Kitchen Remodel!

Our kitchen is finally (pretty much) done!! I am so thrilled with it.

I have always hated the kitchen in our house. Since the first time I walked in the door I disliked it. It made me hate the whole house, for a lot of years honestly. But moving isn't an option for us, due to some awesome (read: terrible) investment decisions we made a couple of years ago. We sat down and had a big conversation about our plans. If we should live with it and plan to move as soon as we could, do something low-cost and plan on leaving in 5-10 years or so. Or really do what we want and plan on staying. We have been here so long now that it really is home. The house I hated for so many years I now cant bear the thought of leaving. After really thinking about it we decided that we both wanted to stay here and make it what we want.

We went to soooooo many cabinet places. (BTW, Home Depot was seriously the 2nd most expensive place and that was for the craptastic cabinets). Brandon's cousin gave us the name of his friend who builds cabinets and he is who we ended up going with. He has been amazing to work with. He made exactly what I wanted. I cannot say enough good things about him. Seriously, amazing! If you are thinking of any cabinet stuff being done, I will give you his info. You should totally go with him. =)

We hadn't planned on redoing the floor right now but when we pulled the old pantry out we really didn't have a choice but to change it out. There was no tile and oddly cut tiles in there. We tried figuring out a way to just fix it up but it wouldn't have looked very good. And Brandon has always hated the tile we had anyway. Even though there were numerous times that he wished he hadn't done it while it was going on, we are both so happy that we ended up doing it. It was such a huge task pulling it out and laying new tile but I think we would be disappointed if we hadn't.

Ok, I think I have rambled enough, I can get to pictures now.....

And FINALLY!!

Chelsea's Walk

I was feeling a need to be outside today so we walked down to the Akery (Granite Bakery for those not in the know). Zach was being a news reporter and writing down the things he saw. Chelsea was the photographer.

A cute look at the world from Chelsea's perspective. 

K5

Zach has fallen behind in math at school. Honestly it is the timed tests that do him in. I detest timed tests! I think it is a crummy way to teach something while you are still learning it. But thats what it is and we are trying to make the best of it. I took him to Mathnasium today to see about after school tutoring. It would be good, I think, except that it costs a fortune. I try working with him myself but he gets frustrated with me. We don't work great together on math, its what we tried last year and we both walked away frustrated.

So I came home and started looking for something else for him. I found a pretty great looking website called K5 Learning. We are going to do the free trial and see how it goes. I think it will be great for him though. It evaluates them and then lets them work at their own pace. I think that is fantastic.

I have high hopes! And I will let you know when he gets going in it!

K5 Learning has an online reading and math program for kindergarten to grade 5 students.  I've been given a 6 week free trial to test and write a review of their program.  If you are a blogger, you may want to check out their  open invitation to write an online learning review of their program. - See more at: http://www.k5learning.com/review-k5?sid=15789#sthash.fsYoh9VX.dpuf

4th of July

We had so much fun over the 4th. Unfortunately,  I took almost all of my photos on my phone. I'm not really sure how to blog from my phone with photos and make it look good so it is what it is!