Team Skins

Who would have ever thought to be on a paintball team and be called "skins". Not to mention the fact that I was on the team. First and probably last time I'll ever been on a team named that!

two members of our team are not photographed because they weren't in costume.

It was Scott's idea to wear the white shirt and tie. Everyone else was in camo or something more suitable for hiding. They all laughed at us...even the first team we were against they were the most decked out in camo. We beat them. I think only one member on our team got shot. After that we won most all of our games except for the needed ones for us to advance.

my right arm, one of 2 welts

The whole reason why I was able to go was because Scott's work had originally scheduled the paintball outing on Friday, but switched it to Saturday. After the day switch, tons of people couldn't make it. I was 1 of 4 girls out of the 100's of men.

When this first happened, it blistered right away. It was nasty.

His peck. He had like 3 in this area.

Scott ended up with 18 welts. Me, 2. You might be thinking like my brother it was because I was hiding...but really no. The other times I got hit it was my gun. I got bunker tagged once because I had no ammo left. Otherwise I hardly got hit. I think out of the 18 games we played I got shot 4 times, bunker tagged once. It was reported that I shot Scott's boss in the neck. We had a great time. A lot of good stories of ambush, kamikaze, a "Will Smith" move, no ammo....

One of his arms.

Life's a Beech

Oh where to begin. Here is our big beautiful beech tree. It provided plenty of shade (often too much shade for our garden) and plenty of leaves in the fall. The only downside is it was dangerous. It was dead, rotting, and branches were falling. In fact, one large branch fell a couple of weeks ago breaking the top of part of our fence. We needed it down, ASAP. Storm season is coming up.

Foreman is up in the tree. One of the large branches that had fallen from being cut.

First problem of the day: the crew showed up at 11:30am when they said by 9am. There is already things going wrong in the above picture. The foreman said that they would rope the large branches down, therefor not causing as much damage to anything that may be in it's way as it came down. Well, they didn't rope a single branch down. Now in the below picture, it gets worse. This was the real cause of our stress.

The entire tree is in our neighbor's yard on the other side of our fence.

We knew the tree was not in a good spot. The foreman told us that he would cut down our tree segments at a time so that it would not do what it ended up doing. He later complained that the tree was really heavy and blah blah...he knew it was a beech tree which is a very hard and heavy wood!

In the process we knew our yard would get trashy but it was in the agreement that they would clean it up. No biggy.

So since they got here late (2 1/2 hours) they stayed until about 7:45pm. But they were complaining the whole time saying they didn't want to come back the next day because they weren't getting paid enough. blah blah blah! They were the ones who estimated the job, and they were the ones who didn't come on time. If they didn't think they were getting paid enough, then they should have estimated for more. However, we had gotten 2 other bids before we decided on these guys. All 3 of the bids were about the same give or take a hundred dollars. So before they left they had asked on two occasions for their payment. The first time was about 3:30pm and he was asking for cash instead of check. What a joke. I told him I doubt Scott would do that. Then they asked again before they left. We told them we weren't going to pay them until they were done. Anywho, they left without being paid. The rest of the pictures are from the next morning of the remains of what they had left.

The log on the left was from the previous branch, our problem. But the log on the right was from them, their problem.

Again, the broken fence on the left, our problem from before. The broken part next to the gate, their problem.

One of the many divots/holes they created.

An imprint from a branch

They told us that our yard would look like nothing happened. I'm pretty sure the deeps gauges into our yard say something else.

Deep hole where a branch impaled itself.

The back side of our fence where they "piled neatly" our firewood.

The "neatly" cut stump

The several broken trees that they hit that belonged to our neighbor. Everything on the other side of our fence is not our property.

The brush that they threw into our other neighbor's yard.

The agreement was they would throw the brush to the curb because the city will pick it up. Several occasions they complained to ME that it was too far away and the wood was too heavy. Hold on, isn't that what we're paying you for????!!!!

This branch was impaled about 2 feet down. Cabo is the size comparison and model.

You can see the brush all to the right side of the fence that should be on the street...IS ON OUR NEIGHBOR'S PROPERTY.

The pole. They told us they would cut it into fire wood size. And this is how they left it.

Now this is in my neighbor's yard.

Everything on the left side of the fence is in our neighbor's yard. Seriously?

This divot was about 12 feet long. Again, in my neighbor's yard.

The photo doesn't do it justice. But the hole here is approx 4 feet deep. Again, neighbor's yard.

A complete mess.

To say the least we were furious. Our neighbor was fuming. Scott was livid. (I was more ticked about my flowers being smashed by their obnoxious feet) They finally came back the second day at guess what time?! 11:30am. Scott had called the night before after they had left and left a voicemail on their boss's work phone. In summary "I am completely dissatisfied. They asked my wife for money when they were not even close to being done. I'm not paying a single cent until they are done. They ruined my neighbor's yard. I am extremely upset at the work that has been done, or lack thereof". So they came back with a second crew. They went to work and at about 2:30 when they said they were done I went out to inspect it. At this point I just wanted them to leave. I was in the house and could hear them yelling and fighting with each other like a bunch of 12 year old girls. I'm not even kidding. So I called Scott and gave the phone to the foreman. Scott said in essence, "My wife is not going to pay you. I will pay you after I have spoken with my neighbor to be sure that he is satisfied." The foreman was obviously mad at Scott. He gave me the phone and I kid you not, ran off to his truck. They left. They came back that night after Scott had gotten home. Scott and our neighbor had them do some last minute jobs that they missed. (Mind you, all that day and night when they came back they complained about not being paid enough for this) In the end, we learned our lesson. NEVER hire door knockers. The thing is, we've seen them in our neighborhood before and saw the work they did. Not bad. But NEVER EVER. That was a ridiculous experience. There is more to the story, like more specifics of what happened. But this was the overall gist.

Swagger

One Tuesday I had the car while Addilyn and I went to play group and ran errands. We waited for Scott to get off work in the parking lot like usual. Once Scott got in the car we took off and just about 100 yards past the parking lot, our car stop accelerating. Everything was still going, but the car itself. Press on the gas, it'd rev, but nothing. So we coasted over to the side of the road and into a dingy driveway of this bar by his work. Three hours later the tow truck finally came and dropped our car off at a body shop that had been recommended to us. Our home teacher took us home. The next morning Scott got a ride to work and then called the shop we had dropped the car off at. Come to find out, they don't work on Mistubishi cars. Excellent. So we asked where they would recommend to get our transmission fixed (since that was obviously the issue). We then proceeded to tow it there. Three days after it broke down, we had a final diagnoses. $2S,800 would rebuild our transmission. Uhm, no thanks. We bought the car for $3k four years ago- it wasn't worth it. We just went over 200k miles. It's lived it's life. So now it sits in our driveway awaiting it's final destination. (My money is on the pull apart junk yard). For a week one of Scott's coworkers let us borrow his truck. That was so awesome of him. This meant that the second car we were planning on buying in the next month or two was going to be bought within the week. No pressure right? Wrong! This is especially true because we knew exactly the car we wanted. With our research we found that a Toyota Sienna was our van-to-be. 2005-2009 models are especially difficult to find because they are highly coveted used van. But we found one. Our one day of car shopping, at the very end, we found it. 68k miles, 1 user, 2008 Toyota Sienna, our Swagger Wagon.

Addilyn at 11 months

Addilyn turned 11 months old 1 week ago. I still have a hard time believing that she'll be one so soon. Wow. So to celebrate her 11 months, here is a post full of photos and videos to all you adoring fans of hers.

Below: Addilyn feeding herself. Sometimes she gets into the mood that she can do it all by herself- after all she does finger food. So with a little assistance in the dipping department, she did really well!

Below: While we were car shopping she fell asleep in the truck we were borrowing. We always hear her make these noises and then they stop when she's in the car. That's how we know she's asleep. Well since I was sitting in the back behind her, I caught it on video. Oh she is so cute. Singing herself to sleep.

Below: It's a little long, almost 3 minutes. But it's worth it. This is me and Addilyn in the bathroom during bath time. Ever since Addilyn has been standing, it's a no brainer for her to want to do it in the bath tub. After countless times of putting her back on her bottom, I stopped. So if you can't understand what I'm saying, I'm saying "You need to sit on your bottom" over and over.

You can see her second tooth on the right. It's growing!

We went to the Travis's for Easter dinner. After dinner on the porch, we played this game "Would you Rather". There's a challenge card with all sorts of different challenges and Scott got one where he had to be blind folded and touch 3 people's faces to guess who it was. You can see by the second "face" we cheated.

Alex

Addilyn's bum

Lori

Discovering her belly button

Helping in the garden

Addilyn took her first bubble bath. At first she was scared of it, but then she got used to it and enjoyed it. When she was scared of it she wouldn't move, then Scott swooshed the water around her and she got a better idea of what it was.

April Showers of a different kind.

Addilyn plays catch with herself with all different objects. Her pacifier, a sock, a shoe, a toy...and in this case, a ball. And she was in the corner for it.

This video was a request from grandma Jadwin. She got her the dinosaur toy for Christmas and wanted to see how Addilyn plays with it. She's a kick with it. 

Our pantry in progress... We started off by chopping the shelves that were in there and making more. I know I have before/after photos, but they're on Scott's phone. There were originally 3 extremely deep shelves. Now there are I think twice as many and a useful depth.

We made the rotators on the sides. There will be one more going above the peaches. We're also going to build ones that go into one of the shelves for the rest of our canned food. It's going to be so great when we're all done! Very functional!

Playing with rocks while we waited.

Last Tuesday our car died. It's transmission keeled over and we're shopping for a new one. The picture above was when we were sitting outside of the car waiting for a tow truck. Currently our car is sitting in our drive way waiting to be told it's final destiny. I will probably dedicate a blog post to our old car for it served us well.

Under our storm drain slab

You may be wondering what is going on since my last post about our water issue in the backyard. We've had the city out twice now and they'll be coming out again to start digging in my neighbor's yard to find a potentially broken pipe. There are 2 big issues that have to be addressed. 1) the broken pipe 2) the drain system itself. One of the pipes was diverted into my neighbor's yard and should have a drain for it to go to instead of ours....updates will come as they come.

Addi & Addi

Since we have no car, I had to bum a ride from Karen to Costco. The girls were so cute. Oddly even with their size difference, people still asked if they were twins. Nope. 5 months apart actually. But it was fun getting samples with them. Addison was fascinated with Addilyn's face.

We had a fire in our back yard Sunday night. This was when it was big before it died down to make marshmallows. One of our neighbors saw it, came out, said he was concerned about our fire, and then 20 minutes later we heard a fire truck. Bleh. The firemen were more impressed with our sweet set up. It's legal to burn within city limits as long as it was recreational. Um, Cabo was there and I had a stick with my mallow on it. We also had a grill next to the fire that we could have put on top.

For weeeeeks she's been making this face. It is so funny. I never watched the muppets, but I instantly knew who she looked like.

She's surprisingly a clean eater, except for the last few days. She's realized that food doesn't just have to go in her mouth. Nope! She sure loves to eat though. What a champ.