Looking for our Wish Lists? Here they are.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Playroom-Part 1

A friend recently asked for photos of our playroom. That, of course, required that we clean it. We have a strip of cork tiles across the far wall, to display learning materials and completed artwork on. You can't really see it, but we have pink and orange flowers hanging from the cieling. The curtain is fabric from Ikea. The gate is a LIFESAVER. We got it from Babies R Us and attached it so the playroom (dining room) is blocked off from the living room and kitchen. Most of the time the gate is open, but we close it if I need to take a shower (or its clean and I'm keeping it that way).
Our table, also from Ikea. Perfect size but the wood portion is raised higher than the white portion, making it a complete pain in the rear to clean. We hope to get a new, flat top one at Ikea while we are in Michigan. The doll cradle is a family heirloom which houses all of her stuffed animals.
The green tubs are toys that are out of rotation. Right now the tubs contain Music, Kitchen and Little People. The VS bag on top is dress up clothes that Lillian is getting for Christmas and were just temporarily setting there. The dollhouse bookcase was made by my dad just for Lillian from a picture in the Pottery Barn catalog.
In the corner is the Learning Tower, which can be used as a lemonade stand, puppet theatre, fort or a tower to stand at the kitchen couter safely. She loves it and so do we, but its a pain in the rear to move from playroom to kitchen.
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Playroom-Part 2

This window looks out onto our patio and has window clings on it, relevant to whatever we're studying at the moment. Currently it is colors. The orange tray is for art or eating in the living room. The pink bean bag is actually a Christmas present and isn't in there yet. The toy chest is another family heirloom. My great grandpa made it and my dad recently refinished it for Lillian. It houses toys that are out of rotation or still too old for her. This worked great, until recently when she learned how to open it. Now we're perfecting the look of death when she does open it, so she's slowly learning to leave it alone.
In the corner, behind the ball toy, is a basket full of dress up clothes. On top of the cabinet is a basket with learning tools for whatever we're currently studying, along with one of my curriculum books. I'm just realizing I should have taken a photo with the cabinet doors open. In the cabinet are art supplies, learning tools that aren't always out like flashcards, window clings, manipulatives, puzzles and games, along with a shelf of books that aren't board books so they can't be out in the open, but are young enough that she likes them to be read to her.
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Monday, November 23, 2009

Christmas Photo Collage

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I tried and tried to make this the header, but it wouldn't do it, so this will have to do. If you click on the photo, it will open up a larger photo in a new window.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Christmas Pictures

Lillian's Formal Christmas Pictures are posted here.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Wishlists

For those of you who get this in email and don't always go to the site to view the blog, here are our wishlists. They are constantly updated on the top of the blog, as we know stuff is purchased. For my list, I suggest you check with Richard before you buy, as he will be shopping off the same list. His email, that he checks often, is richardbrill@gmail.com.

Lillian's Wishlist

Richard's Wishlist

Stacey's Wishlist

Saturday, November 14, 2009

"The November Nor'easter" Update

The news shows have dubbed this storm "The November Nor'easter". As if there has never been another one in November. I'm not positive, but doubtful that is true.

We have been fortunate, and except for a few minutes here and there, have kept power throughout the whole ordeal.

Teresa, a friend of ours, has not been so lucky and she and her 2 year old daughter and dog moved in with us Thursday evening and are anticipating staying until Saturday night at 10pm when their power is supposedly going to be restored. Brandon and Lindsey lost their power today, for 23 hours, but it has already been restored.

Lillian's room had water standing above the ceiling and maintenance came over and made holes in the drywall and drained over 10 gallons of water out of it. The rain is still coming down so the holes are still dripping, and the water spots on the ceiling are getting larger still with every hour.

The carpet in the hallway in front of the guestroom is wet. And the guestroom window has so much water damage, the molding and drywall are separating, falling down and leaking rusty water all over my curtains (now down) and the carpet.

Maintenance says they will be over next week to "fix it" although we have yet to hear what that will entail. Hopefully more than a paint job this time. Until that project is complete, Lillian is (not) sleeping on her portable cot in our room. She normally sleeps 13 hours at night, last night she was at about 7, broken with fits of screaming.

We were able to get out today to go to the mall. We braved the rain and wind, and had a good time, although one section of the mall was closed and out of power, and the children's play area was closed due to a water leak.

Teresa and I also got out to the grocery store and picked up pizza for dinner, and ran by her house. We were hopeful the power would be on earlier than predicted, but it was not. We did, however, rescue most of her frozen stuff, including her Thanksgiving turkey, all by the light of our two blackberry phones. I knew those expensive phones were good for something, if nothing else, they have a bigger screen to guide you with when the power goes out.

The good news is that Teresa's renter's insurance will cover the cost of the groceries that spoiled. She was on the phone with them tonight and they are going to deposit almost $200 into her account.

Everyone else is down for the night and R and I are following shortly. Tomorrow Savannah has gymnastics and R and I are going to try to do a couple errands, hoping the businesses we need to visit have power and no water damage.

R's duty, the Veteran's day holiday, and this nor'easter combined gave us a 6 day weekend. Too bad we couldn't have known that ahead of time and gotten out of town. Although, we would have come back to a fallen ceiling in Lillian's room and a lake on the floor, not to mention ruined pink furniture and that would have been the end of my sanity (not that there's much left at this point anyways).

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Nor'easter

We're having a "nor'easter". Apparently its a huge deal to people around here. It just seems like three days of rain and winds. But geesh, they're closing schools, roads, tunnels, and whole cities for goodness sakes. Setting up shelters in high schools and pre-empting all the tv shows. They closed the malls. So now, we can't watch TV, can't go outside and can't go to the mall. Lil is thrilled.

Not to mention, there's water dripping down from the cieling in her room.

In good news, in the excessive closing of everything in sight, Richard got a day off and was able to spend the day at home with us. It was especially nice because I spent last night with a friend at ER and feel like poo today.

Game night tonight I think.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Nov 2 Update

Still no news on holiday orders.

As far as regular orders: Right now R is still assigned to the Ike, the detailer has to be the one to cancel the orders and he has not. What the Ike sent over was a "recommendation" that the orders be canceled and for now, the detailer has chosen to ignore that recommendation. The Ike CAN make him do it, but as of now, they have not. SO, for now, it seems we are still on track for a Feb 12 deployment.

The car dealership wrote the color of the van as "white" rather than "silver" on the title, this makes a HUGE mess for us. So we're (and by we're, I mean I'm) trying to figure it all out.

We scheduled Lillian's 3 month follow up appt for her tubes on Friday.

We have set up an appt to get a DVR from our cable company, and at that time we will cease TiVo use. I hate new technology.

Apparently, R does not have duty Thanksgiving weekend now, although I have yet to believe it. If that is true, we will be heading to Durham to visit with the Howards/Fuscos for that long weekend.

We're going to make a trip to Ikea on Veteran's Day, next Wednesday, and top the day off with a girls birthday dinner for three of our friends.

ANOTHER washer guy came today. He seemed competent and seems to have fixed both problems. We'll see. East Coast Appliance has not been successful in anything so far, other than convincing us that buying the extended warrant is a MUST.

If you are getting R a Christmas gift, please just give him cash. He just purchased a laptop to use for deployment, and he wishes to use Christmas money to help go towards that.

I just found out that in Virginia when a teenager gets their driver's license for the first time, they have to go to the Courthouse and meet with a Judge. The Judge then gives the license to the parents, saying it is their opportunity to give the responsibility of a license to the child as they deserve it. That is AWESOME. Wherever we are, our kids are getting their licenses here.

Lillian climbed into the house bookshelf dad made today. Just to chill out on the shelf.

Christmas Lists are up on the blog and continually updated. Lillian's is here and Stacey's is here.

Whitney has her biggest show this year on Sunday, and I am helping her with it and R is helping with set up/tear down. Teresa is watching Lillian for us.

I think that's it for now.