House and Fun

We have been working on our house little by little. Working full time and trying to do home projects makes it hard to get things done. Slowly but surely we will get things finished though. We finished painting the kitchen the other night and I love it! It looks great! We had our new carpets put in a few weeks ago and it makes such a huge difference! So much cleaner and the color is more suited to our tastes. Downstairs in the theater room there is not one inch left of anything even remotely related to the Blazers! The red trim and doors are gone gone gone! The dark blue color we picked looks awesome. I painted the bookcases and the doors back to white and now we just need to put up all the trim. At first we thought we'd do white trim, but I have found that I greatly dislike white trim! It shows everything, ugh! We have two dogs, two big shedding black dogs. Black dogs and white trim? Not a good match. So we're going to go with a stained wood trim instead. Most of the upstairs is stained wood trim and its so much better than the white. 

We haven't done much to the outside because we have been having a lot of WIND! Apparently this has been an unusually super windy winter. Welcome to Corbett! :) There is not much point in doing too much yard work when all it takes is one windy night and the yards are covered in leaves and limbs. So far I haven't minded the wind too much but the other morning as we were leaving for work, I looked up at the trees and boy were they swaying! I crossed my fingers and prayed we wouldn't come home to a tree on our house! We were safe, those trees have been there for many years and not come down yet, at least that's what I always tell myself.

Here's what else we've been up to:

I chaperoned Ashlyn's class trip to OMSI earlier this month. This is her class singing space songs while waiting to go into the Planetarium. We watched Perfect Little Planet. It was pretty cute but boy did I get dizzy and nauseous. It didn't seem to bother any of the kiddos though. It was a lot of fun and Ashlyn was super excited I was able to go with her and her class. I have to say a big Thank You! to my friend Jason for covering me at work so I could.

 Nice night for a campfire and campfire = marshmallows!

Ashlyn's friend Gemma from school had her birthday party at Mt Hood Ski Bowl and the kids all got to go tubing. I wasn't able to go but both Jered and Ashlyn had a blast! Ashlyn's ready to go back asap!

 Making silly faces

My brother's wrestling team. That's him standing front left. Jered and I love to go and support him and his team. Ashlyn loves it too. She gets really excited when we tell her we're going to a tournament. They have been doing really great these last few years and this has been the best year yet. District Champs, Dual-meet Champs, 11 kids going to state (the most ever) and 8 of those took first at the District meet. Plus Keith was named Coach of the Year for the third straight year. Monroe Wrestling is a real Ballard family affair. Two of the assistant coaches are my cousins, two of my other cousins have run the little kids program for the last 8 years or so and help out coaching the high school kids as well. My cousin's wife calls them the "Wrestling Mafia" :) There are always a handful of my cousins on the team as well. The State tournament starts tomorrow. We've purchased our tickets, we are ready!