A Few Home Upgrades

We're getting closer to the much awaited birth of our lil Bean, and have gotten the home improvement bug. Not quite to the level of a few of our friends (TW tore his house completely down to the frames), but still enough work to keep us busy and sweating on the weekends. Here are two of the more major projects we worked on.

1. A new deck!!! We've been wanting to add a deck for a few years now, so this is a very welcome addition.

Here is our back patio before building.

Another view of the patio - you can see that there is barely enough room for Tica

And a view of the house from our back fence line

We are still waiting on the wrought iron railing, but here is the semi-final deck. We cut one of the side railings on the patio off and added access to the deck via 3 steps.

We also added another access to the deck from the landing of the existing stairs.

And finally, here's a view from the back fence line. As you can see, it's a pretty tall, so we're considering a small privacy fence so our neighbor, Lynn, doesn't feel as if we're stalking her

Now all we need are some cheap chairs, and some guests!!! Any takers?

2. Painted and added chair rail to the nursery. Tica is really the design inspiration behind this room. She chose the colors, ceiling fan, and the chair rail, and even a really cool light switch cover.

Before . . . drab, boring beige . . .

After . . . fun, gender-neutral, bright colors. Hopefully Bean likes the light!

We're really excited (and exhausted) about these new upgrades. Mostly because it means we are a few steps closer to being ready to receive the newest member of our family!!

Bayahibe - DR part 1

Here is a map of the Dominican Republic so you can follow along.

We arrived in Santiago last Friday night, spent the night at my parents house in La Vega, our bags didn’t make it but we made due with what we had and headed out to Bayahibe (just east of La Romana on the south East) for a weekend at an all-inclusive resort where we met the rest of the family.

Even though a bit cloudy that night the views and the beach were amazing. The water was so nice and warm even though outside it was cooling off a bit.

Sunday was the best day, weather was great and we got to enjoy the sun and the water with everyone.



Here are a couple of other cool shots Arves got to capture. He’s having a blast enjoying his camera and lenses.


More to come…

Dad in Town for Cap 10k

Arves' dad came down to run the Cap 10k with him and while he was here we went down to McKinney Falls to get the legs ready for a run the next day. Bluebonnets were in full bloom and Stan had a lot of fun posing for pictures.

Arves also got to enjoy his new lenses and all the new ways he can capture the scenery.






Race Day

The day was misty which helped keep the runners cool. Arves has a goal of sub 50 mins and completely destroyed it! He did finished at 47:58!!! Absolutely amazing; this was 30 seconds per mile faster than what he had been training at. So proud of him.

Stan also did really well and it was fun to have him come down for this. There were about 20,000 runners/walkers which is one of the biggest races in Texas.

I got to see both of them as well as some of our other friends who were competing at mile 3. I was ready for them with oranges and lots of cheering. It was super fun to see everyone compete I had the perfect spot to wait for them and didn't miss anyone this time.

Casey, Alisa and Millie!

I honestly never thought we would have Casey and Alisa ever come down to Texas, especially after they had Millie but they did and we had such a wonderful time!



Millie is the cutest and best well behaved baby ever. She's always happy to see you and has the cutest smile to show it. Just adorable.

Of course we did a lot of climbing so Casey could enjoy what Austin has to offer. The first weekend we went to Enchanted Rock, granite, and even though it ended up being slab climbing we got to enjoy a good hike and very nice weather.

While we were there we ran into our friend Gerardo and a couple of our other friends from work.

We went a couple of times to Reimers Ranch, limestone, which is one of our favorite climbing spots in Austin and I think Casey really liked it too. It has a really cool cave that the boys got to play at.

Here is Gerardo on Liposuction at the Sex Cave.

While Casey was here Arves got to try some of his super lenses on his camera and of course absolutely loved it to the point he had to get some of his own. Here are a couple of the shots he got. I have to admit he's getting really good

Rockport TX

I know it's been almost a year but maybe one of these days we'll getter at posting.

A couple of weeks ago we went down to the coast with our friends Steven and Jessica and it was such a fun trip. Jessica's grandparents live down in Rockport and we got to spend a couple of days with them and enjoy a bit of the ocean.

Even though the water was too cold we got to skip rocks and feed the birds off the balcony.

It rained a bit and we got to sleep on the porch. Jess demonstrated how to stay warm in the hammock, and during a brief rainstorm we saw the coolest bird, a Great Blue Heron.

Texas Blue Bonnets were in full bloom and we got some great shots. This is such a pretty time of the year.

Bathroom Renovation

Almost a year and not a single post. If it wasn’t for Facebook you might have thought we got lost in big old Texas.

The last couple of months really flew by; in April we went to Virgina to visit the family and run a ½ marathon with everyone. Then in May we went to the Dominican Republic to celebrate my birthday with the family; in June Arves had shoulder surgery and was in good enough shape to go on a hiking trip to the Rocky Mountain NP. You can see all these pictures in Facebook.

The weekend of Arves’ surgery we decided to go to Home Depot to “look” at tiles since we’ve been talking about tiling the bathroom upstairs. Before we knew it we had a design and ended up buying all the tile and most of the materials that day. It must have been the drugs from the surgery.

Here is a before picture of the shower. We hated the plastic walls.

Needless to say, Arves only had one arm and I ended up doing all the demolition work. I was really scared at the beginning but got a hang of it pretty quickly. To our surprise there were no walls behind the plastic wall so the project ended up being a bit more involved than we thought.

Our house was very dusty for about a month and overall it took us a month and a half to get most of the work done. After grouting we were so sick of it that we took a month and a half off. This weekend we just finished and it looks amazing!!


The before and after comparison: