bit.
2. I am now working part-time for the Iowa Region, and mostly working from home.  This allows me to coach, and I will stay part-time when volleyball season ends in preparation for having the baby!
3. Scott is also working a lot.  He has been training a newer worker to inspect food manufacturers, and spent the last two weeks on the road staying in hotels.  Since I was gone both weekends for volleyball/work, we didn't see much of each other for a couple weeks!  He also often ends up finishing up paperwork and answering emails in the evenings and on his days off right now.
4. I am still pregnant!  I'm at 17 weeks now (as of tomorrow), and am starting to show.  My first trimester was lousy...I felt like crap most of the time, threw up every day for about 3 weeks, and wondered why anyone would ever be pregnant more than once!  The last month or so has been better...only a couple bouts of morning sickness, and feeling much better.  I am still incredibly tired.  I am not used to lacking energy to do the things I want or need to do.  I get home from volleyball practice, sit down, and can't move for the rest of the night.  I would like to be able to spend more time in the kitchen cooking, help clean the house, and even get a room ready for the baby, but I just don't have the energy right now.  Volleyball season will end some time in November (our last regular season match is Nov. 3, and then it is single elimination from there), and I think I will have more time to enjoy life then.
5. Scott and I are going to Hilton Head, SC, with my parents and Jacob Vos over Christmas.  We loved being in Charleston last year, and Jake also spent some time in SC.  My parents have time share, and could get a really good deal on a condo in Hilton Head for a week, so we decided to join them.  We are driving down, but I think it will be a relaxing week, and there even will be things for someone who is 6 months pregnant to do!
6. Scott's brother is having surgery this Friday.  They will be removing the rest of his gall bladder, part of his liver, and one of his native kidneys (he has had 3 kidney transplants, and they leave the non-working kidneys in, but one of them needs to come out at this point).  Please pray for him to heal quickly, and that the doctors will have success!
7. My Grandma Evenhouse has been pretty sick with a debilitating disease that she has chosen not to treat.  She is 91, has lived a long life, and is not at a point where she would do well under any sort of chemo or radiation.  After her major stroke 11 years ago I prayed that she would still be around when I got married.  Now I am praying that she will still be around to meet her new great-grandson or  great-granddaughter.  I bought her a new shirt for Christmas, and I am going to give it to her early so she can have sometime new to wear.
8. We will be having Thanksgiving dinner with the Evenhouse family, and I am already planning out a menu.  I love holiday meals with family.

Laundry Room--Final Product!

We are not pretty much finished with the laundry room!  We might hang up a couple decorative items, and possibly put a curtain over the storage area and some valances on the windows, but as of now everything is back in the room and looking a hundred million times better than it looked before.

We put up some inexpensive trim around the windows and the door.  It was "pre-painted," but after installing we decided to slap on a quick coat of white paint to cover the nail holes and finger prints.  For some reason I don't have a picture of the completed trim on the doorway, but believe me, it looks good!  Nice to not be able to see the edges of the wood paneling and the ugly wallpaper that is beneath it.

We also put a metal trim on the stairs.  Since we are lacking in tools (and tool storage space), we borrowed a mitre box and hand sawed all the window trim and stair trim.  It took us a couple evenings to finish...with a power saw, it would have taken much shorter.  Maybe that will be a good Christmas present to ourselves...

We installed some handy tool holders in the stairwell.

And we put back in the cupboard, now painted white.  It's looking good!

Scott asked me last night what our next house project is going to be.  I said, "get a room ready for the baby!"  Yes, that's right, we are going to have a baby in April!  So our next job is to clean all the "junk" out of the "junk room," turn that into the guest bedroom, and change the 2nd bedroom into a baby room.  It is currently covered in pink rose wallpaper...since we plan to sell this house eventually and buy a bigger house, we are tentatively planning to leave the wallpaper up and just live with it.  If Baby Platt is a boy, I apologize in advance.

Laundry Room Part 4

We made good progress on the laundry room this weekend.  I made the trip to Branson with the volleyball team, and Scott worked on the floor prepping for new tile.  He ripped up the old linoleum (which was so crappy it came right up!):

 Then he put primer down on the wood to seal and waterproof it.

 Today my parents came over to help with the floor.  Dad and Scott did laundry room duty (not room for more than 2 people working at a time), and Mom and I worked to clean some stuff out of our store room, go through a bunch of my old stuff that I never quite organized and sorted when we got married and I moved in, and put some stuff in the storage shed.

We left the washing machine in the room because it is heavy, but we took off the door and moved the dryer outside while working.

Here they are putting down tile!  Scott did say that while he was putting down the two pieces in front of him, Dad did pretty much the whole rest of the floor...Dad is speedy!  And Scott did some other clean-up work and misc. jobs in the process too.  :)

The floor is done!

We also put down trim along the floor...our favorite trim for bathrooms/kitchens/utility rooms: self-adhesive plastic trim.  It comes in a roll, and you just bend the bottom a little bit, pull off the paper, and stick it on!

During this week we will put the trim up around the windows and doors, finish the trim along the top of the steps, and put all the stuff back in the room, and we will be done!

Laundry Room Part 3...and counting

This past weekend I had a volleyball tournament in Cedar Rapids Friday and Saturday (we are now 2-2), but fortunately we were home by 3 on Saturday!  When I arrived at home, Scott had already mowed the lawn and did some other chores around the house, and was working on cutting our piece of wood paneling that we finally bought (paid more to get it from a local place in town, where they would cut it into two pieces so it fit into the car).  We had to set up our outdoor mobile work station, and again used the circular saw we borrowed from my sister last year and have stored in our house since.  Some day maybe we'll have a house with a shop and a tool area.

Way to work the man tools, Scott!

The piece is an ok fit...at this point, we are just happy to have paneling on the wall!

Once the paint dried, it matched perfectly!  We also nailed in pieces of paneling along the bottom of the wall going down the basement stairs, and those are blue now as well.  

We borrowed a mitre box to cut the trim for the windows and door, and plan to work on that when we have a little time here and there.  Dad has us written on his calendar for this weekend--we will be ripping up flooring on Sunday afternoon, and putting down the new stuff on Monday!

I am the assistant volleyball coach at William Penn University here in Oskaloosa this fall.  It is an NAIA school, and I had worked with the head coach before with club and HP stuff, so when he needed an assistant coach for this year (someone from the area who has coaching ability but doesn't have to rely on the assistant coaching pay as their living wage...), it worked out well for me to take the job!  We have some great players, and should have a good season!  We're coming into the conference as underdogs, based on the number of seniors that graduated.  I don't think they took into consideration some of the players that transferred into Penn this year, so we should be a surprise to everyone!

This coming weekend I am heading down to Branson, MO, to coach at a tournament there.  Scott will probably be inspecting at an event in Conesville, IA.  This is not one of his favorite places--the town holds a number of biker rallies with "older" men and women running around without shirts on.  The event this weekend is called Thunder in The Sand...more commonly known by the acronym T.I.T.S.  Classy.