Renovation and city living

Here's the kitchen. Larry and Brandon are taking the cupboards down to open it up to the dining area. The mint green is being replaced with a gray called "polished silver". See the school bus yellow up top? Gone! Both rooms are going gray with white trim, white cupboards, and all new black appliances. Poor Larry bought a fridge, moved it in and for 4 days it never got cold. He had to go to Lowes, pay to rent their truck, come back to the house, load the non-working one in, drop it off at Lowes, exchange for the floor model, come home, unload that one, and return the truck. THEY should have done all that and not charged him. It was one of those 85 degree high humidity days too. After all that he wasn't even upset, he was just glad to finally have a cold beer.



Here's where I started painting the walls gray.



Junior hasn't figured out that the stove is a stove. It's actually a very cool sleeping spot on warmer days.



Bear likes the fridge cause no one bugs him up there. Specially puppies.



This probably isn't a big deal to some but we have a street cleaner that comes through the hood. A "street cleaner". At the other place we didn't even have a street.



See the gunk on the left of the window? Yeah they were suppose to fix a cracked window. They replaced just the pane of glass and left all this silicone crap all over the edges.

Tony only lives a few minutes from us so he visits a lot. One morning I had to pick Brandon up over there and was sitting in the car while it sprinkled rain out. I just sat there thinking how convenient it was to be able to get anywhere in less than 15 minutes now. There were buildings all around. I love the city. I took this shot of Tonys building through the windshield and I thought it came out kinda cool.

Ok just a little more Tyson

Then I'll show more of the house. Trust me, Tyson is better lookin than the house is right now. Were only about half renovated.

Larry napping with the baby. He did a boo-boo on the bed on the 1st day and Larry groaned out loud and it hasn't happened since. Of course it's only been 5 days now. I haven't even made the bed yet. I keep making excuses.



Tyson looking out the bedroom window to the backyard while Larry braces the new fence so he can pour concrete into the post holes. He stared at him for a long time so I had to get a picture.



Jasmine has a love/hate relationship with him. She loves him but he keeps challenging her. They play a lot, but sometimes he goes too far and tries to climb her or he approaches her with a front leg up as if to hit her. If she doesn't play he growls at her and acts dominant. I don't think he has a clue how tiny he is. She really likes him when he's sleeping.



These are some of my favorite pics so far:







Please don't pick on me about dressing him up. It got down into the high 40s a couple nights and was still chilly early in the mornings. We even had some days that didn't get out of the 60's for a high. He has thin little baby hairs and his belly is almost bald. I bought him a fleece lined vest. Luckily he can still pee with it on since it's not too close to his wee-wee.

The lady we got Tyson from emailed me a photo of his Dad. Is he impressive or what?



Yesterday we took Tyson to visit Larry at work. He's not in the field right now, he's doing estimates in the office where there were 5 other people to meet, lick, and nibble on. Then he had his first trip to Petsmart to get bitter apple and a couple more squeeky toys. He was very well behaved and hardly moved at all. He just sat there and looked innocent. He had everyone fooled.

Meet Tyson

Before I add more photos of the move and house renovations I want to show you what we did this weekend. This is something we discussed and checked into, and Friday night it became a reality. Since Kayla's been gone I haven't had that safe feeling, and we started talking about getting another dog. The girls love the new house but they miss Bruiser and Chloe, so we got them a new friend. We decided it was best to do BEFORE Larry puts in the new flooring.





Here's a video of his first time in the backyard. I love his expression at :10



I know what you're thinking, sweet and innocent. Yeah, not so much. I expected him to miss his Mom and his litter mates, and maybe have trouble falling asleep or even cry and whine. No. Nothing. He has 2 speeds. Sleep, and terrorize. Doesn't matter what. Could be kitties, could be frail old Jasmine or Sheena, could be a pillow or remote control, sometimes it's a chew toy. The only time I heard him slightly upset was when I made up a bed for him in a big box with chew toys and told him nite-nite. Even then I don't think it was sadness. I think he was threatening to kick my ass in puppyspeak.

Here I got a shot of him in action. I love this picture, and it pretty much sums up his personality.



If he persists too much and we don't stop him, Jasmine barks at him. You'd think he'd get scared. Nope. He backs up a foot for a running start and dive-bombs her, yapping while he does it. Then he'll back up again and let out the meanest growl.

Here's rare footage of him playing nicely:



Can you believe our yard sounds like a nature CD in the middle of the city? It has been drizzley and chilly for a couple days so I bought him a vest last night. They only had 1 kind left for boys. The rest were pink or had tutus on them so I just bought the one they had available. I'll post a picture of him in it soon. I got *the look* for getting him clothing, but I swear it wasn't a fashion statement. It's down around 50 for the last 2 nights and only a high in the 60's. I don't want him getting sick!

We Moved!

Lemme just say HOLY COW cable is fast. I was gonna hit the upload button on these 4 pictures and then go get a drink while I waited but I didn't even have time to remove my ass from the chair, let alone leave the room.

So it took a little longer to get back online than I expected. I have had so much trouble leaving Dish Network (and we're still not in the clear yet) that I wasn't in a big hurry to get the cable hooked up. We have been extremely busy and didn't even have time to sit in front of a tv or computer. We still don't but I'm making time hehe :) Here's a little glimpse of the last 3 weeks of our life. I have lots more but don't want to dump them all on you at once.

My handsome Bear, who has been an indoor kitty for (I think) 17 days now? He seems to be doing fine since he has a new house to inspect. Me, on the other hand, well I have lots more kitty box cleaning to do.



Jasmine *loved* the moving truck. Loved it. We showed her how she could walk up the ramp to get inside to look around, then we made her come out so we could fill it up. Yeah that didn't happen. She kept going back in.



Here she is again inspecting the livingroom. She had a permanent smile on her face the first week. She loves anything to do with car rides and going places to investigate. We even took her and Sheena to the Humane Society on Monday to get caught up on shots and their new city licenses, and she was like a kid in a toy store. She loved it. Sheena did ok. She wasn't scared, just a little difficult because of her hind leg weakness.



And this is the catch-all room which is soon to be my office. Most of this stuff had a very rough trip in the back of the truck and lots of it was tipped upside down.



We ended up not taking Hims Orange. The last week there we worked with him to acclimate him to being indoors and it did not work at all. He seriously could not give up being outside. To make matters worse, at one point when he did come in, Alex beat the crap out of him and Larry had to try and break it up. I helped by trying to jump in between them every time it split up (I thought some shrill screaming would help too) but Alex made it back to him 4 times as they ran all over the house. We decided it wasn't going to work out and didn't want to have cats under the same roof that hate each other, since we have already spent a few years like that with Bear and Blue and it was exhausting. This move has made me realize how much work cats really are!! I thought dogs were more work, but my girls have just gone with the flow, while my cats have been behaving rather badly. Junior howled like a Halloween recording almost the whole way, Bear broke out of his carrier twice and demanded to ride on the dash board and spewed so much hair all over the car that I had to pull over and get Brandon to leave the moving truck and come help me. He had to ride with his hand IN the carrier patting the little brat. When we finally got him to the house he flopped belly up on our bed (which was already set up and he recognized it) and he started purring. He's such a character. As for Alex, he wished me dead. He just stared at me with his 1 eye and wished death threats on me. He adapted after a couple days though and everyone is happy now. Except for me cleaning cat boxes twice a day. Who knew the trip to simplicity was going to be so hectic???

I have lots more to share.. lots has happened and I have lots of pictures... I just didn't think you'd want to read a 20 million word blog post with 40 pictures :) I'll post more when I get some time. The weekend is here and I will be doing a bunch of house stuff, plus Larry is having some home renovation friends come over to look at our kitchen. As we started putting in appliances and taking off cupboard doors for painting we realized the bottom cabinets may all have to come out. Fun fun.

~~~~~~ I have almost 3,000 new emails, only about 10% is real and the rest is junk or group mail but I am going through it some and will try to get caught up, incase anyone emailed me and I haven't answered yet.~~~~~~