Our new room

We have as new plastic bubble room! Last Friday the dishwasher sprung a leak and ruined the kitchen floor. Tomorrow the contractor starts ripping up the wet floor, then we live with a dehumidifier running for the weekend and hopefully by the end of next week we have our kitchen back. Stay tuned...

Sent from my U.S. Cellular® Android phone

Visiting in Salem

On our way to Spring Break vacation, we were able to stop in Salem and visit Seth's aide from his first few years of elementary school. Amber's oldest, Trae, was born on Seth's 8th birthday and her recent additions (9 months old) are Kingston and Marley. Aren't they gorgeous?

Here is Amber and Trae checking out Seth's movie collection. Terrence and Marley looking on.
Kingston and Marley giving Seth's game bag some close inspection.
Seth with Amber and her children.
It was so wonderful to visit, Amber hasn't seen Seth since 3rd grade. He was slightly taller this time! In fact, he's taller than her, as usual that made him very happy. I'm so glad we were able to make this stop, beautiful kids, beautiful family.

Seth's Mask

I love masks and this is Seth's mask he made in Art. I love it!

Teal to Orange

Today was ortho day, Lacey had her first set of wires changed on her braces. Each time you get to decide a new color. She chose orange. They look cool, but I just assumed we would do green for St. Patrick's Day. But.....what do I know?

Not Broken, Just Botoxed

Seth is resisting having his picture taken so I snuck one while at bowling. He has a fancy blue cast on his right arm in an attempt to stretch the wrist and not have it so bent. It's pre-cast position was making getting dressed difficult, his wrist has tightened so much that the palm was nearly laying on his forearm. Botox and casting is the least invasive option and other than the inconvenience of having a cast, it is pretty simple.

Three to four weeks of casting is what we are in for. Hopefully, we can keep it stretched better from this point forward and avoid needing to do this again for many years.

The Color of Money

Finally, Seth's room is done. I made his money valance, it is hung up with the black curtain rod and the black mini-blinds are up. It looks like it would make his room really dark and small looking, but I think it actually just "manned it up a bit". The room does not appear smaller in person, it looks nice. Most of all Seth is happy with it.

Montpelier Olive

Seth is finally getting his room painted, he has waited patiently for years I have to say with his room being a mish-mash of things. Years ago, when he was three he had a racecar room. Racecar bed, comforter with racecars, a painting of one of the cars on his wall and the checkerboard valance. The bed and comforter are long gone but he has still had the other elements. It really was time for a change. So, the new theme is money, and as long as you don't look at all of the eclectic items that he insists be on the walls, one might even be able to find the money theme. At least his comforter and valance will reflect that theme. The deer head, bull horns, and country window fit in there somewhere -- only Seth can explain. With new paint on the walls and all of his various wall decorations, it is, let's say......interesting.

Here's a kind of before picture (I had already started to paint one wall before I realized I needed to get a before picture):

The racecar painting that has long been out of style.
I hired a high school kid to paint this back in 2000, it matched a car that was on his comforter.
That same wall without a racecar. : (

Before picture by the door:

After: (Yes that is a Davy Crocket hat hanging on bull horns -- Seth style)

The third wall complete with country window that he loves, the flag, the moon and medals. I do not choose the placement of these items, his sense of style speaks for itself. : )

That is as far as I got this weekend. The color is Montpelier Olive. The final window wall will have to wait until next weekend and then we should be able to put his room back into some kind of order. The window wall will be even a darker green (called April Arbor). The colors are a little dark but actually look good with the oak. Seth loves it and that is really all that matters.

L-Train!

Today was the day, Lacey had her braces put on. The before picture:

The during picture. At this point, she has had some difficulty with the bands being put on and she is less than thrilled with the glue used. She says it tasted like a mouthful of pepper. Here, we have everything but wire.
All done, wire in place, teal blue bands chosen this time. She was disappointed there were only four brackets, but Dr. explained that he needs to do some moving around of teeth before he can bracket the others. Won't get bottom brackets for a couple of months, but the hard part (bands around the molars) is done so it will just be a simple visit to add brackets. Actually, not a simple visit as two baby teeth will be pulled and anchors inserted but a piece of cake compared to the bands.

Since she has new fancy tracks, and we enjoy watching the Blazers, she has decided to be "Lacey, otherwise known as L-Train!". Don't understand? LaMarcus Aldridge, Blazers, L-Train .......... I guess you just have to be there. = )

Our Hike

We spent plenty of time relaxing and soaking up the sun today. Nadine took us on a hike at some park that we cannot remember the name of. We saw Saguaro cactus and many other kinds that I also can't remember the name of. I obviously did not pay close enough attention to the names of things today. All of the pics of Phoenix can be seen athttp://picasaweb.google.com/familyhendrickson .

First, we had trauma. Niambh is administering "plasters" (bandaids in English). They are from Ireland and we have had many a hilarity at words that are OK here and not there, and vice versa.

This is a bridge over a.........river. They claim this is a river which apparently needs a bridge, but I feel like the character in Indiana Jones saying "You call that a river, THIS is a river!". = ) If this river doesn't have water in the middle of winter I really can't believe it has water any other time of the year!
Cactus, unknown name, even though I was told by Nadine I promptly forgot.
This one I know, it's a Saguaro.

Puzzle Box

I have been wanting to make a bigger peyote box for a long time. The only patterns I can find are for small, albeit very cute, boxes. So, I took the 5-sided box pattern and added many rows to it both for the base and the sides, drew my own "puzzle" pattern, picked out rather bright obnoxious beads and wala!

I tried to make myself keep track of the hours spent, but I kept forgetting to write them down. I know I have at least 50 hours and probably more. I need to transfer the pattern from my hand-drawn one to a computer design and then the computer program will give me a bead count. If I were to guess, probably about 9,000 beads.