A wonderful extended weekend...well sort of

This weekend was kin of a mini-vacation after having taken a week off two weeks past. With next week being our monthly Operations Review meeting, it is nice to get an extra day at home...at the expense of not getting back until late Friday. We spent the weekend doing work around the house; I took the rock guard off of my Tahoe. Some piece of junk plastic protectant put on the nose of the hood by the dealer. Don Hattan's body shop wouldn't take it off when I took it in to them a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to remove it myself. Other than having to get bug and tar remover to get the adhesive of, it was a piece of cake.

This was after Saturday, when we went to Botanica. Sydney loved walking around the garden, although got tired near the end of a two hour stint. EIther that or was cranky about having a big terd in her diaper. There was a wedding going on at Botanica and I am sure they loved the yelling and screaming that our daughter was doing.

Finally, the weekend ended with what was supposed to be a cookout at Conway Springs, but ended up as a cookout at Sarah's parents. About 100 feet before we turned into the neighborhood, Sydney vomited up her breakfast, lunch, and late afternoon snack all over herself and her carseat. Thankfully, the milk, peaches, and cheezits were totally contained by the child seat and did not soil my Tahoe's mint interior. We couldn't figure out what caused it, but eventually I remembered that her pediatrician told us if she reacted to the Varicella (Chicken Pox) vaccine that she would get sick about a week later. We suppose that this is why she got sick.

And so off tomorrow to Dallas for Ops Review.

A slow day

So I'm on vacation this week and the past two days I spent hanging sheetrock in my garage. I bought the sheetrock from Home Depot, in 4' x 10' sheets. I had the joy of loading these into the cart and then onto the 1-ton pickup myself, as Home Depot did not have anybody there who could help. I bought twenty sheets and ended up using all but one of them.

One of the joys of home improvement is learning what you are doing in real-time. All of the books and online sites suggested hanging the wallboard from the top to the bottom. I attempted to do this with a panel lift that I spent $65 to rent. Unfortunately, because I have a 6" cement baseblock that extents outward from the wallboard. The panel lift was totally worthless, so I hung the wallboard from bottom to top. I also had to have Sarah assist with the upper two pieces of wallboard. I really wanted to get the mudding and taping done this week but don't think i will make it. After two days of extremely intense work, I'm done.

So today, Sarah and I took Sydney to the zoo for her Wee Wigglers class. Today's class was about turtles. I hadn't been to one of these classes before and Sarah said that when Sydney was at her first class, she wasn't very controlled and basically wasn't interested. Today was different and she was able to be still when she was supposed to. She was walking around pretty well; it seems seeing other kids her age walking helps her to garner the courage to do it herself.

I was the only father at this class; it was all mothers and grandmothers. A grandfather was the only other man there. It was a fun time, even just to see Sydney play with the other kids and interact with them in a casual setting. We finished off with lunch at LeMonde and then later a homemade dinner.