Final Christmas Gift

I know it’s the end of January, but we had one last Christmas gift for Reagan that hadn’t been opened yet. Well, she saw it last week and asked to open it, so she opened some new puzzles with some serious expertise.

Reagan has some big news

She’s going to be a big sister! The newest Armstrong should be showing up sometime around mid-July.

Budding Artist

Since Reagan’s fabulous music teacher moved, I decided we needed a new winter activity for our Friday mornings. It turns out that there aren’t too many options for Fridays, so I decided on a class through Fairfax County that’s down near Mount Vernon. It’s on the early side, but it will be good to have some time on the way home to run errands if we need to and not feel like we’re rushing home for lunch and nap every week.

This past Friday was our first class and she created a picture based on Rene Magritte’s High Society.

Checking out her finished piece. (Yes, she got the smock and her sleeves rolled up. I got paint on my shirt!)

 

She sponge painted with blue and black on the background, then used oil crayons on the white figure and dot paints on the blue figure. Then, we glued it all down and added the border!

Big Girl Shower

This week, I decided to try to give Reagan a shower by herself. It was quite successful, and she jumped right in the next night. I’m not sure how this is going to go once they put the door in, but it is pretty easy to keep the water contained now with the curtain and the shower head in the ceiling.

She backs under the water and then lets the water hit the back of her head and run down her face. Then, she doesn’t want to get out! There goes our water bill.

Basement!!!

Phew! It’s been a busy few weeks since we returned from our big Christmas and New Year’s trip. We spent the first day washing floors and nearly every other surface in the house. Since then, we have Tim has washed some portion of the floors nearly every day. We are getting a handle on the dust and able to settle in some.

We were able to move our furniture down to the basement the first day, though it was the better part of the week before the tv was usable again. Everything’s working now and I was even able to move the modem/router downstairs and plug our directv box in to the internet. I don’t know all the capabilities of that yet, but it gives us some more features.

Now, on to the good stuff…

Looking from the bottom of the stairs – the door on the left is the bathroom and the shadowed space just beyond that is the entryway to the back door.

Looking from the back wall – the door on the left is a small storage area under the stairs and the door straight ahead leads into the front part of the basement that hasn’t been finished (and is super dusty).

 

Bathroom – since we don’t have a wide a wide angle lens, this is the best I could do. The shower is opposite these and is huge and awesome.

We haven’t done much beside moving our furniture yet, though the puzzle rug and 2 red footstool/storage pieces are new.

Upstairs, the demo is done, most of the framing is done, electrical is well underway, and the plumbing was started today. We have picked a lot of the tile and fixtures. The biggest decision remaining is the washer and dryer. I’ll get a camera up there one day this week to get some pictures.

Christmas Break

For Christmas, we made our annual trek to New Jersey for Christmas eve and Christmas Day and then flew to Cleveland for a belated Christmas celebration with the Armstrongs.

It was a very good trip to spend time with family and Reagan had fun with some new experiences.

First in New Jersey a huge snow storm came in starting Christmas night and lasted well into the night the following day.  Not sure what the official count was, but by our measure, 18 inches fell in 24 hours.  We had packed Reagan’s snow stuff, thinking we would need it in Cleveland, so out she went in the storm.  She thought it was really neat.

In Cleveland, it was cold the first few days and then warmed up the following days.  On our first full day there we went to Snow Days and Progressive Field.  Reagan had her first ice skating experience.  I am not sure she was a born natural but she had fun anyway. 

The lake was frozen which is always neat.  It changes daily based on wind, temp., etc.   We always like to go down and check it out.

On News Years Eve, we went to our friends’ Jeremy and Megan’s house where Reagan and Avery got to play together.  When we got there Avery was napping, so Reagan had the toys to herself.  After Avery woke up they played nicely together.