Christmas eve 2011

It's Christmas eve. All is pretty quiet. Our kitchen remodel is 99.99% complete with only a few things left on the punch list. We started the tear down the day after Thanksgiving weekend. They tore it down in a day, electric the second day, installed cabinets in the 3rd and 4th day. Counter tops measured on the 5th day. On the 6th day we learned that the counter top we had selected was out of stock. So we went to select a new one. We like it even better than the first one we picked but it's hard to know not having seen the first one laid out! 10th day they came to do cabinet fine tuning and other miscellaneous jobs. 11th day they installed all the appliances but we elected not to install the faucet as it would have meant drilling holes in the sub counter and not being sure of the exact locations. Then we waited until day 23 for the counter tops to be installed. That took almost all day! They tore out wall board for the back splash because it was measured without wall board. The day 24 the crew came back to finish things or try to finish everything. The crew worked steady and long trying to get everything finished - reinstalled wall board for back splash, cut and installed backsplash, put in over and under cabinet lighting, painted, patched grout, installed all the handles, installed faucet and fully connected dishwasher and cleaned, cleaned cleaned. Just a few things to finish but we are loving the new kitchen!

I wasted no time in putting the new kitchen to work. I still have most of the kitchen packed up so baking this cake was a bit of an adventure. I was on to make a cake for Christmas eve dinner with the cousins so I did the best I could.

I was also on to bring treats for the Christmas eve service at church so I made a couple of Chocolate crispy cakes (makes 24 slices each) and no baking involved. Good thing I could find my 45 year old bundt pan! All's good!

Thirty five years ago

Thirty five years ago today our baby girl was born. It was at 1:37 in the morning and she's never really stopped being a night owl! I had quite an eventful pregnancy with perpetual morning sickness, weightloss instead of weight gain which required a short hospitalization. Then there was the gestational diabetes towards the end. This baby was due on November 16 and every week after that date I went in for an OCT test and every week they said "well, I guess the baby is not ready" and come back in a week. I had contractions for a couple of weeks and the night before I was at a play that T was directing. Nowadays they would have induced or done a C-section long before it got to be this late. The labor lasted over 2 days and the delivery room nurses said they had never seen such long, high peaks of contractions! Right up til the end they said she was a boy since her heartbeat was fast! If you think she really wasn't all that late and that it was a miscalculation, I'd buy into it a little but she came out with a full head of hair, long finger nails and she was able to turn her head! She was a beautiful baby with strawberry red hair like her nana. We were so happy she finally arrived on the winter soltice that year. I so didn't want a scorpio baby so she must have known and skipped right over Scorpio and Sagittarius and into Capricorn. She was born in the year of the dragon and has been one ever since. She was a delight and a treasure and loved from the minute we saw her!

Alpaca

Just around the corner from us is a fenced in space that is called SLO GO. We started to drive by the area because we discovered that the "back way" out of our development is a little shorter and actually is better on our Prius's gas mileage. The SLO GO is a haven for large tortoises and possibly small but we haven't seen any. A few days ago 4 alpaca appeared overnight and have been in the same pens ever since. They are very cute. They graze almost constantly and don't appear to have any issues with the tortoises and vice versa. So we have peacocks, mountain lions, cayotes, horses, buffalo, burros, cows, sheep, wild turkeys and millions of birds and now alpaca and tortoises!

Kitchen remodel update

Work on the kitchen has entered week 2. Day 1 was demolition, Day 2 was electrical, Day 3 and 4 installing of cabinets, Day 5 creating counter top templates. Today is day 6 and we had a number of the appliances installed, tile laid in places that were disturbed, wall board repaired. Tomorrow the remaining appliances will be installed. Leaving the sink, faucet, disposal, countertops and backsplash, painting. That can't happen until the counters are installed towards the end of December. Looking very good.