Kelly Times Two

We've been living in Taiwan for six months, which is our half-way point for Kelly's work contract that he's fulfilling. I took some pictures for myself of our home the day I left to come back to Taiwan after Christmas break to look at when I'm feeling a bit homesick. Here's a quick tour of our casa bonita. You can also click HERE for an old link to see our swimming pool after it was completed. I prefer fresh flowers, but these will do while I'm away. Sometimes I want to click my heels three times and repeat, "There's no place like home" to escape back to there. Then I realize that home is where my family is, and right now, that's in Taiwan with the exception of our college student. I do miss all my friends in Texas though. And some of my dishes. :-)

Here is our Texas home, sweet home. Linda sent these gorgeous fresh flowers to me the day I got back from taking Lindsey to BYU-Idaho. The cheerful arrangement brightened the entryway while I was at home. Thank you, Linda, for thinking of me while I was transitioning from taking Lindsey to school to heading back to Taiwan. What a wonderful surprise it is to open your front door and see a floral bouquet delivered to you with a smile. I made a trip to Chipotle for a burrito bowl while I was in the States. For some reason, I have missed Mexican food the most. Here's a lovely view of our flower bed in the front of our house. Raul and his crew are doing an excellent job, as usual, keeping the curb appeal strong. Our neighbors on the corner, Kathy and Darryl, have their white stone house well lit to give it a cozy look at night, so I copied their idea. Jim added some nightscaping lights to the front of the house and I love the way it turned out, with the lighting adding a tasteful acc...

These ceilings are tall and the little step ladder above wasn't big enough, so Kelly brought me the nine-foot ladder. For the last two days, I've been painting our bedroom in a Sherwin Williams color called Softened Green, kind of a sage tone in an eggshell finish. I took the paint sample to Home Depot, which copied it and made it conveniently in a Behr brand paint, which I'm very pleased with the quality. I'm almost done, and just need to paint behind the large four-post bed, that is hovering over several cases of food storage. Kelly is trying to convince me that we should move the bed to be able to paint behind it, but I don't want to mess with our heavy bed. I am not strong enough to carefully move our bed, assisting him, and don't want to hurt my back or my gorgeous bed! So, I'm going to gingerly paint over the headboard and around it as much as my arms can reach. I'm a tidy painter. I can't wait to finish everything in the room that I have plan...

After the hailstorm that hit on March 25, we finally got our roof replaced this week. The workers braved the heat and got it done in about two days. Our yard was a mess in the meantime and we couldn't park in the garage. The timing worked out fine because our garage door opener isn't working well. It's been messing up intermittently quite often, and a Home Depot employee helped me pick out a new garage door to be installed since that is where the problem seems to be originating. It's going to take a few weeks for it to be here, but in the meantime, I drove by a house today that has the door I chose. I love it, (see below). I am not having windows added since we have already have these six windows (above) in our garage and natural light isn't a concern. I just took this picture of our new roof this morning. The gutters still need to be replaced and that will happen next week. Kelly got home from Taiwan last night after midnight. We all missed him so much and the ...

Since this is Christopher's last year of elementary school, it will mean the last of the classroom parties (other than the last day of school), so I thought I'd better enjoy the moment! I've never liked the cheap, cheesy valentines sold at the stores and we've nearly always made our own. Here's what we did this year. Several months ago, I bought two packages of note cards that said "hello" on the front from Michael's on clearance for fifty cents a pack. I loved the red and white look, and knew I could embellish them into something better so here's our transformed valentines for Christopher's class. The hello on the right is just printed on the card. The sentiment on the left is stamped on white cardstock, then layered on an oval piece of black cardstock, adhered to the card, then a little gemstone bling added, and topped off with a punched out folk heart. Christopher loved making them. This was the very first year he's ever really been e...

Good evening, boys and girls! Pretend you're one of the Wilkinson quintuplets and sit back and take a look at some of my pictures of what I've been up to the last few weeks. By the way, I did squeeze in a short visit to the Wilkinson's house December. They'll be 18 months old in January and will be old enough to go in the nursery at church on Sundays. What a fun place that's going to be! Okay, here's a picture of me taken one night in December at about 3 or 4 am, as you can see the red blood shot eyes, from lack of sleep, trying to get everything squeezed in that I wanted to do. Like most everyone, I probably didn't come close to all the grand visions of goodness that danced in my head, but did what I could to enjoy the season and Christmas cheer. For some of my relatives, I treated them to new Christmas stockings and had their names embroidered on them, choosing styles that matched their tastes. Valerie loved their stockings. My dad is known as Grandad to...