School soon...

We got the letters from the school saying which teachers the girls have. The neighbor girl came running over and told Meikiina that she has to get the mail because the school letters came. They were both very excited as they are in the same room again. Meikiina told me that she is not nearly as nervous as she was about school now that she knows she and Peyton have the same teacher. I'm so glad too - it makes Meikiina's first day of school so much easier on both of us.

Brynlee got the same teacher that Meikiina had for kindergarten. I'm so happy about that! She is an excellent teacher. Gregg was asking Brynlee what is she going to do, telling her that Meikiina was so good in school and never got in trouble, and if Brynlee does one of her temper tantrums her teacher will wonder why is she doing that. Brynlee flung her arms up and said, "I guess I'll just have to stop (having temper tantrums) now."

Happy Birthday to Me!!

Today is my birthday and the big beautiful pink flower above is a flower my precious Meikiina picked out for me for my birthday. Isn't it beautiful!? (The roses are from a prior special day.) They also picked out a very special birthday card. How blessed I am to be able to spend my birthday with such special people - my family. I also got text messages, phone calls, and family page birthday messages from various family members - even Dad :-)

I had a good day today. We primed in our basement from before 8 a.m. this morning until after 10:30 p.m. We also worked til about midnight last night. We are not as fast as some others, but I feel like we got a good days worth of work in today. We have a good share of it done now.

Here's Meikiina priming. She was a great help and did LOTS of priming.

Gregg's working on the ceiling.

Here's me - cutting in all the edges

And where's Brynlee you ask. Why, she's taking the pictures, of course :-)

Here's the laundry room all primed.

Here's the difference between primed and unprimed.

Swimming Lessons & You Guessed It ... More Basement

The girls are in swimming lessons and both are loving it. All summer long (short) they have been looking forward to swimming lessons. Emm is in level 2 and Bee is in level 1. I started Bee in preschool, but the teacher said she should be moved to level 1 so we did that and she is doing great. She gets a little frantic when she gets water in her face, but she rubs it off and keeps on going. It was darker on the side where Emm was so most of the pictures I took of her did not turn out very well. It would be fun to have them do two sessions in a summer, but it is always sooooo busy that I just don't know how I would do that. Bee is now counting the days til she gets to go on the big slide on the last day of lessons. She's so excited about that.

Emm waiting for her turn. You can see the slide in the background that the girls get to go down.


All done with lessons for the day :-)

Bee's class.

Kick off from the wall and float backwards...

...aaaaagghhhhh!! ... get this water out of my face!!


So relaxing ;-)



I'll get that ring!!

Basement...
We had the ceiling textured today. We had a knock down ceiling done. You can't see really good in the picture, but you can kind of get the idea. I am taking Friday off from work and we should be able to start putting the primer on by then for sure...and hopefully get the whole thing totally primed by the end of the weekend. Then the finishing work starts. Yaaayyy!

... and more Basement

Here are some more pictures of the progression of our basement.

Family room sheetrocked, but not taped.

Bedroom and linen closet sheetrocked, not taped.

Yaayy! Bedroom and linen closet taped.

My favorite - girls being silly!

What's behind door #...wait, there aren't any doors.

...more Basement ... and a Bird

Dave came and finished the electrical as far as he can go. He will come back once more after the painting is done and finish everything up. We had him do a light in the bedroom closet, 4 can lights and support and box for a fan in both the bedroom and family room. He also did wiring for in floor heat for the bathroom and for a future fireplace.

On Monday and Tuesday Eddy came back and finished the plumbing as far as he can go. He also put in the gas line for the future fire place.

They both did beautiful work.

On Friday the sheetrock was delivered.

On Saturday the sheetrockers came and did a lot of work. They got the whole ceiling done and a good share of the walls finished. On Monday Al will come back and finish a lot of the sheetrocking. They will try to be done by Tuesday afternoon so the tapers can come in and start taping. Here's the storage room.

Here's Brynlee standing in the utility room. On the right is a bedroom and on the left is the bathroom.

Here's Brynlee with her new school haircut in the soon to be bedroom. The bedroom is all sheetrocked.

Last for today, but certainly not least. We are now caretakers of a bird. The girls' cousin recently got a bird for his birthday and now for reasons due to the economy, his family will be in another country for at least several months. He could not take his bird with him so he asked if we could care for his bird until he comes back. Brynlee has always been so fascinated by birds. She so has wanted to catch a bird and have it for a pet. Many times she has tried to sneak up to a bird to see if she can catch it. She cannot understand why we can't do that. They knew this and thought maybe she and Meikiina would like to care for the bird. We all adore him. He was pretty scared for a while after he came, but he is calming down and getting used to all of us. I'm sure that when this birdy goes back we will be very sad, but I'm pretty sure that we will be owners of more birds in the future.

Birthdays

We had a fun time yesterday at a birthday party in a park for two little turning 5 year olds.



Wow! Someone gave me m&m's in one of my birthday presents. I love m&m's. (See Baby B above on the right eyeing the m&m's.)

I'm so cute - I'm sure no one will notice that I'm eating my sister's birthday treats.

One of the favorite places at the park was the merry-go-round. I saw Brynlee standing on it so I went and told her she needs to sit down or she might fall off and get hurt. Later she came running to me and told me she fell off, and she told me, "But I'm ok. See all my parts are still here - two legs, two arms, I'm all here." Here's Brynlee brushing herself off after one of the times she fell.

Falling off a little old merry-go-round is not gonna stop me. Brynlee climbing back on the merry-go round ready for more.

Another favorite place...

Now how do I get water out of here and into my cup down there on the ground?

Aaaahhh!! Refreshing!

Basement and Busyness...

Finally, we've been able to start getting work done on our basement. We had our basement framed about a year and a half ago. Gregg's sister and his dad gave that to us for a Christmas present. We so appreciated that, but haven't had anything done since then.

A couple weeks ago, brother Pete called and said he remembered that we had talked about having our basement done and would we like to start on it. So we started working with him and it is going amazingly quickly. We have been really feeling like we could use the extra room and we are so excited.

On July 14th Pete came over with the Dave electrician and we talked about what we want done and where. On July 22nd(?) Eddie the plumber came to see what he will be doing. On July 29th Nate the heating man came to see what he needs to do.

Then the actual work started. On July 30th Pete picked up our shower that we had bought and came and framed in the shower and did a little more framing that needed to be done. We really, really appreciated that. I was more than a bit nervous about getting the shower into the house. It was 33 3/4" deep and our patio door is 33 3/4" wide. Pete said it was quite the project to get it into the house, but they did get it in. We were not home, but I will tell more about that in a bit. I am so happy that they did get it in because I really like this shower and didn't really want any of the other showers that would have fit. So a big, huge thank you to Pete for doing that for us.


On July 31st we had a carpet man come to show us some carpet samples and give us a quote on carpet. We might not have enough money left to do the carpet, but if we do we wanted to know about how much it would be. Nate also came and did all the heating duct work and left us the covers so that when everything is done we can put those on. There is one heating duct that had to be moved so Nate will have to come back to move that and then the heating will be done.
Today, August 1st, Dave came and did most of the electrical. He will come back tomorrow to finish up what he can do. Then he will have to come back again to do the final finishing after the sheet rocking is done. Eddie the plumber will be coming back on Tuesday or Wednesday this week to do the plumbing and put in a gas line for a future fireplace. The sheet rockers will come on Saturday, August 8th and the tapers will maybe be coming August 12th through the 15th.

We have also been busy with all kinds of other things in the last few days.

On Wednesday the 29th, Auntie Jennifer came and picked up the girls and took them to the Radison Hotel in Bloomington by the Mall of America. This is where the Water Park of America is. She spent many hours with them in the water park and the girls had a blast. Jennifer had her Korean sister-in-law and baby niece who just moved to Minnesota, over to the hotel. Being Asian too, she wanted to meet Meikiina & Brynlee. So they all spent the morning playing in the water park together on Thursday. Jennifer asked Gregg and me if we wanted to spend the night there Thursday night, so we did. We went over to Ikea and Mall of America and wandered around a bit. It was fun and relaxing. I did feel guilty that we weren't here when the shower was coming into the house, but it was good to be given the gift of a relaxing evening/night. Jennifer is so good to us.

Today we went to see 'YuLong: The Jade Dragon' by Circus Juventas. It was great. It was from 1:00 to 4:30 and we could have stayed way longer. The whole last hour Meikiina was asking, "It's not done yet, is it?" I think she got hungry about half way through and started acting out, but I had a snack for her and when she ate that, she was right as rain again all the way through the rest of the event. Brynlee enjoyed it too, but was a little scared, I think, a couple of times.

Circus Juventas is a youth performing arts circus. YuLong: The Jade Dragon, is a story of a Chinese kingdom under attack and Hua Mulan (a young woman) dresses as a soldier to take her father's place in the army that was drafted to protect the kindom. It was spectacular - the colors, the costumes, the acrobatics... We often get to see several of the Chinese members of Circus Juventas at our other Chinese functions and our favorite is always the little boy. He's about 5 now and we've been watching him since he was about 2 years old. He's very good already and so, sooooo cute! We got to see him here and he was as cute as ever.