Family Pics

 Our friend and photographer Rebecca Moat took our pictures again this year.  Always so stressful but once it's over I'm glad we did it!

Thanksgiving Day

Happy Thanksgiving Day!  We hosted several families at our house.  It was fun (and a bit stressful).  I made the turkey using Mels "2 hour turkey" recipe.  I was nervous but it really turned out great! 
 

 The chefs behind the meal :)  Good friends Elodie, Jami, and Veronika.


The Waite's, Shutt's and McCormick's.  Between all of us there were 8 adults and 12 kids.  Busy but fun!  Counting my blessings for a wonderful family and great friends.

Turning 32

 Happy Birthday to me!  Turning 32 felt really no different.  Zui made me delicious waffles for breakfast and a pumpkin creamcheese cake for dessert.  The kids loved singing to me and helping me open my presents.  Zui got me matching earrings to a necklace he bought me the year before.  Dennis watched the kids so we could go out to eat dinner.  A fun day!

Familiar Tunes recital

 

 Anjuli's first recital!  She did great.  Definitely

  such a "proud mom" moment :)

Anjuli played "Twinkle Twinkle"

 Always so rewarding to hear my student's play at recitals.  I really enjoy teaching piano and having an "extended" piano family :)

Jazzy at 18 months

All Things Halloween

 On October 26th, Anjuli and Zion went to the Pumpkin Patch with Zion's preschool group.  Zui was a volunteer.  They loved riding the hayride and picking out a big pumpkin to carve!

 Getting ready for the Trunk r Treat on October 27th.  Anjuli wanted to be Sleeping Beauty.

 Jazzy didn't want to be anything...but this was the only costume we could keep on her.

 At the trunk r treat.  Tons of games, candy, and kids...I lost my children about 5 times.  Zui was busy picking up investigators, so I was flying solo.  I decided I don't want to do that again!

 I decided we don't need to do trunk r treat again.  Who needs that much candy?  Or Halloween?  Too much.

 Rebecca Jeanne took these photos for free --we love our photographer!

Halloween Night!  Kim ohana get together with all the cousins. 



Anjuli and Zion were the dynamic duo: Batgirl and Batman

Zion loved the houses that had smoke bubbles coming out.

We trick r treated with our friends Sheri and Patrick for a while.

Fixing our leaky bath upstairs

 So this whole project started because little drops of water started falling on our kitchen table.  We knew it was the bath upstairs and so we tried to figure out where the leak was coming from.  All the running water and plugging and unplugging the drain didn't cause it to leak. 

 Eventually we figured out that it must be leaking from the tile walls.  Since the tiles were ugly anyway we decided our shower/tub needed a makeover. 

I started with the demolition of the ceramic tiles, trying to separate it from the drywall so we could possibly put up new tiles over the old drywall. 

 Well, this is what we found.  Lots of water damage behind the tiles. Whoever installed this first shower tiles didn't create any moisture barrier.  In fact there were two layers of drywall.  The one pictured is the deeper layer.  You can only imagine how rotten the first layer of drywall was.

 I got to work, took all the drywall off, cut even lines to create the joint where the new cement board and the existing good drywall would meet.  I used some 10 mil plastic covering as my moisture barrier and sealed it to the bathtub flange with some silicone caulk. 

 

 After much measuring, cutting and tweaking the cement board was up and ready to receive the tile.

Luckily, I have my best friend Matt's family the Mordens who lives 4 doors down.  Cliff Morden had a wet tile saw which he let me borrow and the cutting of the tiles began.  It was a  slow process cutting the new porcelain tiles.  Since they were 18" tiles the blade would get stuck and I'd have to flip my tile piece around to meet the cut line in the middle. 

 After cutting lots of tiles, I started getting much better at it.  But I ran into a lot of measuring problems since our bathroom walls were not plumb and the corners were not quite exactly 90 degree angles.  So every level of tiles I had to change my measurements to get wider to accommodate the unevenness of our walls. 

 Finally most of my tile pieces were cut and ready to get the thinset mortar to adhere to my walls.  It was fun to slather the cement onto the wall and use the notched edge to create grooves that would cement my tile to the board. 
I also had to move my tiles so that the plumbing fixtures would come out in between the tile joints.  I found out the hard way (cracked tile pieces)  that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t do a circular cut through porcelain tile.  So once I moved my tile joints I was able to cut triangles out of the tile to allow the pipes to come out.
 

Since we were only going to remodel this bathroom one time we went and splurged by adding granite and glass mosaic tiles to our porcelain tiles.  I don’t consider myself a great decorator, but I felt these tiles matched really well together.

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So once all the tiles and mosaic was up, separated from each other using 1/8” spacers, we got some tile sealer (511 impregnator) and painted each of the granite stones to seal it from the grouting that was coming next.  We used a wet sponge to apply our beige grout and wiped it away, then buffed it with a microfiber rag.  Once that was all done, we sealed all the grout, and then did another layer of sealer over everything one more time.  Finally, the shower has 3 layers of protection from leaking in my kitchen again. 

Add in some new plumbing fixtures, expensive acrylic Sherwin William paints (on sale of course) for the rest of the walls and ceiling, and a new shower curtain/liner; and we were finally done!  We love having our home look how we want it.  And the best part, I could finally seal up the hole in the kitchen that developed from the leaking shower walls.  

Whew!  All Pau with my project.  Lots of sweat, but it was fun and I love looking back knowing: I did that!