Valley Fever-ish

Phil has been feeling under the weather for the last week and a half. He's had a constant fever and aches and no energy. He also doesn't want to eat, and for those of you who know Phil, he NEVER loses his appetite. He visited the doctor last week for a valley fever test, which came back negative, but he continues to have the same symptoms. He went back to the doctor today and the doctor took chest x-rays and wants him to come back at the end of the week for more blood work and then another appointment next Tuesday. Apparently, it's common for a person to test negative for valley fever in the early stages, but test positive later after one has had valley fever for a while. The doctor thinks this is probably the case. Please pray for Phil and that he will recover soon.

This whole situation has been tough for me to handle, along with the stresses that the end of the school year brings. I'm certainly counting down the days (17 to be exact).

Pictures

Yesterday morning, as Ryan was playing, I followed him around the house snapping random pictures. Here are some of my favorites.

Hi-EEE!

Hmmm...

Grrr

Looking

Peeking

Berries

Blossoms

Spring Break

My spring break has consisted of construction and painting. Last Friday, Phil's mom and her husband, Don, came down to help us install our flooring. It took the four of us three, twelve-hour, work days to get the flooring in and the baseboards nailed back on. The next project I tackled was painting our entertainment center a rich chocolate brown. (It was a medium toned oak before painting and was too similar to the flooring color.) My painting project took most of the week to complete due to the fact that I painted during Ryan's two-hour nap time each day. We still need to patch and paint the baseboards before the project will truly be complete, but that may need to be tackled during summer vacation. After all this hard work, I'm very leery of painting my kitchen cabinets white, although, that will really finish off the space. Here are pictures of the process below.

Our living room before the demo began.

Down to the carpet pad.

Scraping the glue off the floor and prepping for the underlayment.

Phil laying planks.

Don and Phil continuing to lay the planks.

The floors are in!

The newly painted entertainment center.

The living room.

New Floors

Phil and I have been saving up to put laminate floors into our house. Today we were at Lowes and they had a great closeout deal on these floors so we bought our flooring. I can't wait to see them installed in our home!

On a side note, Ryan did the funniest thing today. He was pretending to drive the car while Phil was unloading the flooring. He saw the cord for my ipod and asked, "dat?" I told him that it was the cord for the ipod and if we plugged it in, we could watch the "chooch" (Thomas the Tank Engine). He looked at me funny, closed his eyes, and touched the cord to his eye, while asking, "eye?" It was too cute!

Spring Break Cannot Come Soon Enough

Reasons I know that spring break is on its way:
1. Children are making "soap-beards" in the restroom at school.
2. Students are chasing each other with tree branches on the playground.
3. My classroom walls are absorbing more information from my teaching than my students are.
4. My house gets more clutter filled by the day and I am unable to keep up with it.
5. I have fallen asleep by 8:30 p.m. on the couch the last 3 nights in a row.

Goldfish Project

Over Christmas vacation, I came up with the idea to redo Ryan's bathroom with a goldfish fabric that I had found this summer. I told my mom my idea and also told her that I would like to make a hooded towel for Ryan that looked like a goldfish. My mom took on the towel project and I sewed the new shower curtain. Now all I need is bath towels that match. Ryan calls his hooded towel his hat.

Morro Bay

This past weekend, we went to Morro Bay and took Ryan to the beach. He adores sand. When he stepped out onto the beach, he froze, looked around to take it in, then laid down and started making sand angels. He picked up fist fulls of sand and let each grain trickle through his fingers. If it were up to Ryan, he would never set foot inside. He loves the outdoors and enjoys getting absolutely filthy. Rocks and dirt are treasures that he likes to share with Mommy and Daddy.
Ryan also picked up several new words while at the beach. He would point to his t-shirt and say, "hawk," which means, "shark." To add to his delight, we took him to the little aquarium in MB where there were little sharks in the tanks. He pointed to every tank and asked to see the,"hawks."

Ryan's other new word that he learned was, "boats," pronounced, "bopes." He loved to stand out on my grandma's balcony and talk about the, "bopes," in the bay.
The weather the whole weekend couldn't have been better. Phil captured this perfect moment.