7 Quick Takes Friday, no. 54

It's been a long time since I last did a 7 Quick Takes. Sometimes I am just not sure what to write about. 7 pithy things that don't need a whole blog post. Pithy is not something I'm usually very good at! LOL!! But we've been pretty busy lately, so I figured I could share what we've been up to.

~1~

First, since we moved, we've been working through a list of things to do on the house. First priority was to replace the kitchen sink. Unfortunately this is not as easy as it sounds. So we looked into replacing a section of the granite counter top so we could get a sink that better fit our needs, was more functional, would better support a faucet so it didn't drip constantly, and was an under-mount sink. More bad news: the granite person we are using is having a hard time finding a supplier for that particular granite. We haven't ruled out the possibility yet, but Hubby is starting to look at over-mount sinks instead. I don't think we have the budget to completely replace all the granite throughout the kitchen.

~2~

The garage door was a mess. OLD!! It was splitting in places, bowed out in others, didn't have the safety eyes on the bottom, often took several attempts to get it to go up or down, and sometimes the motor stopped working when the door was going down and it would just fall straight to the ground. Real safe, right? We got it replaced this week!! Woohoo!! It's so quiet now! And well insulated. And it has the outside keypad. I love it already, like I never thought I'd love a garage door.

~3~

Hubby has been busy in the yard. He removed this plastic, fake wire stuff that was wrapped around the fence (presumably to keep the former owner's dog inside the horse-type fence), he removed the old, rusty wiring that surrounded the dilapidated garden and trashed some other wire things laying in the garden area, and he is contemplating how best to get rid of the pond in the backyard. He's also considering getting rid of the entire fence and planting trees or bushes along the back of the property line instead. This will be a very long term project.

~4~

On a more fun note, we've been doing a lot too. We started off last weekend by attending a Married Couples Supper Club at our church on Friday evening. It was great because we ran into two couples we are good friends with and spent the whole evening chatting with them. So I never got to meet anyone new, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless. There was also free childcare during the dinner, so the boys got to play in the nursery with a bunch of new toys and new children. I think they had a great time. They got distracted by the trains when we first got there, so Hubby and I made a quick getaway. Hubby went in to pick them up at the end of the night while I was wrapping up conversation with a friend. When I got up to the main floor of the church he was just coming out of the nursery with the boys. From down the hallway Peter saw me, shouted "Mommy!" and came running all the way down to meet me with a huge smile on his face!! Such a sweet boy!

~5~

Saturday I took the boys to get new shoes and they did really well. They cried the last time we did this when they were getting their feet measured by a stranger. But this time they did really well. But wow, shoes are expensive!! That evening after dinner, we drove over to the Greek festival. It's not a huge festival and we got there between some of the entertainment groups (dancing groups, I think) so there wasn't much to really do. It was held at a nearby elementary school, so the boys had fun playing on the playground while Hubby got himself a Greek coffee and bought us some desserts to enjoy once the boys went to bed. The food is really the only reason we go to the Greek Festival.

~6~

Sunday was a busy day with Mass in the morning and then Touch a Truck in the afternoon. I posted about this yesterday, so go check out my post on our adventures at this event complete with pictures. 

~7~

Our special plans for Labor Day weekend include buying a new fridge. We're not crazy about the one that came with the house, but we figured we could live with it. After struggling to get everything we needed into a side-by-side and having an ice explosion with the supposedly convenient external ice dispenser, we decided we'd be better off with a new fridge. Hubby has done all the research and has a plan. I'm not even sure he needs me to go with him to buy it, although I would like to see it first but I'm pretty sure his mind is made up. Which is fine with me. We'll also be visiting Hubby's family on Monday for the traditional family gathering of the year. I'm sure it'll be a lovely visit.

What are your plans for the long weekend? Hope you get to spend some time with family. 

Thanks to Jen for hosting these 7 Quick Takes. Check out her blog for many more!

Random Updates for a Wednesday

Random Picture for a Random Post

I have a post in my head that I still need to flesh out a bit more. My goal is to get it down for a Thursday post.

Let's call that update number one.

More fun update: I'm 20 weeks today!!! Half way into the pregnancy! Does that mean my baby is half-baked? Just kidding!! I'm anxious to find out how things are going but I have another week to wait before the next ultrasound. Otherwise, still feeling good, no major issues.

We successfully closed on our new house on Monday. Yay! Before we can move in though we are having a few things done. Monday afternoon I met someone from a carpet place at the house so he could measure our whole second floor. We should have new carpet installed on the stairway and throughout the second story by early next week. I also got hold of a friend who owns a carpet cleaning company with her husband and he's coming over this afternoon to clean the carpet in the basement.

Hubby also contacted a granite person who is coming out next Monday to check out our interesting sink situation and see if he can match up the granite. The current sink is massive (and ugly) so we know the hole cut in the granite is too big to do anything to it. We have pretty much decided that the whole section of granite there needs to be replaced. We'll see what the guy says on Monday. When we talked to him last week he agreed with us just based on how we described it. I think our experience in remodeling a kitchen in our previous house has come in handy with talking to a professional about this situation. We actually know what we're talking about.

The moving has also begun. Hubby took a load of stuff over to the house tonight. Once we get the basement carpets cleaned I'm ready to start bringing anything and everything we can over. The basement will be the best place to stack things for now and we have tons of storage space down there.

My parents are coming up next week to help out. I'm looking forward to it! They'll be here for my ultrasound as well which will be fun. Er mostly fun. It's not really a "fun" ultrasound, but usually they take some time to take a quick look at the baby before we do the "not-so-fun" ultrasound.

The boys have no clue what is going on. Everything we have done so far has been while they are sleeping or at school. We took them to the house on Sunday for the final walk through, but for them it was just a big empty house to run around in. Next week we'll pick them up from school and take them to the new house and they'll be rather confused. I'm curious how they are going to react. They were only 8 or 9 months old the last time we did this.

Final bit of randomness, I have a presentation to do on Thursday at an employee retreat for the entire library system I work for. Not sure how many people that is, but I'm guessing it's around 200?? Anyway, my talk is one of ten "lightening" talks. We get five minutes and no more. They will actually have someone timing the talks and they have a gong they'll hit when your time is up. I thought it would be easy since mine was going to be mostly pictures with just a few words from me. But I started practicing it today. Not easy! I set a timer on my iPod Touch and during the first run through the timer went off with 4-5 slides still to go. I had to cut it down more than I thought. I think I have it down now to around 4:30 to 4:45. In order to do that I have to stick to my script and not get distracted. I'm used to presenting, but not in such a short span of time. I always write out a script or a semblance of a script but I always practice with the idea that I can go off script at times or as needed. Can't do that this time, at all!!

Thursday should be interesting!

I really need to take more pictures. I really need a new iPod that comes with a camera. My current one is old ... no camera. If you don't mind, leave me a comment explaining to Hubby all the benefits of having an iPod with a camera feature on it. (Neither of us have smartphones nor do we have plans to get them; also remember there will be a new baby arriving in December, you don't want to have to wait until we get out of the hospital for pictures, do you?)

That's all the randomness for today. You can thank Jen's "7 posts in 7 days" challenge for bringing on this randomness.