Change of Plans

Our plans quickly changed this weekend when we got over 5.3 inches of rain on Saturday! Ross was planning to work on our patio cover, and we were all planning to go to a pool party. With our street looking like this, we decided none of that was in the cards for this weekend. After all, you can normally see the curb and sidewalks!

We spent all day Saturday trapped inside, so we decided to do something fun today. We went to the Children's Museum! Jackson had a blast. They recently opened their new toddler area, and Jackson loved it! Unlike our house where he's told "no-no" fairly often, everything here was fair game. They had everything from little doors to open and close to slides and balls and blocks and cars both little and big! There are more pics in the album, but here are few favorites from the day.

Dream Boys

It's been a great weekend. I took off of work on Friday and left Jackson at day care so I could get some work done on the house. What I thought was going to take me all weekend, I managed to almost finish on Friday! I sanded and painted our bathroom cabinets, added knobs and pulls to the drawers and doors (with Ross' help), and finished planting new flowers in the yard. I was in such a good mood by the end of the day because I felt like I'd finally made some progress. I've been wanting to paint the bathroom cabinets for a couple of years now. I don't know what took me so long! When I finally stopped for a few minutes and checked my work email, I got some great news that a coworker got certified...this was an even bigger deal than normal because there was a painful process to go along with it.

Then a toy we'd ordered for Jackson arrived, and he absolutely loves it! It's a play n' ride train. Jackson started walking (cruising really) a couple of weeks ago, so we decided to find a toy he could push around to help him out. He's got all of the levers and buttons figured out, and he has a great time pushing it around. When he sits on it, his feet don't quite reach the ground yet, so we push him. If we stop, he rocks back and forth urging us to keep going!

We had our life group Friday night too, which was a blast. Ross and I decided we were being called to step down from leadership for a while a couple of months ago, and a new couple that recently moved to Texas decided to step up. I think it's going to be great!

Yesterday Jackson and I spent some time hanging out in the yard with Bailey while Ross gathered supplies to put new siding on our garage and rebuild our patio cover next weekend. It was such a beautiful day, and I couldn't resist taking some pics of Jackson playing with the grass and flowers. There are several more in the album.

Yesterday evening we made our way to Kingwood to catch up with a couple of my sorority sisters, their husbands, and their kiddos. I love these girls! We only see each other once or twice a year, but they will always hold a special place in my heart! Tammy and Kammy were both ahead of me at LA Tech, but I often felt closer to them than some of my pledge sisters. Their husbands and kiddos are great too! Here's a picture of the girls and the future Kay-Dee dream boys, Bryan, Jackson, and Mason.

The Hat

It was a rough week for Jackson, but I won't complain because I got to spend more time than usual with him. Although, I'd prefer him to be well all the time! Jackson started acting really grumpy and not sleeping well last weekend. Then on Monday, we got a call from the day care saying he was running a fever. When I picked him up it was apparent that every kid in the class was sick, and Jackson was just getting started. Aside from the fever, which ranged from 101 to 103, he seemed pretty normal until Wednesday.

Wednesday was Safety and Total Health day at work, which starts off with breakfast for everyone. I'd signed up to bring a not-so-healthy breakfast casserole, so I decided to drop the food off and take Jackson to the doctor since he was still running a fever but really showed no other symptoms of being sick. Well...when we dropped off the food, Jackson got sick all over the backseat of my car and then passed out. I'd forgotten to bring a change of clothes with us, so we went back home and let Jackson sleep. He literally slept ALL day. We did end up getting a doctors appointment that afternoon, but they didn't know what specifically was causing the fever.

After a lot of rest Jackson's fever finally broke, and he's been slowly returning to his happy, easy-going personality.

We spent most of the day yesterday working in the yard, and Jackson spent some of the time hanging out on a blanket enjoying the beautiful day.

We discovered we don't have any brimmed hats that fit Jackson, so he had to make do with sunscreen and my Cowboys hat cinched as tight as it would go. He didn't seem to mind it despite the bill being as big as his head!

Catching Up

So we're a little behind on our posting as far as the events in our lives are concerned. This has been a busy week for the Taylor family. Last weekend our friends Heath, Barbara, and their son, Carter, came to visit. We had a great time! It was a short visit, but filled with quality time. Whenever we go to Louisiana we always spend time with our families, so we don't get much time to spend with friends. We didn't really do much. We just spent the time visiting and catching up, and of course doing a little shopping. :-)

Jackson got an exersaucer last weekend, and he has been loving it. I can't believe how many parts they come in! I guess this is probably just the beginning of many, many hours we will spend putting together toys for Jackson. Even Carter put in some time helping us put all of the pieces together.

Columbus day was a holiday for those of us that work for the government, so Ross and I took advantage of the extra day and started working on our front yard, which was in desperate need of some attention. Since Jackson came along, it's been left untouched with the exception of the occasional mowing that the summer necessitates. Ross spent several back-breaking hours extending flower beds and putting in edging. In the process he took out a good chunk of a root from the tree in our front yard, so we're hoping it doesn't die or fall on our house! We finished the majority of the planting work yesterday. We still have a few more flowers to plant and some mulch to put down, but it's looking a lot better! We have some plans to extend our front porch/patio as well, but that will have to wait until after Ross gets back from Hawaii.

I spent most of my evenings this week preparing for 2 baby showers. The first one for Jennifer and Eric was today, and the second one for Christie will be next Sunday. I had a lot of fun putting together these "sweet thing" favors and making a diaper cake for the shower today.

This will be Jennifer and Eric's second baby, so they mostly got diapers and clothes, which was perfect. Their first kid was a boy, and they are expecting a baby girl, so some fun girly clothes were a must. You can tell Dad and big brother, Scott, are excited about them...

Of course, we can't have a summary post like this without at least one picture of Jackson, so here's a picture of Pam holding our sweet little boy. He had his 4 month checkup this week, and is continuing to grow at about the same rate. He's a little above the 50th percentile in height now, and he's still in the 25th percentile in weight and head circumference. The doctor said we could start him on solids whenever we're ready. It may not be long, but I'm not ready just yet!

We've posted pics from the shower today and our visit with the Tims in the album, so be sure to check them out!

Back Yard Makeover

I just carried about 15 bags and probably 500 pounds of yard trash down to the curb for pick up tomorrow! Last weekend, E and I talked with Jim Maas, the owner of Maas Nursery, and he helped us sketch out a new design for our backyard. The rest of the weekend was spent digging up grass, installing steel edging, cleaning out plants, and spreading new dirt. Today, we bought about 80 new plants that we will be putting in this weekend. It's backbreaking work but hopefully it will look nice.

Busy Thanksgiving, continued

In the previous post, I neglected to mention a couple of other noteworthy events of our Thanksgiving week. While we skipped shopping on Friday, we were not idle. In fact, we helped to move my mom's parents into a new place, so we helped pack, transfer stuff, and unpack. It's a little smaller place than where they were, so we had to be creative with the furniture but the staff seem really nice and I think it will be good for them, particularly once my grandmother gets used to the change.

Friday night, we celebrated my birthday with my parents. We had some great (as always) seafood gumbo and a nice time to visit. My birthday isn't until December 19 so we were a little suspicious when they said they wanted to celebrate early so they could give me my gift. I figured they were excited about what they were giving me and E and I are excited about it as well. I got a Nikon D40 Digital SLR camera. E carries her Canon SD800 IS with her all the time for those spontaneous moments, but we've been wanting a really nice camera for events, scenery, and, of course, the baby.

Lastly, during this whole time, I've been dealing with tree issues in our back yard. We had a limb fall into a neighbors yard, fortunately not doing any real damage but it led us to decide to get the trees trimmed including another branch that stuck into our neighbors' yard. In addition, we had our Magnolia removed which we've been planning to do anyway to put in a smaller tree.

Links to Projects Labels

I've been using the Blogger labels for a while now but since I'm moving my projects posts to this blog, I wanted to provide links to the labels on previous posts. That way, if you are looking for posts on a specific topic, you can click on the links below for the older posts.

• computer (9)
• construction (4)
• electrical (2)
• fabric (1)
• furniture (11)
• home improvement (16)
• paint (13)
• repair (3)
• stain (6)
• Taylored Truth (7)
• tile (2)
• woodworking (16)
• yard (2)