It is difficult to come back here, but I know it’s what we need to do. Our house still stands, and it needs to be maintained. For those of you who do not read my main blog or other areas of this site, our youngest daughter Lily passed away from SUDC on February 16th. Our last post to this blog was just two days before that. We had no idea that our lives were about to be turned upside down.

Our last project was William’s room. We painted, bought a new valance and quilt, and gave him a TV/DVD combo. Here’s how it turned out:

(Click here to see more photos.)

When we got home after the funeral, I couldn’t handle sleeping in our room. I did not want to be back in the place where I was when Lily passed, and the thought of it set me into a deep panic. Someone suggested that we should make some changes to the room, to make it cheery and different. We got to work, and came up with a a sky blue and spring green color scheme. The end result:

(Click here to see more photos.)

Two months have gone by, and this house is finally feeling like something other than the place where our worst nightmare turned into reality. I could not bear the thought of touching anything in Lily’s room, until it hit me one day that she would never come back for any of it. It was devastating to see all of her toys collecting dust, and clothes hanging in the closet that she would never grow into. We slowly began the process of neatly packing up her things into storage bins. We donated all of her furniture, but kept everything else. We weren’t sure how to feel. Again, someone suggested making changes. We painted the walls in silence. It was unlike any home improvement project we ever started. There was no reward in it; just desperation for a feeling of peace. We bought a dresser and chair so that it wouldn’t feel so empty. My parents bought us a rug to absorb the haunting echo in the room.

(Click here to see more photos.)

(Click here to see photos of Lily’s room as we remember it.)

I have begun to call this our “peace room”. We found some special wall hangings with angels and bible verses on them. We placed a pot of lilies, which my sister sent to us, near the window. The room is now a place where we can pray and talk to Lily. It is no longer a painful reminder that she passed there.

We have set up little memorials for Lily throughout the house. There is a dedication in the entryway, and a shelf of trinkets in our bedroom. We also filled a basket with all of her favorite stuffed animals, and placed it on our dresser. Outside, we planted a magnolia tree for her. It is in the back yard, close to the swing set. It appears to be ready to bloom:

We have reluctantly started on the usual spring projects. The gate had nearly fallen apart. Two pickets fell off about a year ago, and no adhesive and clamps on earth could put them back. Our PVC fencing was discontinued, and most stores stopped selling similar products. Buying another gate didn’t seem to be an option. The dog kept jumping through the gap and running into the neighbor’s yard! That settled it. We had to do something about the gate.

I’m not proud to say it, but I finally pieced everything back together with white duct tape! I found one of the missing pickets, and pulled another from a small leftover section in the garage.

I cleared our garden in the front yard while the kids played on the driveway.

I will start planting annuals there soon. Micah reseeded the hill by the front door. Barney is our first dog, and we had no idea what his urine would do to our lawn. Live and learn, I guess. We hope to see new grass sprouting up before our families visit in a few weeks.

We’ve done a few other minor things in the last month or so. We replaced the ugly $19.00 light fixture in the kitchen. I have touched up paint in a few areas. We still hope to install a window in the living room (on the east side of the house) so that we can have proper circulation with our giant air conditioner. That may happen in a few months. In the meantime, our focus (on the home front, anyway), is yard work. Micah bought a cordless rechargeable edge trimmer over winter, so that should make things easier. I hope we can get back into what needs to be done.

This year’s beautiful apple blossoms have been replaced with beautiful, actually edible apples! It’s not nearly as good as our crop from 2007, but we had a lot of fun apple picking in our own yard today. It seems very early in the season for us to find so many that were ready.

Micah always spots the good ones:

Will attempts to join in on the fun (he insisted on having his own red apples):

What we have picked so far:

It’s time to bake a pie! I can figure it out, I swear…

We haven’t been doing much in the way of home improvements, but we are in need of an update! I brought more shells home from the little shop on Bearskin Neck (see last year’s shells). This year’s collection went in the master bedroom.

I wish we had more time for vacations. I would love to have mementos all over the house from our travels!

I didn’t think the flowers would survive through our week away, but we were lucky! It also helps when you have a (fantastic) friend who is willing to stop by and water your plants!

There are some spots to fill in the front. I haven’t planned this out yet, but I am inspired by everything that is already growing here!

We are in a lazy sort of slump. Grilling and running through the sprinkler have taken precedence over paintbrushes… for now. We can’t keep ignoring the fact that our gutters are in terrible shape, so that’s next. They are in need of some maintenance!

This is all over the hill in the front yard:

I did a bit of detective work, and found out that it is called White Clover. I’m not sure if that is the same clover that has spread all over the lawn.

I also learned that those ugly yellow blades of grass, which are caused by poor soil drainage, are called Yellow Nutsedge.

Great. We have weeds, and it probably means our lawn is “nitrogen deprived”. Now that the science lesson is over, I’d love to find out how to get rid of them. I suspect this is the common objective!

One article suggested spreading sugar all over the lawn. I’m thinking that’s not so conducive to our recent victory against household ant invaders. I found a plethora of other “solutions” which would kill the clover and the lawn. I guess none of these people have four kids under the age of eight. As much as I would love to spend a day carelessly reseeding the entire lawn, it’s just not happening.

I also welcome any tips for our apple trees. The first year, we assumed it yielded only crab apples. We had an amazing crop in 2007 that made even the neighbors ask if they could pick some apples. After that, nothing. They are always consumed before they finish growing. We’ve tried spraying several times, but nothing ever seems to work. I wonder if we will ever pick edible apples from that tree again. So sad.

On the upside, our hydrangeas have started to come out. It may be my only gardening/landscaping victory of the month.

The front steps are welcoming too:

I need to get back to my research before I impulsively dump vinegar all over the lawn.

I made a quick run to Walmart tonight for a few odds and ends. I walked out with this:

I keep telling Micah we have a water feature now. At first, he thought I was serious. It is cute though! I was looking for a flower pot when I spotted the big red sticker. It was $30.00!

I (haphazardly) planted the daisies around the bird bath. I have a plan, I swear. It’s just going to take a while before I can immerse myself into it. That’s even more difficult when you have a one-year-old and a screaming four-year-old running around with blue sand all over his hands. In case you were wondering, that cute, colorful Crayola sand is a terrible mess (particularly because it’s in a water table).

I managed to find enough time to put the gazebo up and relax there for a while. I didn’t realize how much I missed it. It definitely has become one of my favorite things about summer! We just need to get some weeding done and put a new spark plug on the edge trimmer.

This won’t be one of our substantial updates, but it’s definitely worth posting! Micah mowed the lawn for the first time this year. Actually, he finished half of it before running out of time. He plans to finish it tomorrow. The excitement in all of this stems from the fact that we have a new lawnmower!

(Honda HRR216VKA)

It was my birthday present from my parents. They heard me venting about all the problems we were having with ours, so it was a really nice gesture. The old one didn’t mulch, and it wasn’t self-propelled. We had no idea what we were missing. This is awesome! Our lawn has never looked better…. Half of it, anyway. As I have said before, that’s a lot of lawn.

Here’s Micah and the bane of his existence the lawn. Only those who know him very well will understand this:

He will feel better once we’ve bought some of this. I burnt huge spots last year when I was in psycho nesting overdrive, so I think it’s best to leave it to him this time around.

Our apple trees are in full bloom right now:

I haven’t started working in the yard yet, aside from pulling some weeds here and there, but I finally found an angel statue. I have been looking for the right one for years. This one reminds me of my tattoo. I can finally make a little garden for our angel babies.

I bought some English daisies last week because they seemed perfect, but now I’m reading that they will spread. I still know nothing about flowers, and very little about gardening in general. I keep hoping that, as the kids get older, I will have more time (and patience) to work on it. We have a lot of older people and retirees in our neighborhood, and their gardens are incredible. Now that we can mow the lawn in half the time, there will be more time to learn!

My former next-door neighbor sent us a very nice letter last week. She had stumbled upon this site and noticed this post from December. I never did find Christmas dishes on the clearance racks, but she had a beautiful set and offered it to us for free! She stopped by today, and I was sort of shocked. There were literally boxes filled with every matching piece imaginable! If you are reading this, thank you again! We will use these dishes for many years to come. I organized the kitchen cabinets so they would all fit.

I decided, on a whim, to tackle the overgrown mess near the front steps. I’m sure it was nicely landscaped at one time, but it turned into a mound of ivy and weeds. The edge trimmer got it down to this:

I bought some endless summer hydrangea, plantain lilies, and royal purple veronica flowers. I still have no idea what I’m doing, but I think it looks pretty good:

I hope they will get enough shade. The big tree out front should help.

This is how Micah and my Dad spent father’s day:

The gazebo is up! I can’t take any credit for this. They worked very hard, and it turned out great. I have visions of quiet dinners without bugs, and hours in the shade with Lily while the kids play. I’ll take a picture soon. We can start grilling as soon as Micah replaces the ignitor.

Up next: The downstairs bathroom loses the built-in cabinet and gets a new vanity.

It takes 2 1/2 – 3 hours to mow our lawn (as you can see here). Micah always gets the mowing done on his day off. Meanwhile, I take the edge trimmer along the fence and steps, trim the bushes and rip out some random weeds. The lawn bags fill up quickly. The town only picks up lawn waste every two weeks, so this is what we’re left with after mowing twice:

It’s pretty disgusting, actually. The bags smell too bad to keep in the garage, so we just hide them along the left side of the house (where there are no windows). Have I mentioned how glad I am that Micah handles all things lawn? He’s very good about helping out with things I hate to do (like emptying the dishwasher). Lucky me!

A few months ago, I painted the sink top in the downstairs bathroom. I knew this wasn’t a permanent solution, but I figured it would work until we got around to replacing the sink… Then, the kids discovered it and thought, “Wow! Peeling paint and throwing it everywhere is fun!” We can’t ignore it anymore.

One of our home’s many previous owners added the bathroom sometime in the 1970s or 1980s. It was in total disrepair when we first moved in, and we had to hire someone to replace a lot of the plumbing. The last step is the sink. It sits on top of a built-in cabinet and has unusual dimensions. The “vanity top” is a piece of plywood with a thin fiberglass (I presume) material glued to the top. The sink itself is porcelain, and it has many chips and stains. Hopefully, we can rip it out soon!

We’re still waiting to hear about the driveway. We had it repaired about two months ago, and now we want to have it sealed. The company said they’d get back to us when they started sealing for the season.

We’ve been looking for a screened gazebo for the back patio. The patio is 13 x 13, but I doubt we’ll find one that will cover the entire thing. Most of them seem to be 10 x 12. It would be nice to have a shaded place, away from bugs, to sit with Lily while the kids play.

Lastly, we ordered a new gate. One of the pickets broke off the existing one. We tried just about everything, but it wouldn’t attach again. That should be ready to pick up any day now.

The ceiling fan in William’s room was old and obnoxiously noisy. We had been meaning to replace it for a long time, but I was very picky about what I wanted. It’s a very small room, so it couldn’t be larger than 44 inches. I hate the multiple-lights-with-shades look (I had that issue in the living room, but added some nicer shades to make it look better). Lastly, I wanted to have some sort of wall-mounted wireless control. I settled for a wireless remote with a wall bracket that installs over an existing light switch. Then, I found the fan. It was the closest thing I could find to what I wanted without ordering online.

I had been looking at ceiling fans for months, but I had no idea when we would get around to actually replacing the old one. I went to Home Depot and decided today would be the day. I went home, dismantled the old fan, and started assembling the new one. And then it hit me. I’m having a baby in four days. I’m huge. What the hell was I doing? I got as far as I could, then waited for Micah to get home. I thought he’d be shocked at what I was doing, but he knows me too well. He helped me finish up and did all of the awkward lifting/holding. It was hot outside and the air was humid, so it felt like hours of work.

Out with the old…

In with the new…

Will is happy with his new ceiling fan. He says the old one was dirty.

Micah has been working hard on yard work. The lawn looks beautiful right now! Here’s a view of our front yard (half of it, anyway):

I put fertilizer down a few weeks ago, and ended up with 5 or 6 big burn spots. Micah re-seeded, and it’s already filling in perfectly. I’ve kept up with the edging around the fence, pruning the apple tree and getting rid of weeds. I’m also kind of addicted to sweeping the garage. Some people “nest”. I just get a little carried away… but the house has never looked better.

My parents were married in 1964, at which time my mother received an old cookbook from her aunt. It was a copy of the Boston Cooking School cookbook, and she used it all the time when I was young. I always hoped she would give it to me, but knew it was sentimental. I was lucky enough to find a copy on eBay a few weeks ago. It is a 1938 edition. My sister mailed a pretty cookbook holder to me shortly thereafter, so now I can keep it on display. This makes me cautiously optimistic that I will finally learn to cook. We’ll see.

Summer is dragging along. Our tomatoes did not grow as much as I hoped, but the dozen or so we managed to save were delicious.

I was trying to find a product to make the kitchen counters appear more glossy, to no avail. However, I do like Countertop Magic spray. That is probably the best thing I’ll find without begging people to tell me where to find Jubilee Kitchen Wax. I read about paste wax (SC Johnson) and decided to try that… until I smelled it. No thanks.