playing catch-up

Yikes! It's been three weeks since the last post. So much has been going on.

Maeve's loving 2nd grade! She starts Brownies this week, has been busy on her soccer team, and had fun with her best friend (Kaitlyn Thiele) at a sleepover this weekend.

Fletcher seems to really enjoy preschool, though he has yet to learn anyone's name. He's also started Sunday school preschool during 9:30am mass on Sundays, and his buddy (Jack Thiele) is in there so he has lots of fun.

Sean has been hard at work on the basement and it's coming along really well. We have a carpet guy coming tomorrow to patch pieces of carpet to the bare spots left from the wall coming down. We have one wall painted "Hulk green" and it looks great! We will likely miss our deadline of having it all done by Saturday's VA Tech game, but it should be done by the end of the month...yeah!

I have been having lots of fun with the family, and am now officially one week into my 16-month master's degree program. So far, I haven't failed out yet! The program, Masters of Science in Organizational Performance from Bellevue Univ, is all online - so I'm boosting my technological skills more every day!

Here are a few pictures from Sean's mom's 70th birthday party a week ago, and recent pix of the kids. Enjoy!

Fletcher started preschool this morning at Sonshine Christian Preschool :) As noted in early posts, he wasn't exactly "excited" about going - but he was all smiles this morning. I think he was really excited about it. No tears from him at all, or from Sean and I (which surprised me). Here are a few pics of him at home in the morning - can you tell he was still a bit tired? It's a very overcast day, which didn't help him wake right up in the morning! His "bucket" we decorated at home. This is what they transport their papers and art projects in to and from school. The last couple pics are from him at school, even one with his teacher Mrs. Waller.

I'll post more this afternoon, once I see him home at lunch and get the full report of how everything went.

break on through to the other side

Well long story long, last weekend our TV died. We bought it 11 years ago, when we first started dating, and almost had it free because Nebraska ended up as National Champs in football that season (unfortunately, we were #1 in the wrong poll for the Nebraska Furniture Mart). Anyway, I digress - that TV finally bit the bullet, and we went to the Mart to buy a new TV - something we hadn't done in over 7 years! So welcome, Kellys, to the world of HD!

Well after we bought the TV and we were waiting for it to come in, my adorable husband brought up the fact that we'd been wanting to knock down the wall in our basement separating the two small rooms down there. He declared there was no time like the present - we wouldn't want to watch that super cool new TV down in that old small room, which was a good point - so on Thursday, he started demolition.

Here are a few pictures from the initial day or two of demolition:

This brief video clip is especially funny, as Sean does his "Hulk" impersonation:

Now here are a few from the end of the weekend - he, and his friend Doug, really got A LOT accomplished. I don't know if you can tell or not, but they really did:

Here's a brief video clip of the view all around:

It's all really exciting - though our house is a mess of a place right now - we're hoping to have it all done by the end of the month (by the VA Tech game to be exact). I think the extra 11 ft to the room (about 143 sq ft) will really make a big difference!