Mini Facelift

A mini facelift for the house!

Please tell me what you think... I love, love, love the black shutters and door against the red brick. I loathe the blue siding, and the black seems to bring out the gray and makes it less baby blue. Next up will be painting the siding, but for now, this will have to do. What I'm not sold on are the black garage doors. The garage sticks out so much because the tree hides a lot of the front, so it seemed like painting the garage would be perfect and really change the look- but I'm afraid it looks strange? It constantly looks like our garage doors are open to me. I am really not happy about the idea of possibly painting over the black, so maybe I just need to try and get used to it? Whaddya think?
Here is the before- it just looked so dated.


My helpers:

That's right, they're wearing bike helmets. Don't ask, it's a dangerous job.

The after:

The front door/windows:

I guess my initial reaction is, it couldn't be worse... right? I don't normally like colonial style, but the black and red reminds me of that, and I actually DO like it. I think... I need some reassurance. Maybe some cute hardware on the doors to break up all that black? Some carriage style brackets? And obviously street numbers. LOL!

We're back!

Maybe you didn't even know we were gone. ;)
Eddie and I spent the week in San Francisco to celebrate our tenth anniversary... which is not until September but who's counting? We had an AWESOME time and came home to two very well cared for, happy children that we missed very much! Many, many pictures to come but here is just one. We had some great weather, even though it was actually warmer here in Cincinnati.

Hilarious!

This might go down in history as one of my favorite photos. Emily snapped this of me and Sully having a showdown on Mother's Day. I made it black and white so as not to embarrass Nana- the chair I am sitting in is being recovered by Nana but it's currently a very scary shade of orange.
I love Sully but he has issues in public!

Mothers Day

Happy Mothers Day to me! :) And Nana and Grandma Gayle, of course!

Sunday morning, we hit the zoo with Grandma, and I'm glad we got there early, because on our way out, it was absolutely packed. The animals were really active and it was a lot of fun. The kids were so excited to feed the giraffes at the new giraffe overlook, but that was a little disappointing to me. First of all, Jack at his cracker instead of giving it to the giraffe, not really his fault as he asked the dorky worker, "Can I eat this?" thinking it was for him. The worker answered "Yes, blah blah blah" telling him that they were safe for humans, but not meaning to actually EAT it... Jack only heard 'YES.' and it was gone. *sigh* That's our boy. Second, it's crowded and they're rushing you to feed it and move on, so the giraffe eats the cracker and they want you out of the way immediately. It was actually much more fun to watch OTHER people feed them than do it ourselves.
After the zoo, we headed to Nana and Papa's house, where the weather turned on us a little. It would have been nice to enjoy the day on the deck, but that was not to be! Papa made us a GREAT dinner and we had a great day!

A little more of our Blue Dolphin

Neily played goalie again this past Saturday. I think this is one of her favorite positions, and she is actually really good at it. She is more aggressive as a goalie than any other position, and she really seems to get what she's supposed to be doing. She had one great save and dove on the ball, she did really well! She paid attention the entire game, which is our main goal for her. LOL!