T-Ball Tyson

It is hard to beleive, but my little baby boy is playing T-ball. We debated between soccor and t-ball. Due to intense peer pressure, we went with the t-ball and his best friend, Blake.

I don't think I have ever laughed harder in my life, than I did the first few practices I watched. It was hilarious. Kids were running in every direction (besides towards first base) and most of them were doing anything but watching what was going on. Bugs and dirt were common distractors.

Things shaped up as the season progressed, though. I'm not counting on the majors, but there was definitely some improvement. I think there was one game, even, where Ty ran all the bases without having to be reminded. He actually watched the hitters and ran as soon as the ball was hit. I've never been more proud.

My favorite part of the whole thing was Ty's thumbs up. Anytime he looked at us in the stands or at practice, he would get this goofy, toothless smile and give us a big thumbs up. It was super cute.

Below, is his "ready position." I'm not sure why, but he always kept his legs together and then leaned over. Note to self...work on ready position.

Ty turned out to be a pretty good hitter. He didn't hit a grand slam every time, but he was consistently good. The second half of the season, the coach would pitch them three pitches. If they didn't hit it, they got the tee. It was hit and miss whether he hit one of the three pitches, but I think he did more often then not. Here's our Number 2 getting ready to bat:

The season is now over. The last game was Saturday and I just can't say I am all that sad about it. It was fun, but I didn't like being tied down. Two practices and a game a week. Come on now...I can't have that much structure in my life. What am I going to do when he started kindergarten?!!

May I Present...Our Fireplace

Okay...so it might have taken a titch longer than it should have, but the tile around the fireplace is complete! Wahoo! I still don't get the honor of calling it complete due to the lack of mantel. Someday...

Fun With the Bishops (Part 1)

We had a great time with the Bishops here last week. For those of you who do not know...that is my sister and her family from Utah. This is their second annual Spring Break Trip to California. I can't say we had the best weather, but it wasn't as bad as we had anticipated, so we will count ouselves lucky! It is getting late though and this is more blogging than I have done in the last year, so this is going to be brief!

Bon fire on the beach! You're welcome, Stan, for not putting the picture of you when you fell over in your chair! The kids were freezing and asking to go home as soon as the s'mores were over, but I thought it was fun times!

Jake loved trying out the 4WD on the dunes. He didn't even need the shovel!

Kelsie was in rare form this week. I am not sure what has gotten into her, but she was throwing tantrums left and right. Here she is at the park, throwing her flip flops to let everyone know she is mad. What she was mad about, we never did find out!

Hiking out to Oso Flaco. The walk out was great. The beach was ridiculously windy. The kds were crazy enough to go in the water, but once they got out, the wind was whipping the sand against their legs and the fun was all over!

More fun to come when I get another chance to sit down and blog. Really...I will try! Have a great one!

Easter Cuties

As requested...pictures of Kelsie in her Easter Best (and Ty isn't looking to shabby either!) Look at the cute cousins! Kayli let Kelsie borrow her dress for Easter since it is too big for her. Wasn't that generous?! It really was just about the cutest dress I have ever seen. Kelsie LOVED it. She loved looking so pretty for Easter and loved it when people commented on how cute she was.

Some mostly finished pictures...

I hesitate to say "finished" because it seems like nothing is completely finished. There are little touch-ups to do in pretty much every area. We are living in it, though, and I think that deserves some recognition.

Here is kind of a cross shot from the family room, across the ktichen into the Living Room.

Here is the bookshelf. We obviously added the crown moulding, but not so obviously, we also beefed up all the edges and shelves. They used to be pretty skinny, so we ripped them all off and replaced them with some thicker stuff to make it look a little more substantial. What do you think? (I know...you would think I could at least clean off the shelves before taking a picture for my blog, but I don't care and neither should you!)

Look...we even have drapes up in this room! A new room from ceiling to floor. What else can I say?

This is one worth noting...the light fixture in the kitchen. Paula found a light we both loved on Crate and Barrel's website, but it was WAY out of the price range. We thought, "How hard can it be to find something similar for a lot less money?" The answer...a lot harder! Paula spent days and days looking and my head was about to burst after spending a few hours looking. I took a break though and when I came back, this is what Paula had found. Cute, huh?!

Unfortunatly, it took so long to find that we didn't get it up before the Nielsen clan showed up. Sorry Jen and Dave that we had no light in our house while you were visiting. Wasn't it worth the wait though? The only question now is whether we hung it too high. We are morally opposed to hitting our heads on the light, but we may have taken it a little too far. What do you think?

Okay...that is all the house energy I have for the evening. Ask Dal...I am burnt out. In between the Nielsens and the Bishops, I couldn't motivate myself to do anything. Now that Spring Break is over and we are all alone again, I still don't want to finish anything. The only motivation we have is that we have a lot of tools that we need to return to their rightful owners, so we need to get it into gear and finish this baby up. Here we go again...

More work in progress...

I have to say a BIG THANK YOU to all who have helped us on our little project. We couldn't have done it on our own. We had Bishop over here pretty much anytime he wasn't working for a while, Paula has been our interior design consultant every step of the way (yes...we needed a lot of hand holding), Alex helped out with all our electrical stuff, tons of people let us use tools, other friends entertained our kids on the rough days and Laura actually cleaned my house for 4 hours one night...without me...even my bathrooms! We have the best friends in the whole world. My family is amazed whenever they hear what everyone has done for us...I think we almost have some of them convinced to move to Santa Maria!

Now on to the pictures...a little bead board in the kitchen with crown mouldings installed throughout the living areas.

It got a little cold at points throughout so sometimes I had to move my painting inside. How lucky are we that paint doesn't stick to our new floor?!

My litte Dally...all grown up...usong a saw! Dal has been a real trooper...he works all day and then comes home and we work until all hours of the night!

Don't think this wasn't a family affair! Tyson and Kelsie loved to help whenever they got a chance. Thanks to Home Depot, they were dressed to impress and ready to work!

Don't worry...there are more pictures to come. I am just trying to do this in chronological order...kind of!

The Long Awaited Update

Ok...so the house took over our lives for a while and I had NO TIME to blog or do much of anything for that matter. I cannot say that we are done (as much as I wish I could), but we have definitely made some progress. The fact that my sister Jen and her family were coming at the end of March helped push the work along as fast as we were able. I'm not sure what day of the remodel we are on now...lost count after 30!

So let us start with what is not done...the fireplace. Oh the fireplace! This has to be the worst part of the whole project in terms of how much stress it caused. The stress came, not because it was hard to do, but because we couldn't make a decision concerning what to do with it to save out lives. We still have the tiling to do and then comes the hard part...deciding what to do about a mantel. Here is the progress so far:

We start with the lovely pink tile and even more pink grout. Please take note of the lovely brassy gold finish around the fire box and the knotty wood paneling behind!


Say good-bye to the wood paneling and hello to some serious clashing! It really is a good paint color...I promise!


Who knew a can of spray paint could work miracles on a fireplace?! This picture doesn't do justice to all the work that went into this. As much fun as Ty and I had kncoking out the old tile, it left a HUGE hole in the wall when it knocked out all the sheet rock behind it. Dal worked very hard to rebuild it with backerboard (another nightmare you will have to ask me about) in prep for our new tile.

Anyway, not all that exciting because it is not done, but I don't want to spring it all on you at once. You will have to wait and prepare yourselves for the next update when we actually get the tile in .We have made many of the cuts already, though, and plan on making some serious progress this weekend. Cross our fingers!

I'm so HAPPY!!!

Yeah...the floor is finally going in! The original plan was to finish all the painting first and then start the floor, but we ran into a few glitches. The kitchen wall was a mess and needed to be sanded, puttied, sanded and repainted. The Family Room had a few spots too so that still needs a nother coat after a few repairs. Dal also got pretty burned out, so we needed a break from painting. We made sure the hall was done and since the Living Room doesn't have to be painted, we were good to do that side of the house.



Thanks to our friends, the Espinosas, we got all the hall laid and about 1/3 of the Living Room. Wahoo! I can actually envision what it will look like now. It was so exciting A big Thank You to the Espinosas for all their help. Before they got here last night, we had no clue where to even start. Now it looks like it might be possible and we might even get it done before all our visitors at the end of the month!

So Dal actually has tomorrow off work so I think we should be able to make some good progress. We are hoping to get the LIving Room floor done, finish all the painting, knock out the fireplace and maybe do a few other odds and ends. I an taking a tiling class at the Home Depot on Saturday to try to figure out what we are doing with the fireplace. Any suggestions are welcome. Wish us luck!

It's Painting Day!

After much deliberation, we decided to paint the kitchen and Famiyl Room ro match the Living Room...keep it neutral. We taped, primed and painted our little hearts out. This picture shows how we finally convinced Dal to paint the wood wall behind the fireplace. I stand by that decision, but as you can see, we now have to redo the fireplace because that pink tile just doesn't match anymore. Dang!



Bead board will be going up on the lower half of the kitchen wall, so I thought I would leave a little something for whoever redoes the kitchen next time. Precious! When Tyson saw my grafitti in the morning, he was quite upset that he was not represented. The wall looks a little different now with the addition of Tyson's and Kelsie's names

Oh yeah...we painted the same color down the hall...doesn't it look great?

Sorry for the Delay...

Okay...so the whole blogging our progress each day didn't quite work out. Sorry about that. Where did I leave off? We had to plastic all the walls in the house while the ceiling texture was put on and then painted. We hited somebody to texture and Dal and I painted it ourselves. It looks really good. There are a few areas where the paint didn't go on quite as smoothly as we would have liked, but we are okay with it. Please refrain from pointing these spots out when you visit us...we are fully aware of each and every one.

We were so excited to finally take the plastic down. We had to duck underneath it to enter or exit the house, duck as we walked in and out of rooms and it kept me from being able to get into a several of my cupboards. Happy Day that it is down. Now comes the fun part...

Family HOme Evening

Now the fam is waiting for me to join them for FHE "Remodel Style" The kids are hoping this never ends!

Days 2, 3, 4 & 5

I haven't blogged the last couple of days for several reasons
1) I have been DEAD TIRED at the end of the day and haven't felt like it
2) My computer is acting like the family television while ours is in the garage so it hasn't been available much
3) For as much work as we have done, you can't really tell int he pictures so what is the point?

Okay...so we got the carpet padding out, pulled up all the carpet tacks (which Kelsie and Ty hated because it was so loud!) and found a guy to put the texture on for mot too much. All that was accomplished Friday (Day 2).

Day 3: I cleaned up the ceiling in the Family Room by scraping all the little stuff we missed in our original scraping of the popcorn. It was a very dusty job, but I suceeded. Ty and Kelsie grabbed whatever toys they could find to put over their heads so they could stand under whereever I was scraping. Good family fun! We then had a birthday party to go to and it was Valentines Day so we called it a day!



Day 4 was the Sabbath so we took it easy watching movies on the computer. My little family is now getting too big for us all to fit into our queen-sized-bed comfortably. Did you know you can watch Karate Kid online? It is great!

Day 5: The rain comtinued to pour down so Ty had to splash around a little bit outside. He loves to get out the rubber boots and umbrella. what a cutie!

Today we finished cleaning up the ceiling and filled in all the imperfections in preparation for the texture to come. Dal is ready to quit his day job and become a drywaller. The texture won't be happening until Thursday so we are going to tak eit easy for a couple of days...doing little jobs here and there...making our daily trips to Home Depot...you know...the usual!

Day One

Okay...so we hit the ground running on day one of the remodel. We tried to sleep in (Dal woke me up at 6:45 because he couldn't sleep in). We had a nice waffle breakfast and started working at 9:00.

The popcorn came off great and we were pretty much done with the major scraping in the Living Room by 10:00. Not too shabby! Here's Dal at 10:00 this morning:



Next the carpet got hauled out to the side of the house. Good-bye forever!

And finally...at 9:30 tonight this is where we are. Our goal for the day was to scrape all hte ceilings and get all the carpet out. Check! We did it. Day One was a success!



I know it looks like there is still carpet in these pictures, but that is just the foam underneath. We didn't take it all out because we wanted a little cushioning for the other work to come.

Oh yeah...sorry if you tried to call us today...I took down the computer which happens to also be our telephone. It is now back up and running, though, so feel free to call once again.

And I just wanted to say thanks to Shannon for taking the kids to the library and park today. They loved it. Kelsie kept telling me all afternoon that she got to go to the park with "kinzie." For those of you wondering what they did the rest of the day...they were banished to the garage to watch movies all day. Tyson has been looking forward to this since we started planning this remodel. I wonder how long that excitement will last for him. Kelsie is already over that.

I am dead tired and need to go to sleep now. Bring on Day Two!

The Before Pictures

So I started to take before pictures and somehow got distracted. So here are pictures of the Living Room once we got the furniture taken out and before we started any of the fun stuff. The Family Room looks just the same...same nasty carpet (probably worse), same popcorn ceiling, not same paint, etc.

Here goes nothing...

A New House for the Rigbys!

Okay...so we don't really get a new house, but we are fixing this one up. Starting tomorrow, we are changing a few things around the place. (I guess the fact that our house is now worth next to nothing so we will not be going anywhere anytime soon as we originally thought has finally motivated us to make some home improvements!)

It all started with our nasty carpet. I have wanted to replace it pretty much since we moved in almost five years ago. (I will post pictures of its nastiness later) We decided that since we have small children who believe food tastes better off the floor than from a bowl, new carpet was never an option. Thus we are extending the Pergo from the kitchen into the living room, family room and down the hall. Since we have to clear the house out to pull up the carpet, we figured we might as well scrape off the oh-so-trendy popcorn ceiling while we are at it. And of course, once the popcorn is gone, I am finally going to be able to have the crown molding I have always wanted. Nobody in their right mind would put up crown molding without replacing the old mini-sized base boards that are original to our 50-year-old house. And while we are at it, there are a few rooms that could use a fresh coat of paint. You see how it goes! Who knows how many more projects will be added to the list before the couches come back into the house.

You may be thinking, "Why is Tiffany rambling on about all this in so much detail?" Because it is my blog and I can write what I want to! Just kidding. I just wanted to warn you that I would be offline for who knows how long. I know I don't blog all that much so you probably won't even notice my absence for the next few weeks, but I thought it polite to mention it anyway. So with that...I must go move all my furniture out of the house. Wish us luck (The before and after pictures will be forthcoming) If I find somewhere else in the thouse to set up the computer, I might even get around to posting some action shots of the process so you can all feel bad that you're not here helping us!