At the Beach, at the Beach...

No, not THAT beach!

Olivia and I just recently took our first trip to the beach. Navarre Beach.Well, that's not exactly true, but that last time she was there, I didn't even know that she existed yet. Anyway, we went to Navarre Beach and had a blast!

Chad came with us for both weekends but went back home to work during the week (a couple of days in the sand and sun is enough for him) and while he was away, we enjoyed a lot of other visitors.

Olivia's cousin A, Aunt B and Uncle P got to spend some precious time with us. We don't get to see them often because of how far away they live, so we were super-excited to have several days to just play and be together.

I think it is safe to say that Olivia is completely over-the-moon for her little cousin who is 4 months older than she is. When she wasn't trying to do exactly what he did or play with the same exact toy, Olivia was usually gazing in his direction with all the love a 6-month baby can muster.

That's right, Thing 1 and Thing 2.

You would not believe how hard it was to get two babies, one of whom is not even mobile yet, to be still and look in the same direction for a photo.

Olivia also got to hang out with both sets of her grandparents at the beach. Gran and Papa came down the first weekend we were there, and we all enjoyed beautiful weather.

Sadly, this is the only photographic evidence that I have that Gran and Papa were at the beach. I didn't really get into the picture-taking groove for a couple of days. I'm betting that Gran and Papa aren't too upset that I don't have them plastered on the internet in their swimsuits, though.

Honey and Pappy came at the end of the week. It was Honey's birthday while she was there, so we made a cake and sang to her as well. We also made handprints and footprints to give her for her Christmas tree, but I used the wrong homemade play dough recipe and they melted in the oven. Whoops. (We're working on a re-do.)

Honestly, the pool at the condo was a much bigger hit with the babies than the beach was. It turns out that sand isn't all that fun when you put everything that you touch in your mouth. Olivia also found the waves (which were fairly big the entire week) a bit frightening.

Maybe I'm partial, but is this not the cutest baby you've ever seen?

We had these floats for the babies to play in the pool. Gran found one for Olivia, and Aunt B already happened to have the same thing for A. They both loved floating in the nice, calm and clear water of the pool and splashing around with their toys. (Olivia wore a hat all week so we didn't have to rub sunscreen in her hair.)

Feathering Our Nest

When C bought our home in 2005, he definitely made the purchase with an eye towards potential. I mean, it wasn't going to fall in on itself or anything, but the original homeowners definitely turned a blind eye towards good taste and practicality. Not to mention that the folks who owned it before us rented the place out to Norma Ray and Billy Bob, so our little Love Nest came with more than its fair share of dings and dents.

When I met my Beloved, he was in the throes of renovating the master bathroom. (Go ahead and look up throes, I know you want to. I used it correctly. It means "epic struggle.") Now, if you have ever been to our home, you have surely gotten a tour of said bathroom because we are very proud of the hard work that went into making it a beautiful and much more functional place to shower and brush your teeth. Much of the work, in fact most of the work, in there was completed by C alone; I, however, will take credit for being the motivation for completion (He had been working on said bathroom project for 2+ years when we started dating. I told him I wouldn't marry him until the bathroom was usable. I was only partially kidding.)

Anyhow, we've done many things to feather our nest since marrying last year. Well, since I was pregnant for 97% of that time, I wasn't a whole lot of help -- unless you count making Honey-Do Lists. But again I was the motivation for completion. Or, in this case, I was growing it inside of me. We painted every wall in the house, remodeled the laundry room, set up the nursery, cleaned out the daylight basement, updated the fireplace and very recently have been working on our backyard. We've had a drainage problem that has washed out most of our good dirt and all of what little grass was there was long ago killed by the dogs...so while the weather was halfway decent, C started building a retaining wall with the help of my dad.

In the meantime, because apparently one project at a time isn't good enough for us, we decided to tackle Olivia's bathroom. It's small, which we can't change, but also had horrible wallpaper and a really beat up little vanity and cabinet. I wanted to paint and patch some holes, and C has always thought that it smelled funny (dirty) in there and wanted to scrub everything down and redo the floor tile.

My handsome Better Half, oblivious to what the remodeling future holds, smiling as we tear down wallpaper.

We figured it would be a three weekend project, with Labor Day giving us a long weekend to work to finish up. So about a month ago we rented the steamer to remove the wallpaper and knocked that out one Friday night after Olivia went to sleep.

Now the fun begins as we remove all of the junky bathroom fixtures.

Next, we started removing all of the fixtures so we could take up the tile from the floor. This is when we first realized we were in trouble. Big Trouble.

(L) The sheetrock was so nasty behind the shower surround that you could push your hand straight through it.
(R) Trouble is a-brewing. This is the hole in the subfloor that was directly under our toilet.

It turns out that Norma Ray or Little Billy Bob or Frank Lloyd Wright had a leaky faucet somewhere along the line. And a leaking toilet. And a leaking shower. As we peeled back the layers, we could see that the leaks had been (mostly) found and fixed, and the damages had been patched up but not really corrected all along the way. And that smell C couldn't source? It was all of the rotten wood and sheetrock. So to recap, Everything in the bathroom had at one point contributed to massive water damage, and the floor, subflooring, floor joists (!), sheetrock, insulation, and all plumbing fixtures needed to be replaced. As I have said to one of my house guests recently, it's amazing that one of you didn't wind up falling through the floor when you used our commode.

Rotten wood and smelly filth are all that's left of the bathroom at this point.
Can you believe someone just covered this up and hung wallpaper?

As the work to remove all things rotten began, C and his father-in-law (who has been a gigantic help with all of this, thank you!) found that the damage to the floor and whatnot extended under the adjoining wall into Olivia's nursery.

Here's more of the water damage and subsequent hole in the floor in Olivia's room.

So they have been working to fix her room first so she isn't displaced. When Mom asked for a progress report earlier today, all I could say was "they've ripped out even more stuff, there's a bigger whole than the last time I talked to you, and they haven't started to fix anything yet."

I just had to include this photo of the bath tub in our front yard. It's cast iron, so when Dad and C first tried to pick it up yesterday, they thought it was nailed to the floor because it was so heavy that it didn't budge!

To be fair, progress had been made. They've worked hard and accomplished a lot in very little time. It's just a far cry from where I expected to be this weekend, putting the finishing touches on a new paint job and beaming with pride at our fresh smelling guest bathroom.

We'll get there. Eventually.

It's 8:10 am...

And I've nursed Olivia, she played and I pumped, she ate cereal and so did I, we cleaned up her and the kitchen, changed her into daytime clothes, and now she's taking a nap.

One year ago, I was just rolling into the office and starting my day. The most pressing item on my agenda was finding coffee.
Oh, what a difference a year makes!