Andrew's magic wand

A few nights ago when Ruel was reading to the girls in their room, I was sitting on my bed and Andrew was jumping around me with one of the girls' wands. He waved it at me and this is what he said: "You're not a mom anymore. You're a frog. Now go to your pond and hop on green things!"

Alrighty then, Andrew. Got it. Guess I'll go hop on some "green things"!

Hooray.........cabinets!!

This was a very exciting week at the house! All the cabinets were delivered and installed yesterday. This includes the kitchen, mudroom cubbies, built-in desk area, laundry room, and living room bookshelves. I'm not posting many pictures of the kitchen, since I'm still keeping that a surprise, but here's a look at most everything:

Darn - this is not very good lighting so you can't see all the details and the color, but this is my built-in desk area. If you look closely, you can see the little cubbies in it.

Here are the mudroom cubbies. They will be painted red (keep an open mind - it will look nice!).

You can see some of the laundry room cupboards here. They'll be painted an off-white color.

And this is the 1/2 bath cabinet. I love how it turned out:

Here's a very close-up glimpse of the island before it was set in place. That's all of the kitchen I'm going to give for now!

Here are the living room cabinets. Ruel says that the mantel was completely finished today after I was last there, so I don't have pictures of that yet. Stay tuned till next week for that.

The hardwood was delivered yesterday and apparently they're going to start installing it tomorrow. There are mostly just a lot of little things we need to get now. Fortunately the big decisions are behind us. What a relief!

Exterior paint

I haven't posted on the house for a while but a lot has been going on. They finally painted the outside. I was a little surprised with how it turned out because it was supposed to have a little bit of green in it, but it doesn't seem to. I like it, though. It's kind of hard to tell from a picture what it really looks like.

So I have spent the last 5 days looking at every kind of hardwood possible: stains, grains, widths, pre-finished, unfinished, you name it. (Finally got that decided on about an hour ago.) I spent a whole week before that looking at every single light imaginable before I finally picked a chandelier for the dining area, outside lights, entry, hallway, and living room lights, and two ceiling fans for the great room. I spent HOURS online and HOURS at about 5 different stores, sometimes with screaming kids. That was great fun. Now I'm about to order all the drawer pulls and knobs. Next I need to find doorknobs and I still haven't decided on the stain for the front door. Most of the big decisions are finally over now, though. Still have to buy all the faucets, a bathroom light and some towels bars, but we might actually be on the downhill slope now. The only major obstacle left is that the hardwood, which will be delivered on Thursday, takes several weeks to acclimatize (sp?) so it will be REALLY pushing it for everything to be completed by the 19th. The contractor thinks it may go into the week after that (HELLO!!!! Christmas!!), but he doesn't seem to get that that is not an option! If we have to stay off the hardwood for a few days and order pizza for Christmas dinner, we will. Anyway, I am excited to see all the cabinets which will be here on Thursday. Some of them will need to be painted. We're also finalizing on the carpet right now. The electrical work, including installing the lights, should happen in the next several days. Cross your fingers for the 19th!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Tax cuts"

This is a link to a blog a friend of mine posted yesterday. It totally cracked me up and I just had to share. Looking forward to my taxes going up (and no, we don't make more than $250,000). Go Obama.

http://amynaseath.blogspot.com/2008/11/tax-cuts.html

What a relief........... it's over

I thought November 4th would never come. No, not the day a black man became president (that's another story entirely). The day this election was finally over.

Have you ever had a test that you studied for for weeks and weeks? It dominated your whole life, you thought about it every time you went to bed, you dreamed about it, and you woke up thinking about it? You worked so hard and studied with friends from class and got extra help from a tutor and made flash cards and prayed and studied and studied and prayed and knew finally that there was nothing else you, or your friends, could do? Then you took the test (this is really taking me back to Econometrics... UGH!) and waited..........and waited..........and waited, and you could hardly eat or sleep until you found out the results and finally, you got the word. You passed!! You passed and that's all that mattered. That's how I feel today with the news that Prop 8 passed in California. It's been such a long journey for hundreds of thousands of people here and there have been a LOT of road bumps along the way. We've been vilified, slandered, mocked, vandalized, and called bigots and haters. Property has been stolen, destroyed, defaced, you name it. However, we have become stronger and everyone who fought this fight endured to the end. No doubt about it. There are two good articles today on the protectmarriage website that I am going to insert here. One is about the victory, one is about the opposition already filing a petition seeking to invalidate the decision of the voters.
http://www.protectmarriage.com/article/statement-by-andrew-pugno-general-counsel-of-protectmarriage-com
http://www.protectmarriage.com/article/statement-on-proposition-8-passing-by-ron-prentice-chairman-of-protectmarriage-com
There's a lot of great information on that website. The greatest part about this whole experience has been seeing how many people have tirelessly donated so much time, effort and money so generously over the last 3 months. I've never seen anything like it. It's the most organized effort I've ever witnessed. I think our ward alone was tasked with contacting over 45,000 registered voters in one zip code (by phone or in person) and finding out where they stand on this issue. The ones who responded positively were contacted at least two more times by ward members either leaving reminder flyers for them to vote or calling in the last few days to remind them to vote. We also drove around to precincts yesterday to verify who on our lists had already voted and then called the ones who hadn't to remind them yet again. I got to do a little bit of going to the precincts which was pretty fun. This has truly been a rewarding experience and no matter what happens in the future, I think everyone will remember this and we can all feel proud for being a part of this effort. I'm excited to attend an end-of-8-campaign party on Saturday. I went out and found number cookie cutters today and I'm going to make cookies in the shape of an "8" frosted with the campaign colors, yellow and blue. I am definitely in the mood to celebrate! Hooray California!!!!!!!!!!! Now......... can we get back to real life??

Paint colors

I took a few pictures of the paint colors inside the house yesterday. They're done with the inside now and will start on the outside soon. I chose a greyish-bluish for the living room that looked more greyish on the sample, so when I saw it a few days ago, all I could say was , "Oh......wow! That's blue!" The pictures does seem a little more grey. I'm going to hope that once I have furniture, curtains and decorations in there, it won't seem as blue to me.

So after I had picked all the paint colors, I showed them all to Ruel. He's been too busy to be involved in much of these decisions and it's probably best that way. He doesn't seem to like much of anything that I've picked, but I keep telling him to trust me. It will look nice. Anyway, I also had a darker greyish-bluish shade picked out for Andrew's room and he thought it was too grey. He thought he should at least get to pick the color for his son's bedroom. I figured it was easier to give in to that than have him try to change my picks for places where more people would actually see! So, he ended up picking a color called "Brilliant Blue". It looked so bright on the sample, but I did my best to keep my mouth shut and tell myself that it's just paint and maybe no one will see it! (I contemplated calling the contractor and changing to a little more subdued blue without telling Ruel, but decided not to.) Well, after my reaction to the living room, I walked down the hall and could almost see the room glowing before I got there. I let out another, "Oh!!! WOW!!!" and this is what I saw:

I'm not sure Andrew will ever nap again! It's practically neon! I'm thinking about toning down one wall by doing some stripes or something like that. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to pass them along! (Hint, hint: Shelly, Beth, LaRene, Laurel.........) I did take a picture of the kitchen color (LOVE IT!) but, I'm going to try to stick to my plan to make that my "surprise room". It's going to be hard! The great room and laundry area, etc., are the same color our old living room was. It's a pretty neutral khaki-ish color. I'm anxious to see what the outside will look like. It's hard to visualize what something's going to look like from just a small paint sample (as Ruel actually admitted to me after he saw Andrew's room this morning). HELLOOOOO!!! :)

Activists in the Rain

So I've never posted about this before, because every time I form what I want to write in my mind, it ends up being too long and I get too riled up. Today, though, I'm excited about what happened. So if you don't live in California and haven't heard, we have been tirelessly campaigning for YES on Proposition 8 out here for months. A Yes on 8 vote on Tuesday means that it will be written in the California constitution that marriage is between a man and a woman. We did this 8 years ago with Prop 22 and 61% of the voters approved it, but back in May, 4 activist judges on the California Supreme Court overturned that and made gay marriage legal in California. This proposition seeks to end this battle once and for all (although I'm sure either way it goes, it won't be the end of it). Church members have been asked to support this proposition with their means and their time and boy, have they ever! People from a lot of different churches have gotten involved in calling all registered voters, going door to door, displaying signs, writing letters, you name it. It has been a daunting task, but now in this last big push before the election, it seems that we may actually have a fighting chance. Anyway, today we gathered with about 30 other people at a busy intersection and waved our YES on 8 signs. Another group about 3 miles down the road did the same with 60 or so people. I also heard there was a caravan of about 200 cars from Daly City to Oakland today in support of the cause, waving their signs. Well, it was sprinkling when we first got there and by the end (we were there almost 2 hours), we were all pretty well soaked. Here are some pictures:

Emily really got into it, screaming at all the cars: "YES ON 8! YES ON 8!" She will be a political activist someday! Once it really started raining hard, Hannah just wanted to stay dry!

"You want me to hold this for how long??? While I'm getting rained on? Whatever."

There has been a lot of nasty stuff going on here with opponents stealing people's signs, vandalizing their property, calling them bigots and haters, and of course the local liberal media has totally been supporting the no side. I could tell you lots of stories, but I'll refrain. Anyway, I wasn't sure how our message would be received today, but for the most part, it was great! Tons of people honked and waved and gave us thumbs up. There were a lot of really supportive people out there which was encouraging. Of course, we did have a smattering of the opposite side, too. Across the street, some of the others holding signs were met right away by a guy screaming a stream of obscenities in their faces and then he somehow came up with his own handwritten opposing sign and stood there by them the whole time. This other lady came by and swore and yelled at the Catholic nun holding her sign next to me. (Luckily my kids didn't hear either of those people.) There was also a carload of girls that were stopped at a red light right in front of us for probably 2 minutes, one of whom was making a choice gesture at us the whole time. Hannah asked me what she was doing and I just told her she was saying "no". Ruel had a guy in a car tell him he (Ruel) was teaching his kids to hate. Whatever. It was interesting. All in all, a very good experience, though. We kept smiles on our faces and had fun waving at all the people who were honking in support. My only wish is that people who don't agree with us will realize that just because we have a different viewpoint doesn't mean we hate them or hate anyone who is gay. There are a lot of scary things that could happen if this doesn't pass that have already happened in Massachusetts. If you want to check it out and see more information, you can go to http://protectmarriage.com/. Also, my friend Alisa and her family went to the other corner today and did the same thing and also had a great experience. I really enjoyed reading what she wrote about it and thought maybe you would, too: http://schlegelrock.com/. And send your prayers and good thoughts our way for Tuesday!! This is a BIG deal!!