Daily Recap – nicole.groudasfamily.com

Wicked Weekend

No house work this weekend because we went to NYC for my xmas gift! Ryan got us a hotel and tickets to see Wicked! We left Saturday morning when Mark and Suzanne came over to watch the girls for the weekend (THANK YOU!). Poor Bella of course ended up with a nasty cold but is already doing much better this morning so we missed the worst of it (sorry Grandma!).

We drove down to Poughkeepsie and took the train into the city. I stitched on my travel project (dragons!) on the train rides which was an extra bonus. We had a hotel right on Central Park with a view of the park and we went to see Wicked! I’ve seen Wicked before but it was Ryan’s first time and he really enjoyed it plus our seats were amazing!

Sunday sleeping in was maybe the best part and then I stitched on the train ride back. Driving back from Poughkeepsie was horrible in the snow – stressful in the car with front wheel drive. I missed having all wheel drive for sure but Ryan did all the hard part and I kept my head down and stitched. I ended up finishing up my Patience dragon so I have 9 dragons ready for the dragon quilt – 3 more to go!

Some pictures – more stitching since there was no house work this weekend!

Finished - Patience Dragon - perfect for right now! — Finished – Patience Dragon – perfect for right now!

Halloween and other updates

This is a very late post but generally I like to have my sewing projects on here along with house projects. So I’ll do a quick recap. No house work has been going on, Ryan has been working every free second he has including all weekend every weekend 🙁 This means I’m on Alex duty and with the teething lately (molars!), her naps haven’t always been great so I’ve been focusing on things that are easy to quit when she wakes.

What have we done ? Well first up was Halloween, I made her costume this year, she was a purple owl. She LOVED it. She loved the costume, loved trick-or-treating and just overall had a blast. She walked down and back up the street carrying her bucket and chatting with the neighbors. The idea of picking out candy and then getting to eat some at the end of the night – wow. It was fun.

Alex with her glow wand and bucket of candy when we were all done. It’s impossible to get a still picture of a toddler!

After Halloween Alex and I went down to Aimee and Jason’s for the weekend (Aimee’s birthday) and the kids all got dressed in their costumes. We had a great weekend playing, Alex loved playing with all of Jason’s toys (I got a ton of great xmas gift ideas out of it for Alex 🙂 ).

The last 2 weekends we’ve been home. We started going to myGym on Saturday mornings and Alex loves it. We love it because she’s happy and gets tired out enough for a great Saturday nap 🙂 I need to come up with a Sunday morning activity to do the same! In the afternoons we hit up the park and do some daddy snuggles while he works (usually a xmas movie is on). We started introducing xmas concept to Alex and so far ‘Santa’ and ‘Ho ho ho’ are fun ones.

Alex’s favorite toys right now are trains so we spend a lot of time playing with Thomas and friends 🙂

And this weekend I finally finished the top to Alex’s wall hanging for her bedroom. I set up my sewing room in my diningroom and Alex sat at the table and colored while I cut and ironed. After Alex went to bed I put the top together and I am looking forward to hand quilting it!

Hopefully we’ll have a house update next week, this weekend we plan to tile!

More cabinet updates

This weekend was the first in a while that we were all healthy so it was great! We relaxed, did some shopping and got some work done on the house. Saturday Ryan got all the knobs and pulls installed in the cabinets!

Then I installed the 2 drawers in one base cabinet that didn’t come pre-installed (these drawers were free so had to be installed).

And some features of the cabinets…

double oven and that bottom rack rolls out !

All of the base cabinets (except for sink base and kitchen aid cabinet) have rolling shelves!

On Sunday Ryan hung our maps in the tvroom before Alli’s playdate (we had a couple of mom’s/babies over for alex to play with). It was a very relaxing weekend. Alex started coughing though so I’m wondering if we’re about to get another cold – ugg!

New Car

Ryan picked up his new car today! We’ve been looking for a while because the gas is killing us driving the truck and acura with such long commutes. This will be the commuter car and I get to drive my acura again now!

It’s a 2013 Honda Accord Touring V6. It’s got tons of fun features and looks very nice. It also gets 35 hwy which will be a huge improvement to the acura driving to boston!

Gifts

The nursery is still in disarray because the closet system is not yet in so I’m waiting on final pics of that (plus I want to paint the mural). In the meantime … here are some gifts I wanted to show. First a package arrived for Alexandra from her Gramma Bozik…

And for my first Mother’s Day from Ryan…

A white gold locket so I can carry a picture of Alex with me always.

Yesterday we had a very busy day, with my allergy shots in the morning, walking the dog since we finally had nice weather to do so, then down to Worcester to pick up our stripped doors! Finally a stop at my aunt’s quilt shop and then stitch night. Needless to say we went to bed early last night!

Today we have mother’s group (find out how much Squishy ways – that’s her new nickname), then cleaning the house!

Family Visits

I got the most recent pictures off my camera and thought I would share some pictures from Aimee and Jason’s visit this past weekend:

: Fitz thought Jason was a fun new toy/person to play with and snuggled right up. He was very good with all the grabs and quick movements from little Jason even one really hard ear pull 🙂

: Little Jason opening his birthday gifts Friday night from us. He likes anything he can turn into a drum :)Little Jason opening his birthday gifts Friday night from us. He likes anything he can turn into a drum 🙂

: On Saturday Uncle Mark, Aunt Mo and Hannah stopped by for some quick baby snuggle time.

: Hannah meets Alex!

: Uncle Mark snuggling with Jason.

Some photos of the cousins before little jason had to head home on sunday. Unfortunately Alex wasn't really in the mood 🙂

jason happy — Jason however was a complete ham for me while i rocked alex and took pictures of him playing.

My favorite pic of little Jason the monster 🙂 I have no idea how I caught this one but it was a great face!

And now it’s back to the week, counting down the days until the next weekend. Monday Alex and I drove down to Worcester and dropped off 6 doors to be dipped/stripped (goodbye lead paint!). That includes the 2 doors for the nursery! Plus all the tvroom doors (3) and our closet door for our bedroom. Going to have a lot of doors and windows to paint as soon as the weather is warm enough to keep the windows out for a period of time!

Love me some sleep

So I chose sleep over nursery progress this weekend but that doesn’t mean we didn’t get any progress done. Ryan had a ton of work to do so he wasn’t able to work on the house but he could hang with little Alex while he worked.

Friday night I managed to get everything in the nursery primed (trim) except for the windows which i’ll wait until it’s a bit warmer out to do so they can stay out for a bit. That’s also not dependent on leaving the room empty since the windows can be removed to another room.

So the trim is primed and ready to be lightly sanded for the first coat of paint (today?).

Saturday Alex and I went over to Celebrations with my friends to shop! When we got home Aunt Erica (Tia) came for a visit! We went out to lunch (after miss alex ate first of course), then just chilled at home.

Now it’s sunday and I am hoping to get some painting done once this headache eases up a bit.

sleep — I slept for 5 hours straight last night thanks to this chair!!!!

Last 2 weeks

Ryan was trying to surprise my dad with the nursery progress we made over the last 2 weeks so while I continued to blog I had to keep the posts ‘private’. I have just made them public so feel free to scroll down to find the 4 recent nursery progress posts to see how the progress went.

Easter weekend was a blast – all the family was up, the house was clean, the dogs were good, my nephew was A-dor-a-ble! PLUS Dad and Ryan installed the sub panel in the attic and Sunday Dad worked on electrical while Ryan continued work on the nursery. I’ll post details and pictures later today.

I’m pretty tired, even after relaxing all last night. So all my attention is on work this morning, once I’ve figured out where I ended up Friday and made some progress maybe my brain will be ready to do dual duty and allow me to do things like laundry (and there’s plenty) on breaks. For now – focusing on work!

Missing the rooster?

Nope! But the rooster is gone – I think Fitz misses it, I haven’t cleaned the kennel yet that we kept him in for the last 2 days and Fitz is very interested in the kennel every time he walks by.

Hopefully the rooster is happy in his new home ‘on some farm’. We got a note last Thursday that said the Animal Control guy had picked him up in the morning. I’ve since talked to another neighbor who said that there’s a guy on a nearby road that had a chicken or rooster in his yard (fenced in) and let it loose and claimed it wasn’t his last week. So I’m pretty sure he was getting complaints about the crowing so let it loose – thanks a LOT!

I’m just glad we’ve been having some decently warm weather so the rooster didn’t suffer. Of course I could do without all this rain lately. Luckily Fitz went to daycare yesterday and got tired out so he’s not bugging me for a long walk in the rain today! He’s just giving me ‘the look’ because he’s not in his comfy bed (he’s in my office with a cheap bed instead) 🙂

Last Rooster Post (I hope)

Well we thought we were just about done with this rooster, animal control finally came yesterday and dropped off a trap – problem was it was WAY too small for a rooster, it has however caught 2 squirrels already. So Ryan pulled out Fitz’s unused dog kennel and a blanket, caught it with the help from a neighbor and it spent the night in the kennel. All ready for him to get picked up today I called animal control… and the guy is out sick 🙁

So IF he’s in tomorrow he’ll come get it, in the meanwhile one more day of rooster crowing (now on our porch) and I put out water and some corn for the poor guy.

I’m sure our neighbors are loving this as well and Fitz tried to play with him when we came back in this morning, poor thing went crazy being that close to the dog (I have since pushed the kennel back further from the door). This morning not only did I have Fitz poking me to wake up but I had a rooster crowing – guess what I’m never going to own – a rooster – maybe chickens some day but never a rooster!