Can I just say........

......I really love my wife?

Kitchen/Dining update

Didn't get a ton done on the weekend. By the time I went to the dump and got home, Alene and I were ready to decorate eggs. I really wanted to get a ton done on Saturday, but the day just flew by. I can remember when I was little, how I could not WAIT for the day to be over, now it seems like they get quicker and quicker!

For the kitchen, we basically need to grout the countertops, add the base/door trim, and build the island countertop. I'm hopeing to be able to grout the countertops this weekend, but I guess we'll see. I spent part of Tuesday putting up some of the trim in the kitchen. I spent last night painting the rest of the trim (I paint it before I nail it, less messy that way and I only have to touch up the nail holes). I should be able to put up more trim today.

Last night I built the famouse arch I've been dreading to do. This is the arch that leads you into the dining room. It actually turned out to be easier than I figured.

Here are some pictures:

I wanted to match the arch that leads into the living room


I used some cardboard to trace it and create a template


I traced it onto the drywall to cut out


Here it is all cut out



I used cut pieces of 2x4's to fill in, in between the walls, then screwed them in with drywall screws


Here is the rough wall, but not too bad. To hang the drywall under the arch, I had to cut the back of the drywall every inch (about 96 cuts) then broke each cut so the stuff would bend. That took a while.


Here is the arch I tried to match. Not too shabby.


I'm going to try to get most of the trim hung tonight, date night on Friday, then grout the kitchen on Saturday.

I have ton of prjects to do outside as well. For starters, I just want to get the lawn mowed, as it is close to 1' in some spots (but some other spots have hardly grown). I have a TON of weeds taking over everything too. Alene and I are going to plant a garden someday, but we better do it soon.

We had a good easter

It blew by quickly, but it was good. The previous night we spent time decorating easter eggs and placed them in a basket on the back deck. We told Caiden that the Easter Bunny would come and hid the eggs for him. Obviously we hid them, but you should have seen the look on his eyes when he saw the basket was empty. He is so cute when he gets so innocently excited.

We went to church, then went down to my sister Julies house for easter dinner with the family. It's crazy how much our own family is growing. Janna, Julie, and Amanda are all pregnate again. Julie and Janna are both expecting their 5th, Amanda is expecting her 2nd. It's so cute seeing all the nieces and nephews get along so closely, they all recognize they are family and they love it.

Here are some pictures of Caiden on his egg hunt:







I found this cool "Siamese Strawberry" among the group of strawberries I bought.

Caiden had a Karate thingy today

He was so cute. They ran them through these obstacle course, then had them do some grappling (basically wrestling), then they got to do some sword fighting with these foam swords.

Here are some links to video of him:



This was cute. Caiden had to face this kid who was likely 2-3 years older than him. He knocked the foam sword out of the kids had twice!



Here are some pictures:

Fishing Atlanta

We went out to Lake Lanier to do some striper fishing (Striped Bass). We only went out for 4 hours, but it was funner than I expected it to be. I don't fish (I have, but I don't do it regularly) and I am looking forward to learning the art/skill of fly fishing in the future (when I have more time), but I've never thought much about wanting to go out on a boat and just sit and wait. I'd rather work it up and down a river like the fly fishermen do.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

This was what the sunrised looked like on our ride out to our spot


This was our guide (shane), who also owned the guide service company. He was pretty much leading all his boats as to where to go, etc. He was a stud fisherman and knew exactly what he was doing.



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This is the first fish I caught, which was a spotted bass. We weren't looking for those though and it was only 6 lbs, so we tossed it back.


Here is another striper I caught. Biggest fish I've ever held.


This is me kissing one of my beautiful babies.


This is one of my co-workers (Todd) with a tasty bass.




Here is a striper another co-worker (Al) caught. This one was HUGE (about 23 lbs)


Here is Al on the boat


Here is the losers (my other co-workers) boat, from a distance. They drank more beer, so they didn't catch as many fish :-).

Atlanta Aquarium

My department from work all went down to see the Atlanta Aquarium, which claims to be the worlds largest Aquarium. It was quite impressive. Here are some pictures:







These Manatees reminded me of Tim. OK, that sounded wrong. they reminded me of him because of this picture, which makes me laugh every time I see them. These Manatees were hilarious though. They were totally hot-dogging it for the crowd. They would swim around in circles in the tank and every time they rode by the glass, they would look at everyone like they were saying "check me out". Of course, I don't think they realized that it doesn't look cool when they decide to take a dump in front of the crowd too. That was pretty gross.



These were dudes inside one of the tanks cleaning the insides. It was pretty interesting.

Hiking Atlanta

Here are some pictures of us hiking areas of Atlanta

Stone Mountain:
I remember sticking a piece of gum on this pole last time I hiked it, so I found it and was looking to re-chew the sucker.



Tyler on top of Stone Mountain


Alene on top of Stone Mountain





This was a cute little bridge that was built around the 1880's and was moved to the park around 1920. The history said that it cost $1400 to build, but $19000 to move. Pretty funny. It was built with all wood, no metal. It has wood pegs holding all the boards together. Pretty impressive.



This is the famous carving of General Lee, General Stonewall Jackson, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The 2nd part of the KKK was formed at the top of this mountain. Pretty freaky. It took 20 years to do this carving.





Kennesaw Mountain:

There are a lot of civil war battle grounds in this area. This mountain was used as a look-out as well as a defense. The confederates were crushed here as well as out-manuvered as the Union simply fought for a bit, then went right around them.







Finally, on my birthday, we went fishing (pictures will be on another link). We didn't go fishing for my BD, because nobody I was with new. I was fine with it being that way (I don't like attention on my BD). However, when I returned to my hotel room, there was some room service consisting of some berries and whipped cream, some DELICIOUS chocolate cake, and milk. It kind of worried me because I had no idea how it had gotten there. I figured someone put it in there on accident, so I didn't touch it thinking I would be charged for it. It had no occured to me that it was for my BD (in fact, I had already forgotten that I was 29).

I called Alene a bit later and talked to her aboutt the fishing day, etc.. I then mentioned the room service tray that was in my room and how I was wondering how it got there and why it was in there. She then said, "maybe because it's your BD". It hit me then that SHE did it for me. I was so stoked because everything on the tray looked delicious, AND for the fact that my wife is so thoughtful. Thanks baby. Here is a picture of how it was set up in the room.

Coke Factory, Atlanta Georgia

Upon checking into our hotel room in Atlanta the first thing Alene and I did was head downtown Atlanta to tour the Coke Factory (Atlanta is where Coke was "invented"). Here are some pictures from our tour.

The cool sign at the entrance of the building



The building was being held up on one corner by a coke bottle



Alene inside at one of their displays



That's a lot of friggin' coke!



A couple of big coke bottles, artfully designed



Hanging out with the Coke polar bear



The best part: the tasting room. They had all kinds of flavors of soda here, most of which aren't made in America; flavors like "melon soda" and other oddities that are in demand in other countries.



It was fun to see a bit of American history. Kind of sad that something so bad for you is so worshiped, but it is part of our history.