Conversations with LMS

Friday night was our ward Christmas party.

Mr. M came home from work, we ate a quick dinner, then headed to the church.

Since we didn't have a chance to talk much during dinner Mr. M and I were talking about what had happened during the day. LMS kept asking us to turn up the radio and stop talking because she wanted to listen to the Christmas music playing.

As we pulled into the parking lot, she said "do what this song says mommy and daddy".

We stopped talking and heard "Silent Night" playing.

:)

at the ward activity

Forced down time

I had a nasty cold the last two weeks and it really knocked me out. I've had to force myself not to run around doing my usual activities. 10 years of feeling like crap got me in the habit of getting stuff done, even when I wasn't feeling good. A week of not feeling good and several more days of feeling horrible made me realize I have to stop and take it easy.

This is not easy for me to do: Christmas is rapidly approaching, I have church responsibilities (our RS Christmas activity was Tuesday night and the ward activity was Friday night), there is so much I "need" to be doing.

Late Tuesday morning I made the call to one of my counselors and told her I was too sick to go to our RS Christmas Get-To-Know-You activity (bringing together sisters from 3 wards means we had to plan an activity for December, even though we didn't have much time to do so).  I felt especially bad about calling in sick since my other counselor and my secretary were both out sick on Sunday (and I should have been too). But I felt so much better after making that call- just getting rid of the stress. I'm very grateful I have great counselors who took care of everything so I didn't have to worry about it (they're feeling better, at least).  It was also a good exercise in letting go and not being a control freak, like I tend to be.

I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday laying on the couch, catching up on some tv shows. I also got to organize all my bookmarked webpages and update my recipes in Plan to Eat, which I've been meaning to do for awhile now.

This morning I managed to go for a short run, which went really well. My knee didn't hurt (the physical therapy is helping!) and I didn't cough up a lung, despite the cold temps. I was really surprised that my throat and lungs reacted as well as they did. I'm encouraged at my prospects for the half marathon (3 weeks from this morning!).

Now that I'm finally feeling better, I'm actually being quite productive- I'll have some projects to share soon.

Messy squirrels

I've mentioned before that we have lots of oak trees on our property, and therefore we also have lots of squirrels. Several of the squirrels like sitting on the porch rail to eat the acorns.

The favored spot:

(notice the newly cleaned and stained wood)

The squirrels sure are messy though:

And I think they're fattening up for winter. The debris they leave is increasing every day.

Do you have messy critters around?

Decorated Front Door

Not too long ago I saw a super-cute front door here, and once I accepted that I was done working on the porch and door till spring, I created my own version.

Cheri used a bright red wreath from Target, but I was afraid it would clash too much with the blue door, so I bought the natural version (on sale!) and a star tree topper. After removing the spring thing from the bottom, I carefully wedged the star into the wreath, hung it on a wreath hanger, and hung that on the front door.

To finish off the look, I cut the phrase (from Matthew 2:2) with my Silhouette and stuck it to the door. I usually buy my vinyl from ExpressionsVinyl.com, but if they don't have what I'm looking for I'll buy from SilhouetteAmerica.com. When I did our Happy Camper shirts half the vinyl came from Expressions and half from Silhouette because of color availability and price.

I also installed our flag pole and hung Christmas lights.

I love it!

My upcoming half marathon

won't be quite what I hoped.

I had hoped for a decent time after training properly for it.

Unfortunately, I hurt my knee before I even got a chance to start my official training plan. I finally started physical therapy last week and my physical therapist is confident I can complete the race.

Last week I was able to do some running and walking without too many problems, but this week I've got a nasty cold and can barely keep from hacking up a lung, let alone spend time on the treadmill.

With the race three and a half weeks away, I guess I'm going with the "better to under-train than over-train" school of thought. My goal is to not get picked up for going too slow- if you can't keep up a certain pace, they won't let you finish.

New life for a tired front door

  Here's our front door. The natural wood color just doesn't go with the rest of the house. It stands out, and not in a good way.

If you look closer you can see that not only does the door not match the rest of the house, but the varnish is worn off and the wood is not in great shape.

 Can you see the fuzzing of the exposed wood fibers? Wood is not supposed to do that. Apparently the previous owners were a little too enthusiastic with the powerwasher.

One of the projects on our list of things to do before it got too cold was to make the door look a lot nicer.

The first thing I did was sand all the fuzzies off. So much better! 

Then I primed all that exposed wood.

I had originally planned on painting the side window panels a dark blue/black to match the shutters. Once I primed it though, I really liked the white look and changed my plan. I also realized that board under the door needs to be primed and painted as well. Not sure how I missed that one...

I painted the door blue. I LOVE the color, but I'm not convinced it works with the slightly pinkish siding. I'm leaving it for now, though.  

Then I painted the side panels white, and since I had the paint out I went ahead and painted the columns and the rest of the wood trim on the porch.  The rails are vinyl, but the columns are wood. I'm thinking the previous owners did a quick and dirty fix on the porch railings before putting the house on the market. I was only able to do one coat of paint before the cold weather moved in for good. I kept hoping the weather would warm up enough for me to get a second coat on, but it never did, so I just peeled off my frog tape and put out my Christmas decorations.

In the process of painting the columns, I pulled off the navy trim pieces. For some odd reason, woodpeckers LOVE the navy wood trim and pecked holes in two of the columns, one of them repeatedly. I bought some PVC trim (maybe the woodpeckers won't like it?) and will try out some plastic fusion spray paint on it before attaching the trim to the columns in the spring.

I also stained the decking after Mr M powerwashed it.

And sometime this winter, if I have nothing else to do (hah!), I'll bring in the porch swing and paint it.

Before:

After:

What do you think of the door color?

Conversations with LMS

Little Miss Sunshine was doing her usual "delay fish" routine tonight. After another trip downstairs to pee (which she has to do downstairs, not upstairs), she slowly headed back upstairs.

After a minute, I said, "get in bed".

We heard her say "uuuhhh" from her spot on the stairs.

As she finished climbing the stairs she asked, "Mommy, how do you know these things?"

"Because mommies just know these things".

Hee hee. Little does she know that I did the very same thing when I was young. Amazing how we think our parents don't notice anything....