Oh, Hey, I Remember Blogging

I suppose I should talk about how sorry I am about not blogging in such a loooong time. But instead, I'll just do some pics n' bullet points about what's been going on in the Leveille household in the 6 months since I last talked on here...

Scott and Ben hard at work tearing the laundry room out!

Ok first up is some home improvements! We hit the house stuff pretty hard this spring and early summer because of Scott's 2nd shoulder surgery (more on that later). Here's what we did:

• Bathroom--stripped the old wallpaper, saying "au revoir" to the toile...made me a little sad, but it was time for a change. And if I ever try to wallpaper something again, slap me. Stripping wallpaper is NO fun!
• Bathroom--got repainted to Pale Gold 2 and the trim done in turquoise with an antique-ing and brown glaze to tone down the blue. Definitely a very different style!
• Laundry Room--we totally demo-ed! The "before" LR was a lean-to type of room tacked onto the back stoop outside the kitchen. Some of the college group guys came over and had fun slinging sledge hammers through the walls!
• Laundry Room--we hired a general contractor to help with the re-design. The new LR is about triple the size! The back door was moved, the hot water heater has its own little closet, and I have LOTS of storage space! 
• The rest of the front facade was re-sided to the cedar shingles and the door and window trims re-worked. No more shutters, but pretty, wide woodwork! The front of the house is now much more presentable!
• Deck--oh golly...the poor deck was demo-ed, but hasn't been put back together yet...but we've re-designed it and it will be bigger, wrap around the side to the back, meeting the new laundry room addition. Hopefully we will have that finished soon!

Laundry Room in the middle of demo!

So, while the laundry room was torn apart, we had to live with my mom, because the hotwater heater lived in said laundry room, and it spent 6 weeks in the middle of the backyard. Can't live very long without hot water! But, my mom was very gracious, letting us take over her house, doing our laundry, and generally putting up with our messiness. And, as home improvement tend to go, an estimated 1 week project turned into 6 weeks. 

At the end of which, Scott had his 2nd shoulder surgery, stemming from an injury when we were overseas last summer on missions. 

So here's how THAT weekend in June went down:

Scott has surgery + staying overnight in hospital + Ann Marie coming down with stomach flu + lack of sleep because of hospital neighbor singing all night/Scott in crazy post-op pain/Ann Marie running to the bathroom + Ann Marie in mini-tern at UAB with crazy amounts of papers to write + a house that was torn apart and dirty = we were REEAALLLY glad to be staying at Mom's house! :(

OK I think that I've reached my writing limit for this afternoon...stay tuned and I might will finish the story later this week. 

I'm trying to be more disciplined in writing....but don't hold your breath! ;)