Babysitting, Sorta

My neighbor had an appt to go to the other morning, so I watched her daughter Callie, and son Lincoln for a few hours. Surprisingly, everyone was pretty happy the whole time. Callie put Olivia to sleep in her arms, and the boys watched Veggietales and Toy Story 2 while they ate their grapes and animal crackers :)




Then Callie helped me make Albondigas Soup--it was very good!
I got this recipe from John's mom Lulu.

Here I put Callie to work chopping the carrots, celery, onion, and bell pepper.

Here we mixed the ingredients for the meatballs: 1 lb ground beef, 1 lb ground turkey, brown rice, italian bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, eggs, milk, salt, and worshershershershire sauce lol.

We had to wait for Susan to come back with my Rotel tomatoes, but then we made the broth, and put everything in:


Taking a break with Lucas:

A few simmering hours later:

Thanks Callie!

House Stuff

I am pretty sore all over. I thought I would show the progress we have made in prepping our house for renters. I met with a property manager who surveyed the house to assess what we can get. I told him of a few projects we still have to finish, and that we are leaving nice stainless steel appliances and a nice GE washer and dryer, and he is confident we can get $1450 which is pretty much our mortgage. Made us feel a little better about the transition.

He offered to have his contractors come do my projects for me and gave me a list of pricing for each. The prices were reasonable, but with encouragement from my very independent and skillful neighbor who does EVERYTHING while her husband is overseas, I decided to take on some of them myself. I pulled all the weeds in the front garden and scraped out as much of the white rock I could, to lay down mulch and plant these nice chinese holly shrubs. I bought these ferns which I think add to the appeal of the front of the house.

Before

After

I already replaced the front light fixture, and FINALLY affixed our address to the house lol. For 3 years we've allowed deliveries to rely on the addresses around us lol.

Then I removed the sink vanity downstairs...that was hard. I turned off the water supply to both valves. That vanity top was really glued/caulked into the wall. I used a pry-bar and flathead screwdriver and eventually got it out, but with much damage to the drywall. I took out the mirror, disconnected the sink, and had John carefully lift that HEAVY vanity top to put in the garage and take to the dump. Then I pulled out the actual cabinet, which was harder than I thought (it was almost exactly the length of the wall, so it was crammed in).



I worried about the drywall damage, but looked up DIY videos on youtube and decided to try these steel plates that can mend sheetrock holes. I also bought a big tub of joint compound. Those mending things are amazing. I first sanded down the area, there was a big hole on this side:





Then I placed some joint compound in the hole, covered it with the steel plate, attached to mesh/netting. It had an adhesive side, so I made sure it was flush with the wall, and applied the compound to the outside. Let dry overnight, sand, repeat. For the money and work, they are well-worth it compared to replacing a huge piece of sheetrock.

Then I picked a darker tan color to paint the bathroom, and am finishing my second coat today. We took out the old baseboards and quarter-round and bought new ones. We are currently waiting to hear back from people about extending the woodfloors into the bathroom, as we have a lot of leftover wood. Once that is in, we can add the final touches---I found this small vanity and sink for $34 at Home Depot! Still looking for a nice mirror though.

John wanted to spend more money, but I convinced him $34 was the way to go--especially for a downstairs halfbath, and especially for renters.

I know the color seems dark, but that light in there is so bright, it works. I think once we have the sink and mirror and flooring put in, it will look great



Then we had my brother James' friend Bryan (who has his own Landscaping company at age 20!) come over to maintain our yard, as our lawnmower stopped working as I was cutting the grass...he and his co-worker did a great job--lined up the lawn/driveway, weedwhacked around the house too! Today he came and repaired the back deck (from dog damage), and power-washed it, so he can re-stain it tomorrow. All for a very good price, plus the price of supplies of course. He also powerwashed the front of the house which looks nice and clean and white now. :) We have hired him to do our lawns twice a month, up until we have renters in november, to whom we will also recommend his services.



Everything's powerwashed and clean!

He's going to re-stain it tomorrow. I think it will look great.
Anyway, it's not all finished yet, but the house is coming together. Our next big thing is painting the rest of the house..what a tiring task. How will I do it while keeping L + O away from it, and keep them from breathing in the fumes? We'll make it work. I hope it will pay off. Once I complete the bathroom, I will take more pics. I am pretty proud that I was able to do a lot more on my own, and for less money. It makes me want to do more things (more personalized) to our next house.

More checks marked off on the list :)

Big Boy Stuff

We are treating Lucas like a bigger boy these days. Here he is in his big kid bed the first morning--he stays in it all night so far, but likes getting out by himself in the morning :)



Then he went to wake up daddy:

And we went and bought him some new shoes at Payless. He was so good while the lady checked his foot size and tried shoes on him. We ended up buying light up buzz lightyear sneakers, and (BOGO) got a pair of Spongebob vans a size bigger for him to use when he grows out of the buzzes.


Then we had lunch at Red Robin. It was a fun day, and tax-free here in VA.



he loves making them light up! He had to try out his trick in them:

Some L + O Video

Lucas loves the letter 'B'. Any words with B in it, he loves to try to say...boobies, birdies, baby, belly button, beep beep, and in this video, he tries to say "berry" for raspberry. Then he pushes Olivia, and last he gives her a kiss. He does care for her, but I think he still sees himself as the baby of the house, and Olivia as the family pet lol.

Been a While!

Got our computer back and cleaned up! It wasn't so bad to be without it when John was home. We did more with the babies and fixing the house up! But I missed putting up my baby pictures and documenting their developments.






Olivia is sitting up very well on her own, and sometimes bends all the way down to bite her feet, and her back is strong enough to lift herself all the way back up. Trying to crawl on her tummy, but not quite lifted off the ground yet.
Lucas gets kinda jealous of her attention, and is pretty much constantly doing bad things and crying when I say "No!" He is nice and mean to O. He likes to give her kisses--and he's really nice and gentle about it---not sloppy like John lol. But then he likes to push her back when she is sitting up. She doesn't like that! The other day I was washing dishes, heard her crying and found her on her belly trying to crawl while Lucas sat on her head!! I don't know why he thinks that is okay.
They are sleeping alright in the nursery, but Lucas had his whole leg over the railing of his crib...and the mattress was already lowered all the way..so to prevent him from falling from so high up (which I did when was his age...and had a seizure..) I took off the railing and installed these 2 big boy bed semi-rails to keep him from rolling off. We tried to act like nothing was different so he wouldn't just keep getting out and wandering around. He did well last night and is still sleeping!
I am going to do a separate blog about the house and renting it. But here are some pictures of whats been going on with the Hodge's:





My mom bought her and lucas some clothes---isn't this dress cute? Its for 18 month olds lol...

Viral

Sorry no updates and photos and video or rantings lately...our computer got a bad virus (one of those that acts like it's selling you "antivir solution" anti-virus software.) It is being cleaned out and everything we own (like 90 GBs of our babies!) is being saved to an external drive. From now on we are taking extra precautions with our info and identity etc. Probably will be back to blogging tomorrow if Best Buy finishes cleaning it up. Til then, here are the few pics I have of Lucas and I in the front yard the other day--I installed that outdoor light all by myself! (the one we had stopped working and was old and dirty.)

I started to pull the weeds from the garden but it was too hot and my back has been killing me..probably because i've been responsible for carrying ~50 extra lbs around! We WILL get this house and yard ready for rental within the next 2 months!

I hope you all are well-Thanks for checking us out!