Gone Missing Again

I promise that I am not gone forever.  Can't believe that January has come and almost gone.  What have we been up to?

The city has been at it on our street for the last 3 weeks.  So over it... This is after having the gas company replace all the lines in our street right as we were installing kitchen cabinets in Oct/Nov.  Looks like they are pretty much past our driveway as of today but the no parking signs say that the won't be done until April :(  Glad that the sewer pipes will be new BUT....

This little guy continues to keep us busy.  But he is just so much fun (most of the time).  He is one chatty cathy.  He started preschool the first week of January-I just can't believe how time has flown by...

 
This really has been eating a ton of our time.  But well worth it-so liberating. This is a pic of Steve's brother, and his wife, Amber listing books on Amazon.  As promised in December, we have gone head first into the hoard.   I am pretty excited as we actually (this is really cool) already sold quite a few books on amazon and at Powell's book store.  We have been meeting 1-2 times a week for the last couple weeks trying to get 'er done.  Really want to get through a large part of it before the babe comes.  Also cleaned out all our clothes as well as my craft supplies. 

Speaking of my brother in law and sister in law, they are expecting twin boys in June!  Our family is almost going to double in size in the matter of a couple weeks!  We can't wait!

A depressing use of our time has been on what is shown above.  We were lucky enough to be able to purchase a rental home just over a year ago.  Unfortunately, our tenant (who was great for the first year) decided to have a party just prior to moving out and caused pretty extensive damage to the house.  You might expect this from a young kid who has never rented a home, but a 30-something man who was a home owner in the past?  So depressing.  Fortunately, my parents came to visit a couple weeks ago and my dad was able to complete some of the repairs for us.  However, we still have spent several weekends and nights at the house finishing repairs, cleaning and doing other general maintenance.  The cleaning crew is there now and the new tenants move in Friday!

After 10 months, we even got our laundry chute door hung.  We had it made last March when we had a cabinet made for the bathroom and it has been sitting in the hallway ever since.  It only took 10 minutes and two trips to the hardware store (one for a magnetic catch and one for finish nails) to get it done.  Wow, does our hallway look better and why didn't we do that sooner?

We enjoyed how gorgeous Portland was after a night frost!  And even made it to the local mountains for some tubing!  I was the photographer as being preggo and tubing don't exactly mix-boo!

And if you are on the look out for an awesome kitchen or other part of the house cabinet, this guy is for sale.  I bought it at an estate sale a couple years ago with plans to refinish it and use it in the kitchen.  As our kitchen plans evolved, we realized that it wouldn't fit into our plans.  It is super cool as the hinges are original and all the lower cabinets are actually glass that is painted.  I really was hoping it would work in the basement but our ceilings are too low.  I paid $100 for it and we are hoping to sell it for that so please let me know if you are interested. 

We have a lot of house stuff happening in the next few weeks so stay tuned....happy super bowl weekend!