Marathon staining week and adorable B pictures

I know I haven't been around much at all in the past week or two. But I have very good reason (or excuses, whatever) for not posting or being online much at night (sorry to my Myspace friends who look for a nightly status from me) or sitting down and watching any TV, you get the point. All I can say is it's a good thing I'm not into any of the new fall TV shows cause I would have missed most of the episodes this month. Although I do have TiVo...so I guess I don't have much of an excuse there, huh? Anyway....I'm going to blame last weekend's weather for this week's non-stop craziness. Because had it not been so rainy/humid last weekend, I could have gotten a lot more staining done then, rather than spending every night (until 9-10pm most nights) trying to keep up with our carpenter. But thankfully 4 boxes of shakes were completed in 3 nights! That's a record for us! And what's even better - WE ARE DONE with the shakes! Which is great because those things are a real pain in the arse and take hours to stain. I swear - it takes more time to stain than it does for our carpenter to nail them to the house. I think we went through about 11 boxes (and it takes about a gallon of stain per box) in total (with about 200 shakes in each box) just to cover the back and 1 (very short) side wall of the garage. Heaven forbid if we were doing the entire house with those things. I'd have to hire a crew to stain all that! But all of our hard work paid off because it looks great. I'll take a few pictures tonight to post up later.

In other house news, the masons are quickly working on the last part of their job - the far wall of the house that is a full 3 stories tall thanks to the walk-out basement. We're hoping they finish up before it gets too cold outside (can wet mortar freeze??) We have also been discussing the front and rear decks with our carpenter and decided to go with Brazilian redwood for the decking for both including the gazebo in the back. I'll have to see if I can post the plans on here so you can get an idea of what the back deck is going to look like. But basically, the retangular portion of the deck will be the same dimension as the old one, but on one end we are incorporating a large gazebo to provide some shelter from the sun since the it hits that area of the yard from about 11am until sunset. That will work out great for outdoor entertaining during the summer. The only downside to all of this is the fact that we will have get rid of a gorgeous japanese maple tree and a very overgrown but pretty white azalea bush. We were initially thinking about uprooting both and replanting them somewhere else, but I think they might be too big for that. It will be sad to see them go, but I think the sacrifice will be worth it.

Ok - now for some B news - he has been very much enjoying his Pre-K and Jr. K classes thus far despite the fact that he's caught a bit of a cold already. He is already writing out most of his name and has even started to read! It's amazing how quickly he picks things up.

Here's a picture of the rascal performing his latest trick. This is what happens when he's too lazy to get a glass and fill it with water...

Yup - you got caught mister!