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By kilax, September 5, 2016 9:23 am

I’m not sure if I am pooped from my Saturday long run,

moving back upstairs Saturday,

or my whirlwind Sunday trip to Iowa for my nephew’s birthday party (including LOTS of time in the bounce house),

but I sure am happy it’s a holiday!!!

The move on Saturday went well! Data was excited to assist:

Anne and Terry came over to help, (yay, so thankful!), and our new mattresses were delivered!

I’ll post “finished” pictures tomorrow!

Since we completed the move on Saturday, I was able to make a day trip to Iowa on Sunday for my nephew’s 8th birthday, and to see my dad’s mom, whose 80th is today!

It was such a treat to see them all!

And to have a lazy, lazy day after such an exhausting weekend!

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By kilax, September 3, 2016 6:44 am

(part ii!)

Lucky me, I never have to set an alarm clock to wake up for my weekend long run (or anything else, any day of the week), because Data is kind enough to make sure I always get out of bed.

Thanks so much for having my back, Data!

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By kilax, September 2, 2016 6:53 am

1. Moving back upstairs! Getting our new mattresses! Hanging up artwork!
2. Both of my grandmas turning 80! And maybe (hopefully!) seeing them this month.
   
   Grandma Pete (Mom’s mom), me and Grandma Tiger (Dad’s mom)
3. Skamp!
   
   Skamp 2015!
4. Teaching fitness boxing again.
5. Getting hot chai lattes at Starbucks.
6. Socktember – it’s the month to start learning to knit socks! Actually, I have two other projects that kind of got bumped in front of the socks. Maybe I will still have time to try socks though! It’s really time to start knitting holiday gifts… is it bad I’ve been listening to some holiday music already?! And that it started in late August?!
7. Whatever house project Steven and I start next.
8. Having our final house inspection (for the FHA 203k streamlined work) and getting that off our shoulders!
9. Double dates with friends!
10. Eating healthier than we did in August.

What’s on your list?

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By kilax, September 1, 2016 6:26 am

Happy nine year wedding anniversary to Steven!

Last year we spent the evening of our wedding anniversary packing up the bookshelves in our office (and we went out for dinner). It was the first place we started to pack up to get the townhome ready to put on the market.

Now, a year later, we’ve gone through two moves AND LOTS of home renovations (at both the townhome and our forever home). It’s been a busy year! And it’s been a stressful year that could have really “rocked the boat,” but it actually made our relationship stronger, because we’ve had the same goal, and have been working together to achieve it. It feels good to work so hard on what is best for us.

And that’s one of the great reassurances about being in a partnership – that the other person always has your back, and your best interest in mind. That they’re there for you to lean on and take the lead (from time to time, or a lot of the time, in my instance!). That their strengths complement your weaknesses, or, if it’s a weakness you both have, you’ll work on getting better, together.

I feel very grateful to have such a driven, take charge partner, with a “I can figure anything out” attitude. Those are NOT my strong qualities, but it doesn’t matter because my partner has them and I have 100% confidence in him.

Awww.

(By the way, those boxes we packed up on our anniversary last year are STILL in storage. Ha! Everything else we’ve brought to the house, we’ve unpacked, but our books, a few kitchen things, and a lot of garage stuff remain in storage. Winter project?!)

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By kilax, August 25, 2016 8:05 am

• Today is my snister’s birthday! I wish I could celebrate with her, in person! Happy Birthday, snis!

Gosh, I think this is the last picture (from Nick and Alyssa’s wedding in June) I have of the two of us! I should have taken one when I saw her on my birthday in July!

• My magnets came! And now that they are here I thought of a few more I’d like to make. Ha.

• We have a sensor installed on a tree midway through our driveway that alerts us when cars (and deer, ha) are coming or going down the driveway, by playing a song in the house (and by alerting Steven on his phone). Of course, this tends to go off whenever I am on a conference call! One time someone asked if that was our doorbell. Ha, no. We just have a knocker on our door – add that to the list of house “to do” items – install doorbell.

• When we were leaving the house Tuesday night, Steven slowed down the car and pointed in to the woods – a calico cat was sitting on a log in our yard! We’ve never seen him before. I hope he comes back!

Can you find him?

• We were leaving on Tuesday to GET GROCERIES!!! Which we hadn’t been able to do since mid July! We haven’t had time to shop or cook much since we started our second floor ceiling project on August 3, so we’ve been getting take out and eating very basic meals. And, as you can probably guess, I feel like crap from all this crappy eating. Here’s to hoping we can eat better and cook a bit more now!

Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 106

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By kilax, August 22, 2016 1:22 pm

Two Data posts in one day! Winning!

Part of our dining room ceiling is currently demolished, and we have plastic separating that part of the dining room from the kitchen, but you can still see in to the space. Contractors are here today, and one of the first things they did was put insulation between the floor joists over the dining room. Yay, progress… that someone else did!

So I am in the kitchen making our sandwiches for lunch, and happen to look over at the dining room plastic, and see a huge piece of insulation come down… with Data riding on top of it! What the what?!

He lands on the floor, making only a small thud noise, and calmly walks away.*

View from the kitchen

View from the living room

Meanwhile, I am in the kitchen with my mouth hanging open, saying to Steven, “Did you see that?! Data just floated down from the second floor on a piece of insulation!!!”

Steven’s like “So he went skydiving?”

Ha ha, I guess so. And I guess R38 insulation is thick enough for a 12-pound cat to fall 8’6″ and be okay.

And apparently, skydiving makes you VERY hungry:

And look at this!!!! CEILINGS! IN MY BEDROOM!!!!

*How did he get up there? Well, you access that part of the attic through a door in our bedroom that he pried open. Little sh*t. He’s been sneaking in there this whole project!

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By kilax, August 22, 2016 6:57 am

Us too, Data. Us, too.

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By kilax, August 18, 2016 6:27 am

• I hit a 700 day streak practicing Spanish on DuoLingo! I am practicing stuff I’ve already learned though, since I went through the entire Spanish course late 2014/early 2015. It would be awesome if they added more vocabulary and lessons. And if I practiced with a Spanish speaker!

• My running uniform might be changing! I needed to replace the Champion’s Women’s Absolute Bike Shorts that I use to run in, but couldn’t find my size, so I ordered the Champion Women’s Absolute Fusion Shorts with SmoothTec™ Waistband to try. They’re the same inseam length as the other pair (7 inches), but a little bit different material (these are 87% Polyester/13% spandex vs. the old ones being 87% Spandex/13% Nylon), and they have a bit thicker waist band (the inside of it leaves funny marks on my skin, ha). The new shorts have been working for short runs and I am anxious to try them on a longer one! This is not sponsored, I bought these with my own money.

• The ducks have stopped visiting. Wah! I haven’t seen them in a week. The pond must be too low for their interest. Sadness. But that’s okay because we have a new friend, Burt (see first picture, below). My mom found Burt when she was out cutting hosta leaves to put in these pretty flowers she picked up for us when she went to run errands. Steven does NOT like spiders. When I showed Burt to him, he jumped back and said “it’s time to get a shot gun.” Ha ha.  (Well, I am laughing – he may be serious.)

• Besides helping with house projects, cooking for us, and surprising us with flowers, my mom also helped me out by wrapping some gifts for me. I am horrible at wrapping gifts, which is funny, because that is kind of what our Tuesday night house project was (more on that tomorrow).

Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 105

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By kilax, August 17, 2016 7:45 am

Working all day and night (and trying to fit in short workouts) is getting to me. I’m exhausted by the end of the day, every emotion is 10x more intense than it should be, and I’m incoherent and out of it.

So all that being said, I’m super impressed that I realized my shirt was on inside out on the train ride in to the office, and not on the way home. Ha!

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By kilax, August 16, 2016 6:33 am

When Mica and Harrison visited and we went to the North Dunes Nature Preserve* we noticed the beach had a ton of smooth, flat rocks (from the tide hitting them up against the barrier along the shore?).

I immediately told my mom about it, because I know she and her mom have a “thing” for flat rocks. So when Mom was out here this weekend to help with the house stuff, I said “It’s too bad we won’t have time for you to go check out all those flat rocks!”

Hold up, that is not what she had in mind! “Let’s just get up early and go before we start work.” Okay, then!

And that is what we did (um, we left about forty-five minutes late though – but we were there and back in fifty minutes!). We drove to the beach (fifteen minutes from my house), found some cool rocks, took some pics,

and then drove back and got right to work! Zoom, zoom, zoom!

It was nice to take a short amount of time to do something fun on Saturday (a bike ride with my dad) and Sunday (finding rocks with mom). I haven’t had much downtime lately. And it sucks when you have people come help you and you don’t even get to catch up with them because you’re working so hard. So yeah – it was a nice treat.

Mom said she plans to leave the rocks in a basket to let the grandkids play with/try to stack because “it is relaxing and fun.” Then after awhile she’ll put them in a jar and label them with the date and location where she got them. She was impressed by Lake Michigan’s size and the sound of the waves!

And I am sure I’ll be taking my mom and her mom out there, if they visit together in the early winter as they sometimes do!

*which I erroneously called Illinois Beach State Park in my blog post – not too big of a deal – they are RIGHT next to each other