Happy Birthday, Brad!

Yesterday was Brad's 34th birthday, which makes him older than Jesus! (We won't say what that makes many of you out there!) Yes, sir, there are advantages to being the youngest sibling and marrying an older guy! Just think, your gift to me is helping me always feel young!

Kidding aside, Brad is a super special guy and we're very happy for the chance to celebrate him. He had a great day: his new smartphone arrived (a phone/pocket PC/camera combo), he got a sleek little new digital camera and lots of nice cards and well wishes, we enjoyed some good ribs and key lime pie, watched Lost's season finale... and other people were in our house doing "his" nasty job of smoothing our bedroom and bathroom ceilings! Thanks to everyone for your thoughtfulness in remembering him.

One of the biggest challenges of Brad's birthday was coping with Brooke's disappointment that it wasn't her birthday! All week long, when we were shopping for his presents, Brooke kept insisting that she should be shopping for her! But, it did help that we all got to wear party hats last night.


Yes, we actually hired painters, painful as it has been to us DIYers. All week three amigos have been smoothing ceilings, taking down our hideous 1991 wallpaper, patching, priming and painting. The contractors brought their own problems and reminded us why we usually do it ourselves. My experiences hiring various painters over this past year have taught me that my standards for quality work are much higher than a lot of professionals'. Tomorrow their supervisor is either coming himself or sending someone else to come finish the job properly. He stopped by tonight and agreed with us that the job has a lot of clean-up and touch-ups still left undone. So, hopefully the problems will at least be resolved soon. The good news is that the ugly wallpaper and ceiling popcorn is GONE!

I'm very glad that we're going through all of this mess and disruption now instead of after the second baby comes!

Here's the hideous before picture. I'll post pics of the rooms' progress when they're further along.


In the meantime, here are some of Brooke playing at the zoo's park on our last visit to tide you over.