Saturday, December 17, 2016

Family of 4 Christmas

We had a little Christmas at out house before heading to Indy for 2 weeks. Andrew used the remainder of his paternity leave during November and December, so we went home for actual Christmas this year. I think that's a first since moving to Washington.
It was Oliver's first Christmas. Aiden picked his own gift for Oliver, helped him open it and showed him how to use it. Aiden made sure all of Oliver's presents were opened and inspected. 
Aiden had the present opening thing down this year, no help from us.
Reading their new books with daddy.
We also went to Redmond Town Center and rode the train and carousel.
Everyone wears a turkey hat on Christmas, right? 

We had a friend visit our yard.

Monday, December 12, 2016

A Few Little Parties & Projects

We celebrated one of our birth class friend's 4th birthday. 
And had a holiday get together with 6 little boys. 
Here are a few of the little projects I've worked on over the past several months (because I haven't had any major house projects to work on).

I got this Jenny Lind high chair from my local Buy Nothing group. It was a bit beat up but ended up needing a lot less work than I expected. I cleaned it, applied 3 coats of wipe on poly, and replaced the buckles and straps. Done!
Because Oliver had a new chair I kept an eye out for something to get Aiden, and I found this chair at Goodwill for $6. It was in terrible shape. Chipping paint over old stain, a broken stretcher, and badly stapled/screwed/bolted together. I completely disassembled it (and used painters tape to number everything so I could put it back together the exact same way), lightly sanded it, and then primed and spray painted all the pieces separately before glueing it back together. Aiden picked the colors. I also applied a spray on clear coat to hopefully protect the paint job.
This small table was also a Goodwill find that would work perfectly next to our recliner. This I completely stripped to re-stain. It's tedious and I don't usually like doing it. Once done I realized the top was in really great shape compared to the legs, so I ended up only refinishing the top and painting the rest white. I think this ended up looking really nice in our living room against all the wood floors. 
I decided to build a new work bench. When we would go to do a project it was hard to drag everything out and put it away efficiently, plus we don't have a lot of storage space. Locking wheels, and a workbench that functions for use and storage is what I went for.
And I painted it because why not.


Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Everyday Life with Littles

Hugging turtles!
Aiden painting at school with his friends and Mr. Roger.
Happy boys!
Just some weekend lounging...
Just some weekend house work in the crawl space...


Life with 2 is more fun than I expected. It's still really hard, but definitely better than what I'd stressed over and built up in my head. 

I recently quit my job at Responsys. The Oracle acquisition came with no perks, in fact, they regularly took away perks. Good employees were departing weekly, internal tools and gaining new business were impossible, and there were no signs of raises after 2 years of nothing. 

The commute, trying to manage home life and a full time job, struggling with postpartum depression, sleep deprivation... then the job and team I loved at work fell apart. It wasn't worth it. It was time to go. And it's made such a difference for our whole family. 

I ended up quickly finding new work, working from home, doing exactly what I was doing at Responsys (with some of the same people!). 

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Thanksgiving 2016

My parents flew in for Thanksgiving. We tried to take them to the Columbia Tower (tall black building below) but turns out they close 2 days every 5 years for maintenance and we went on one of those 2 days. Instead we took them to the Smith Tower just a few blocks away. It has an old world ambiance, they serve drinks at the top and there's quite a bit of history to this building. Sarah, Tobin, and Brody also came up Sunday to visit.

We wore him out.
We went to Redmond Town Center, rode the carousel and saw Santa.
It didn't go great...