Thursday, June 30, 2016

Guests

Beginning with the visit of Josh's mom we were inundated with guests. It was so foreign to us, as we'd been married almost 7 years and had rarely had visitors. That was on account of living across the country, and also being free of children, making it easier for us to travel. We were excited to have friends and family visit, but were also a little stressed since we were in the process of moving/renovating, and our house was chaotic. The plus side of having people come was the motivation it gave Josh and I to get as much done as we possibly could. Since we had our friends Scott and Tara coming to stay with us for the whole month of July we needed to make the basement more live-able, so our next big reno project was the guest bedroom. It was cold and dark. 



We had to add and patch drywall in places and then paint. We put down carpet tiles and added baseboard, caulked and painted that. Then added the all important door. (You kind of need one for a bedroom.) All done in about two days. We were pretty proud. There was still no light in the bedroom, but Josh ran the electricity and installed one just a few months ago. Our unlucky guests had to deal with lamps during their stay...and giant slugs and spiders, but that's gross so lets not talk about it. I found a free burn basket on craigslist, sewed a bag for it from scrap fabric and used it as a temporary laundry hamper. (Now it's a plant stand in our dining room.) We also bought a new wardrobe off craigslist to replace the dilapidated one, and I've added a few more things to the walls to make it more cozy, but I'm too lazy to take new pics, so here are the old ones. We're really happy about it and I love that I have some old brick somewhere in the house. I love old brick. :) And there's another project down. Tada!



Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Camping

After the month long bathroom renovation/moving our stuff to the house my parents and Tyson drove out to visit during Josh's vacation week, which just so happened to start the day we officially moved in. It was a tad bit crazy. Since the pipes in the house all looked like this in the beginning...

(That's rust.) Josh had decided to redo all the plumbing in the house in one go. That meant the kitchen sink had to be torn apart. Luckily after getting the plumbing back up and running, and the week before my family came out, Josh's mom came out to help us clean and organize. She was heaven sent. Without her I don't know when I would have gotten to cleaning and our kitchen wouldn't have been livable.  


Luckily the day after my family showed up we got out of there anyway. After a month of hard nonstop work we were excited for a break. And it was awesome. we headed out to the Olympic Peninsula and pitched our tents in a campground with an insane view of Lake Quinalt. 


We had a blast exploring near camp, and playing games.









Some of us (the crazy ones) did some swimming in the freezing lake. And always at night for some reason.





Poor Josh had been working SO hard. We're pretty lucky to have him.


We met some funny critters that stuck with me and became inspiration for baby boy's nursery.


Have you seen the Hoh Rainforest? No, I mean the Hooooohhhhh Rainforest. You should. It's quite amazing. We spent a large part of our time singing the Jurassic park theme song and were really tempted to ask the park rangers where you go to see the T-Rex.









Camping while pregnant is not advised. Unless you have a really comfy pad to sleep on. I remember getting almost zero sleep the first two nights until I complained enough that my parents remembered they had some extra bleacher pads in their car and I stole them to pad my hips.


On the way home we swung by La Push and hiked down to second beach. It was the first time we'd really seen the sun and it was beautiful.

I think my mom saw the whole peninsula through binoculars. ;) She's a birder and had fun trying to spot some she'd never seen before.





We also collected a mountain of driftwood. I wanted to collect enough to make a mobile for the nursery, but we all couldn't stop picking pieces up. Driftwood is cool, but probably the coolest piece was this ring found by my mom. It was an awesome trip and a much needed break from the house. We can't wait for our next camp out!