Off to India

Pat left yesterday for India. He's got a layover at Singapore and might try to do a little sight seeing during his stopover. He's got about 15 hrs of wait time before his flight to Hyderabad so, he might as well take advantage of the time. His flight to Singapore is a pretty long stretch, 17 hrs - yikes! We'll see if he prefers this route vs the last time. He'll be frequenting India for a while and so he is trying to search for which one would be a better route. I'll keep you posted, when we hear from him sometime tomorrow when he arrives in Singapore.

As for Shua and I, school has been keeping us busy. He's got several activities in school. Today they have a songfest at his classroom and I will go watch them. Next week, is all end of school activities, Field day, Summer Bday celebrations and of course last day of school recognition program.

I just hope we get some sunshine soon. It still feels like Winter here, the mountains got a few more inches last night...whew!

Wild things...

A Robin decided to build his nest by our front door. She has four eggs in it. I couldn't see since it is pretty high and she's been guarding it most of the time. We took a photo of the egg on Saturday and we'll monitor it. We try not to scare her away and so we normally tip-toe our way in and out of the house... such a sweet thing...





This one on the other hand is a different story. This raccoon lives on the tree in our backyard. I might have distracted his sleep when I was digging and weeding around his territory. He was definitely not happy with me and I wasn't happy to see him either. I did finish my project as fast as I could while he was asleep. I was not comfortable working with a wild animal nearby...

Floor galore!

The floor is almost done. We still need to seal and grout the floor and we're done for now. We used a natural stone called Scabos. It hosts a significant color range that include red, dark brown, and rust accents. Many of the stones have crystal deposits. We did the modular pattern to make it a bit easier for us to install...he he he.

Here is P hard at work last week.


The new floor...
his handmade vent...crafty eh?
close up...

Hard work

This weekend, I challenged myself to do the demolition of our front entry floor. I convinced myself that it should be easy since it is only about 50sq ft. It is not a big space but I didn't realize that it had a subfloor about 3/4 inch thick. Needless to say, I did overcome my challenge and is very proud of accomplishing the project with little help from P. It took me about 6 hrs to do the job with several breaks in the process. I was not too sore on Sunday but I am pretty sore today...weird!

Anyway, here's some photos of my hard work and labor... the best thing about it too is that P and J had a great time together. Now, to me that is priceless!

Beginning of demo... P helped me chisel a portion on the edge of the slab then I worked my way all the way to the center.
The debris, at first I was mostly chipping the slab then I got better with my technique and was pulling out bigger slab...it felt good to see the big chunk come off.

The bare floor...

and soon, the new tile... P will definitely have to do that himself. I don't think I want to take on that task.

Mission Accomplished

Today, I submitted the final petition paperworks. It should be the last set of forms needed unless I missed out something. If everything goes well, the next step would be medical and interview. Not sure how long before we hear from the visa center again but I am just relieved to be done with dealing with paperworks for now. I feel like I have deforested an entire mountain with the amount of paper used during the entire time. I have mounds and mounds of paper in my filing cabinet just for immigration stuff. I can't get rid of them until everything is all clear. Anyway, still I am glad that I don't have to work on paperworks for a while , until I hear from them again.

Now, I should be able to focus on our projects at home. I might be doing floor demolition this weekend which I don't mind doing since I know in the end it will all be worth it.

Sweet surprise

Saturday was full of surprises, my girlfriend Helen invited me for what I thought was just an afternoon tea and was completely surprised when I was met by all of my other girlfriends at the restaurant. We had dessert at the restaurant, caught up with each other and walked around downtown Portland. It was a very cold slushy day but I had so much fun with the ladies. I thought that was the end of surprises but P pulled another one too. Once I went to sleep on Saturday night 11PM, he got busy in the kitchen and baked me one of my favorite cakes until 1:30AM. He made me Brazo de Mercedes, a rolled Meringue with egg yolk filling....hmmm super sweet and tasty!

Here is his masterpiece and my object of desire since I can not indulge yet due to my bad throat...ahh torture!
It wasn't as presentable as he wanted to since he too had to hide it from me and that was not very easy with such a small refrigerator...he he he...

Undecided...

Well, that is how I have been during the last week. For some reason, I struggled to choose between the two schools for J. I think both, equally have good opportunities to offer and so that made it equally tough to pick between the two. I just couldn't make up my mind. I have been very wishy washy during the decision process while P has been pretty solid. Finally, last night I made the choice. I turned in the registration today and so he should be all set by August.