Aloha

We just got back on Saturday from a week in HAWAII!  

It had started as a week in New Zealand, where Hubby's going for the next week, then it looked like a week in Sydney, where Hubby's going for the week after his week in New Zealand, then reality finally struck us full in the face and we realized a week on the other side of the planet really means three or more days getting there and back, a couple days of jetlag, and actually only a day or two to enjoy New Zealand, or Sydney.  So Hubby had the brilliant idea of all of us going to Hawaii, then he'd go on to New Zealand and the girls and I would come home.


We had a marvelous time!  We relaxed!  We enjoyed ourselves in a wide variety of ways!  I'm going to make a list:


We 
snorkled (twice)
beached (twice)
ate out (twice, once at Bubba Gump's and once at a luau, and once at Denny's which doesn't actually count)
slept late (a lot)
stayed up late (a lot)
got up early (once)
cooked
drove (a lot)
read (a lot)
napped
paddled kayaks
boogie boarded
swam in the ocean
swam in the pool
got a Sharpie tattoo of a turtle (one of us did, anyway)
made fish out of palm leaves
learned and forgot some Hawaiian words
ate poi (yuck)
ate a bunch of other foods on the luau buffet



We saw
Sea turtles resting on the beach (4 different turtles, 2 different beaches)
black sand
white sand
blue water
black volcanic rocks (more of that than I thought ever possible)
glow from a volcano (OOOH SOO COOL!)
2 different vacation rental homes
palm trees
verdant green stretches of hillside
the Captain Cook monument
dolphins
swimming sea turtles (I didn't see them, though)
TONS of different kinds of fish
an eel
coral
dancing natives

It was a wonderful trip, we had a great time.  I think, however, if we're going back to the islands, we'll probably choose Maui or Kauai over the big island.  There was just too much black volcanic rock.  Maybe if we'd stayed on the north side, my opinion would be different. But we stayed on the south west side, where there is black volcanic rock, and more rock, and more rock.  And over there some more black volcanic rock.  Sitting on top of a bed of black volcanic rock.  Surrounded by a wall of black volcanic rock.  In front of an entire landscape of black volcanic rock.
There may be more pictures later, because I did get some good ones.  But until then, here are a couple that I emailed to myself.

That is volcano glow behind the girls!

The most beautiful beach, which was a 30 minute hike over, you guessed it... volcanic rock!

Notice the very black sand beach on which the turtle rests.

 
all right that's enough for one night.

What is the good angle of a bathroom, anyway?

The cabinet is getting installed today.
I've gone back and forth with the granite guy, they need six pages of signed forms and agreements, and then a separate contract, with diagrams of where the faucet will go, model numbers for the sink basin and faucet, and assurances that anything not already specified in said contract will be an additional cost.  He's having trouble attaching files to an email, so he sends faxes, which I receive as an email.  I don't fax because of our phone line being a cell phone line, so I print everything out, sign it, and then had to learn how to make my new Christmas gift printer send scans back to the computer.  It's been a really busy day in which I actually accomplished nearly nothing.  But there's a cadre of workmen in my basement, hopefully accomplishing a lot.  Not the granite, mind you... this is all prep for the granite.

When it's all done, I hope to have some photos like you would put in a magazine.  In the mean time, I have shots like this:

 

 Hopefully the glamor shots will come later.

More remodeling dust

The remodel of the house continues, with day to day dramas that are wildly important that day, but sort of get washed over with the next day's drama.


We got a bid back on the greener of the two pieces of granite, never heard about the other one.  It was high but reasonably so.  Fine.  We proceed and meet with someone at the tile store to get some help narrowing down our options.  I choose, I buy tile, the installers come and tile the floor.


I get a phone call from the granite guy, apparently that particular piece of granite was sold a year ago, the boss just forgot to mark it.  He can't sell it to me.  For crying out loud they're already cementing the matching tile to my bathroom wall!!!
I frantically drive down the mountain to look at more bone yards.  I don't find much, whatever good stuff I find is, again, already sold.  I can't decide if the greener granite guy was lying to me (did someone come in with a check in hand saying I'll pay you right now?!?)  I decide to call him the next morning to see if the other piece he had, the Sequoia, is available.  
I call and he says he'll give me a bid on that, and there is another piece of Victoria Regia (the green one) available but the finish is different.
I drive ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE VALLEY to look.  The Victoria Regia is horrible, all gray and scratched, you can't see the colors at all. Yuck.
He says he'll give me the Sequoia for the same price as he quoted me on the nice Victoria Regia, even though their cost for it is three times as much.  Again, I don't know if he's blowing smoke or not but he assures me the Sequoia is more of a showpiece granite, and a really nice piece.  It is nice, it matches my accent tile really well, and even has a little green vein running through it I hadn't noticed before.
I take it.
The tile guys had to stop because now we're waiting for the cabinet, and then the granite countertop will go on top of that, and then the tile guys can finish.  So far it's gorgeous, I'm really pleased.  I'll have to take pictures.  
The new windows should come tomorrow, the tile guys will continue tiling the shower area but then they'll have to stop.  The contractor wants to paint tomorrow, I haven't picked a color yet. The cabinet comes Monday, the granite template and installation will be after that, the shower floor material will be ready on Wednesday.  The doors should come the end of next week or beginning of the next.
But tonight I'm just happy the kids are in bed and the kitchen is kind of clean.  I haven't started on taxes and the calendar I usually make my mom and family for Christmas is nearly done.  I've changed it, it's going to be a March to March calendar.

I'm sure there were other, more significant things I should be writing about, but I can't remember them.  It's all lost in the remodeling drama. 


Oh, and the drama that we leave on the 16th for AUSTRALIA!! hehehehe

Dusty

Perhaps I've mentioned we're building out the unfinished basement of the new house.  That's what the beautiful marble in a previous post is for.  More about that later.
As part of the build-out we had to get a new furnace.  The original furnace is too small to heat the basement in addition to the other two floors of the house.  Also we are getting it "zoned" so we can send the heat to whichever floor we want.  The furnace installation guys have been here the last week or so, pounding, grinding, rattling, and basically making a huge mess downstairs.  So then they tell me that part of the huge mess is because there was SO MUCH junk and garbage and debris in the existing ducts that has been there from when the house was built.  Whenever they disturb it or take a vent down to work with it, they get a face full of insulation, drywall chunks, dust, tile chips, 2x4 chunks, sawdust, dead mice, pinecones, what have you. All the ducts are full of it.  One of the features I'd demanded on our new furnace was the fancy electrostatic filter because it's been driving me crazy that the day after I dust everything is all dusty again.  I am not a daily duster.  I'm more a "when it drives me crazy" duster, once every couple of weeks... or so.  The filter on the existing furnace is just leaning up against the opening and completely ineffectual, which goes partway to explaining my dusting problem.  But apparently the rest of the problem is that every time the furnace turns on it kicks up more existing crap from the ducts.  Sigh.  As soon as they're done installing the new ducts and zoning it all I need to call one of those duct cleaning companies and have them get the rest of the stuff out of there.


As for the marble vanity top that I'd picked out... I went back and had them give me a bid for it.  A 6 foot by 2 foot slab was going to cost me $1300.00.  That included the backsplash and edge and installation, the sink hole cut out, and a sink mounted on the bottom.  I asked how much it would cost for my contractor's tile guy to just pick up the slab, and then he'd do all the rest of the stuff?  The 6x2 foot slab by itself was $900.00.  The guy then went on to assure me that there is no way I'd want my contractor's guy to cut and install it, no way.  I'd want THEM to do it.  (For $400.00).
I started looking for a new piece of countertop.
I found a piece of Ubatuba (say OOO-bah-TOOO-bah) which tempts me purely by the name.  It's black with green and gold flecks in it.    This is my picture (and my thumb) of the piece I found in someone's boneyard.  It was hard to get a picture of it because it was outside, there was so much reflection and it was too bright.

This picture is from the internet,

It is quite pretty, though it's kind of uniform.  Hubby and I seem to be attracted to the unique wild pieces that are different from foot to foot.  The price on this - installed and sink cut out and everything was $580.00.   Even with my inherent inability to do math I can tell that's less than half the price for the fancy rainforest brown.  Also this is granite, which is sturdier.
I need hubby's opinion.  The only problem is the place with the ubatuba isn't open on Saturday.  So we found a place that was open on Saturday, and found two more likely pieces in their "boneyard."  One is called Victoria Regia, it's kind of like slate like, not shiney, with greens and blues and grays through it.  This is my picture of the piece we found:

The other is called Sequoia, with black and browns and an interesting crackled appearance on it.  This is my picture of that.  It doesn't show up so well, but I couldn't find anything on the internet that looked the same. 

The guy who showed us both of those pieces said both of them are somewhere in between marble and granite, not totally one or the other.  He also couldn't give us a price on them on the spot, he'd have to email us. 
Either one of the three other pieces is quite different from the original piece of rainforest brown marble I am refusing to afford, and would mean starting over from the ground up to match it with tile for the floor, walls, and accents.
Next I took Hubby (and the girls) to a tile store, where they have a fabulous showroom and though they don't sell partial slabs, they have a lot to look at.  This was also were the tile store that had the most stuff to match greens, since so many of the countertop slabs we were looking at would go well with greens.  Hubby was overwhelmed (welcome to my world, darlin'!) and suggested that we get a designer from the tile store to help us.  He's going to be in town this week, so we set up an appointment for Wednesday.  By then we should have bids back on the Victoria and Sequoia countertops, and a stain sample of the cabinets.  It is somewhat problematic to not have samples of everything we're trying to match.


I have learned a whole lot about the whole process, and am glad I'm doing this one little bathroom first, before we do the kitchen.  But things keep happening in the kitchen that march its remodel up - the microwave went out (we pulled the little one in from Hubby's office and have been using that), Thing 2 got a huge sliver in her foot from the crappy parquet wood floor, and the dishwasher has started not turning on unless you SLAM it shut.  The clock is ticking on that.  Right after the rest of the basement, and the garage, and my office.  
Yeah, get in line, kitchen-itchen.

The kids are at school, so who is doing all that whining?

Like a slowly opening door that needs to be oiled.  A long, sad, drawn-out squeak.  
It's the dog.  Somehow he can tell the difference between weekends and weekdays, and he knows it's a weekday, and there's absolutely NO GOOD REASON for me to not be walking him.  WHAT?  I just got back from dropping the girls off at school, this is HIS TIME!!!  Why would I park myself in front of the computer and read some random person's blog when I SHOULD BE WALKING WITH HIM!  Who cares if it's 19 degrees outside?!?   He's alternately pacing around the house, looking at me expectantly, barking tentatively at the windows, and sitting next to me emitting a high sad squeaky whine.
So I'm not blogging, I'm going to walk the dog.  Though I'm pausing long enough to take a couple pictures because even though he's annoying, he's a big fluffly cutie.

Come on, Mom!  WALKIES??  Please??!

Rushing to bed

Just wanted to catch up quickly, before I get to bed because if I do one thing this year, it's get to bed.  So I can get enough sleep so I can have enough energy to get through the day so I can drop a few pounds.  Okay, two things.  Just the two things, get to bed and lose some weight, if I made New Year's resolutions, that I would resolve.


Today was a good day.
Thing 1 had a field trip to "The Norwegian Center" that I thought would involve snow-shoeing, or alpine skiing, or some other cool equipment, but I think the lack of snow kept it pretty much a hike in the mountains.  Just her and about seven other kids with the two guides from the center.  She had a marvelous time.  After I heard her describe all the wonderful details to Hubby on speaker phone just before bed, I tried to congratulate her on "finding some joy" and not dwelling on the bad part of the day - homework was pretty nasty, long division that she really struggled with.  We're still working on finding the joy, but she seems to be happier, overall.


I found a little joy myself, in the form of a piece of marble I found in someone's marble bone yard for the basement vanity top!  Yippeee!  A lovely little piece of Rainforest Brown marble, all shot with browns and greens and a deep red vein going through it...  It was just so satisfying to have made a decision... though it is the third decision I've made, the other two got tossed aside for the next decision that came along.  I think this one's a keeper, though.  Now I just have to pick the wall tiles, the floor tile, the knobs and drawer pulls, the sink faucet, and the towel racks.  And whatever else.  But hey, I've got a countertop!
So this is NOT the piece of marble I found, but it is a full slab of a very similar piece of marble I found on the internet.  I'm going to bed and am too lazy to upload the picture of the actual piece of marble from my phone.  But it looks a lot like this.

Christmas Round Up

I have had numerous frantic realizations over the past week, all of which have been resolved.  Two involved gifts that I thought hadn't been delivered, which I found later under some other package.  Whew!  And then the whole problem that once I had everything laid out in front of me, I realized I was short on my parents.  My parents who go completely overboard on us.  It turned out okay, though it is still a bit of a shy of normal year for me for them.
So for the girls,  Thing 1 had decided she wanted a pet, not a dog or a gecko like we already have, but something that could be HERS in HER ROOM for HER.  After some internet research, she settled on gerbils.  They're small, they're friendly, they're not completely nocturnal, they're social and she could have two living happily in her room.  Thing 2 seemed okay with getting the gecko in her room as a compensation, instead of having the gecko aquarium in the hall.
Now this sounds fine and dandy until the actual day would approach.  I was pretty sure that Thing 2 would find this all horribly unfair and would decide that a single gecko does not equal out to a pair of gerbils.
I sort of ignored this whole situation, kind of hoping it would go away.  While I'm not opposed to having pets, this situation befuddled me and I figured if I put my head under the sand long enough it would go away.  After all, it worked last spring when Thing 2 started begging for a guinea pig, didn't it?  I had been nearly ready to go with the guinea pig then, but she stopped begging and Hubby said we should just figure we'd dodged that bullet.
Hubby took the bull by the horns, and on Christmas Eve started making the rounds at pet stores.  He talked to many pet shop employees, did some reading on his iphone, and then called me with the conclusion that while cute and social, gerbils are rascally little escape artists and you mostly play with them by watching them or catching them if they get out.  Getting a cage that would actually contain them would be a little more problematic.
He settled back on Guinea pigs.  They are social, friendly, and if tamed and held they tolerate being held just fine.  Each girl could have a cage in her room with her own pig, and we could put them together to play while the girls are at school.  Our investigation indicated that if handled frequently, guinea pigs will be easy to handle and are somewhat cuddly.  They are not nocturnal, they're not gnawers on the same level as gerbils.  We saw reports on websites that people's guinea pigs would follow them around the yard, and sit for hours on laps while you watched TV.  This is looking good.  We went so far as to privately talk to Thing 1, and ask her if her heart was set on gerbils how would she feel about a guinea pig?  We told her briefly what we'd found, and she said she was completely on board with the guinea pig, in fact would have asked for one in the first place but thought she'd have a better chance of getting a gerbil because they were smaller and she thought we might agree to that.
So for Christmas we wrapped up two guinea pig cages, and told the girls we could let them go pick out their very own piggies soon.  That was a sticking point for me, Hubby thought we should have the piggies there on Christmas morning, I was pretty sure the girls would want to pick their own.  Yesterday we went to my folk's for Christmas Part Deux, which left today as Guinea Pig Selection Day.


Apparently the choice was rather picked over from two weeks ago.  I like the long haired ones, and might have influenced the girl's choice when I started gushing over those... one had what looked like a large pimple on the back of his ear and the Petco girl told us she couldn't sell him.  We ended up with two males from the same cage, both long haired.  I think both girls kind of liked the same one the most, a little guy with a black head, and yellow and white body. Thing 2 also liked a rather sandy bed-headed looking guy.  Both weren't very skittish, sat quietly while held, and seemed quite lovely.  We finalized our selection, boxed them up, bought the necessities that weren't provided with the start up cages, and brought them home.  Several times I looked to the back seat to see the girls bracing the Petco box on the empty seat between them, with both of them leaning over to brace it with both hands.  For the whole 1/2 hour drive home.

After things were all set up and assembled back home, I came upstairs to take a nap, and Hubby and the girls went downstairs to watch a movie, the girls with the piggies on their laps.  Hubby reported that they appear to be "lap rodents."  (He said I could quote him on that.) Major score for Mom and Dad.
Shortly after we got them home and set the cages up, we noticed that Thing 2's piggy, preliminarily called India, has one eye crusted shut.  Sigh.
I expect they wouldn't have sold them to us if we would have noticed.  Thing 2 is already completely attached.  She came to me in tears and said it was worse, that before though he could open it, it is now completely closed and oozing a little white gunk.
Sigh.
I got on the phone and called two veterinarians, the one nearby who said they don't seem any piggies, and the one back in town where I always took Kelso.  Apparently they see guinea pigs fairly frequently... so I made an appointment.  Tomorrow I am driving the $34 guinea pig to his $45 check up appointment.
Sigh. 
Kelso is Very Interested.  Since he figured out they exist, every time I turn my back he's gone upstairs to the girls rooms to look at them.

 

 Thing 2 posed with India

 

 Thing 1 with a close up of ... Maybe Maxwell