My New Nephew :)

He's here! He was excited to come meet us all too :) My sister wasn't due until Sept 14, but Brayden Michael Kelly decided to arrive Sept 10th at 6:59pm, weighing 6 pounds 8 ounces and measuring 19 inches long. He is such a cutie pie. Here are his pictures and I'll let his cuteness speak for itself.

Hi, my name is Brayden. I'm new here!

Oh, I don't know if I like it out here yet!

Proud Papa

Proud (but oh so tired) Mama.

Getting to meet Great Grandma Faye for the first time!

¹³People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. ¹⁴When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. ¹⁵I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." ¹⁶And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.

Mark 10: 13-16

Chrissy and Adam's Wedding

In August I road tripped it down to Sebastopol, CA for a dear friend's wedding. On our way we stayed in a gross hotel, and endured the craziest winding road ever created on the face of the planet. I barely was able to keep breakfast down... ugh. I get sick just thinking back to it. But when we made it to Sebastopol Jessica and I wasted no time in checking out the local wineries. It was so much fun and we learned a lot about wine and each bought a bottle to bring home with us. Then we took mom and dad to the brewery before we all freshened up to go to the Rehersal dinner at The Union Hotel.

The next day we took of to the beach and lazed around soaking up some sun before the wedding that evening. Devoto Gardens (Chrissy's home) was gorgeous! The bride and groom had smiles all night long and everyone had a GREAT time enjoying good music and good food!


On the trip down. I just don't feel these pictures do this road justice. It is a cruel road and an unusual kind of punishment when you are just trying to make it to a friend's wedding! Can you tell I'm still not quite over the torture of it? I've never been so carsick in my life! These are two different pictures, they just look very similar as that is what the whole road looked like.

























Jess and I enjoying the tour of some wineries in the California sunshine!


























Some of the views we enjoyed as we relaxed on the beach pre-wedding.


























Now the good stuff. Here are just a few but some of my favorites from the wedding :)

Home Sweet Home

This is another blog where it is mostly pictures. They say a picture is worth 1000 words, so I will spare you most of mine this time:)






Another picture from of the front of the house, but I have added a few more plants out there now.


Picture of the family/living room.


I am standing in the same spot from the picture before for this one of the front entry way, but just angled the other direction from the family room.


Again, I have just rotated my position slightly to get a picture of the kitchen. It's all pretty much one big open space in my little home. It's nice and cozy.

Here is the view of the dining room and the open area I took the previous pictures from.


Bathroom in the hallway.


Master bedroom.


Master bath. Not my dream master bath, but I'm not complaining either!


The little green room. It's like a re-creation of my childhood bedroom. Ha ha, I'm sure my guests will love it! Soon it can be a baby's room for my little nephew that will be here soon (I'm sure he'll appreciate the girlie pastels)! I can't wait to meet him and get to babysit and have him over to play:)

One corner of the blue room... aka the office/overflow area housing lots of pictures to hang, or maybe not if I decide I don't want them all up on the walls.


Bill paying area. I have been spending much time here lately.


Small corner of the patio and back yard.


Looking back and the house and the patio along with the door to the garage.



Other end of the house and yard.


Last angle of the back yard with the setting sun.

Painting

Well initially I was telling people that I didn't think I'd need to paint the interior of the house at all. It turns out the more I was there, the more the tan neutral colors were boring me and the house seemed to dark and bland. So I went from not thinking I wanted to paint, to painting every room in the house a new color except for the 2 bathrooms and I didn't need to paint the ceilings. It's much brighter in there now and I must thank my Mom and Grandma for their good eye for color and helping me pick out such beautiful colors. Dad, Uncle Mike and Steve all helped to make it happen. Mom cleaned my kitchen for me and Laura kept us all well fed. It was definitely a group effort! Here are a few snapshots of the new colors and the work it took to get there:)

Here is Steve using creative means to be able to reach the edges at the top of the wall.


A nice snap shot of random junk that is collecting at the house. This is also the new color up on the walls that replaced a light colored tan and a more chocolate color of brown. The paint changes color depending on the light and the shadows... it can look tan, green or almost yellow but it works and I like it!



Me concentrating hard on not dripping paint on the woodwork or floor. But as you can see, I always manage to end up with lots of paint on ME rather than on the wall.



I thought Steve was on to something, so later in the day I found myself up on top of the fridge in order to do some touch up work.


Here is a little bit of an overall view of our work. I love color! SOOOO much better than tan.

Well that is it for now. Maybe next weekend or the week after I will actually move into the house! Lots of long hours getting the house cleaned up and painted so far, but I think I will be happy later that I took the time to do it all. Monday we'll hopefully get the carpets clean and then I can move on to being the happy home owner and slow down on how much of my income I donate to Home Depot on the weekend. We'll see. That's it until my next adventure! Stay tuned:)

My First Home!

WELCOME HOME TO ME! This is me posing outside my front door:) After two days of ownership, I have already met neighbors from 5 surrounding houses and been invited to the neighborhood July 4th block party. They are a friendly bunch.

As of June 26, 2009 I officially became a home owner! It's still taking a little getting used to, but after a long weekend of hard work, I'm starting to actually believe the house is mine. These aren't the best pictures, but they give you an idea of what things look like. I was busy so I didn't take much time to take pictures...



The front yard is torn up because I have a new sewer now and the roof should look remarkable as it is brand new as well. Someone living here prior to me thought it was a brilliant idea to put two layers of composite roofing on top of the original wood shake roof. As a result, my inspection showed up lots of rot. But that is now fixed and wonderfully new.

The kitchen with various moving supplies laying around.


Living room and fireplace with a pile of window coverings left behind I decided I didn't want to leave hanging. The whole interior is going to get a fresh coat of paint coming soon. That will be fun next weekend! And hopefully cleaning carpets too:)


Picture of the extra bathroom.


Back corner of one side of the yard. This is a before picture. It looks much better after I spent all afternoon tackling the weeds back there, and I won!


Back side of the house. That fencing created a mini doggie run for the previous owners. Since I have no dog and no purpose to close off that part of the yard, I tore down the fence and it opened things up quite a bit. And I discovered lots of little stepping stones overgrown by grass. So I dug those up to be placed elsewhere someday where they can be seen and used.



Here is the garage in all it's glory. Saturday morning was spent cleaning the house and garage (which had roofing materials ALL OVER the place). I tackled the interior while Steve tackled the garage and I was glad to be inside the whole time with an excuse to stay out of the mess that was there before. In the afternoon, we cleared out Steve's storage unit and moved it into my garage...the pile has already shrunk in size to about half what is seen here. Now with garbage, recycling and yard debris cans all stuffed full, I am eagerly awaiting Thursday garbage day to clear all that out and fill them all back up again. And home ownership begins.

So far it's been a lot of hard work but fun making whatever decisions I want to about the place. So long to apartment life:)