Orange wallpaper

The drawers are too close to the wall, so I had to cut the end off so that it will clear the door trim. Here's the wood after a table saw.


Here's my nicely sanded and rounded edges. Just need to stain them and put them back on.


Here's the drain and shower pan kit. The rails are presloped so you know exactly how to slope the concrete. Unfortunately the hole around the drain wasn't large enough so this kit is sitting on top of the concrete base. This means the shower pan is going to be an inch thicker than it should be. I didn't realize this until the tile guy had already poured most of the concrete.


Here's the orange wallpaper. This is actually a waterproofing membrane called Kerdi. It goes on with thinset and then the tile goes on top of it. The whole shower is covered in this including the ceiling. I just hope the kerdi on the ceiling has enough strength to hold the tile.

Phoenix Zoo

Lauren visited her first zoo. Unfortunately she slept through most of it. Luckily for her we became zoo members. The membership pays for itself after 2 visits and is tax deductible.


Giraffe's necking.


Even strollers get their own train ride.


Lauren wasn't the only sleeping one.


Turtles catching some rays

Rosy cheeks

I'm 11 months old now...

...and still no teeth!

Gotta love priceline.com

Whenever we travel somewhere, we usually use priceline for the hotel and car. We haven't used it for flying yet. I start by going to biddingfortravel.com to get an idea of how much the winning bids are and what hotels they are for. Then using that information and knowing how to get free rebids, I can usually get a pretty low price for hotels and cars. Here is our latest winning bid for a rental car in Seattle from National.

Your Offer Price: $11.00 (per day)
Total Rental Days: 3 days(2 days and 20 hours)
Subtotal: $33.00
Taxes and Fees: $33.09
Total Charges: $66.09

Usually when I travel for work, I don't really care what all the fees are but when you are traveling for leisure, you start questioning how much all the airport taxes and fees are. You'll notice the taxes and fees are more than the rental price of the car.

New wheels

Mom and Dad are putty in my hands. I bet I'll have the real thing before I even have a license.

Spotless

There's a dirt spot on the fridge. Don't worry I got it. It's all clean now.

More storage please

Just as in hard drives, you can never have too much storage. Since our pantry is fairly small and our cabinets are filling up with baby food, we decided to add a pantry door storage system. The system we bought was from elfa which is pretty pricey compared to what you can find at BBB or LNTs. But it is pretty sturdy and fits on the door without any drilling. It also uses a single hanging rail down the middle which doesn't get in the way of the door knob. The first system we bought from BBB had two rails on each side which interfered with the knob. It wasn't as sturdy as the elfa either.

My first non-battery powered swing

Swings aren't all that fun if you're not moving. You guys need to push me.

Nice top

Our quartz counters were finally installed. We just need to tile, paint, and then get the shower glass ordered.


Here's the top on the corner unit we have in the toilet room.


Before the tops went on, I finished wiring 3 outlets in each of the boxes and installing the 1/4 turn ball valves for the hot and cold pipes. In this box, I actually ran the dedicated circuit for the air tub into this cabinet so that the hairdryer won't trip anymore. As long as the tub isn't on, the hairdryer will be the only thing on the circuit. Previously the hairdryer would always trip the bathroom breaker especially in the summer.


Here I added in the two breakers on the right that are for the tub and the heater in the exhaust fan. There's normally a cover panel that hides all the wires. :)

I'm 10 months old now!

I predict by 11 months I'll be walking on the runway. These photo shoots are nice and all but the runway is where the action is at.

Some things money can't buy....

My own seat to Hawaii - a few hundred dollars.


Hotel room on the big island - $150.


A new set of wheels - $16


A nice dinner out - $30


Enjoying a good book by the ocean - Priceless!

Whale of a good time

On our first day at the Hapuna beach, we managed to see some whales breeching.



Here's a time lapse of one of the jumps.

Plane delays

Our flight is delayed for 3 hours but at least they gave us some guava juice. Too bad I can't drink any.

Beach baby

Lauren goes down for a nap after some surfing and playing in the sand on the big island.

R&R

Finally some well deserved me time. My hectic schedule of facetime with my peeps and monthly photo shoots has burnt me out!

Connections

I hate connections. They better not lose my luggage!

My first flight

And our first time boarding before first class. :)

Master bathroom remodel day 300

Okay it hasn't taken 300 days but it is dragging on. Here you can see the vanity cabinets installed and the drywall textured. This is after I took down the drywall and had the framer lower the medicine cabinets 3 inches. I also lowered the lights 5 inches and then re-hung the drywall and repaired the old cutouts. Although I measured the vanity width and took into account the door trim, I didn't take into account the tile on the side of the tub. As a result, the drawers will not open so we placed the cabinets so that the drawers will clear the tile on the left side but now they won't clear the door trim. We'll need to cut the drawer faces a little in order to clear it and hence why there are no drawers on the right side. There are just way too many details to plan for.



With all the careful planning, you'd think I would have measured the door to see if the cabinet would fit. Luckily it fit after removing the door and some of the trim.


I also had the plumbers come back out so they could center the showerhead and the temperature control. I took down the cementboard and then made a patch so that the holes matched the new locations of the rough valves. I also changed out some of the 1/2 inch cementboard for 1/4 inch hardiebacker(white-ish gray) so that the shampoo niche would be just a little bit larger.


Concrete patch.

Let me out!

Cat Seat

To prepare for Lauren's upcoming airplane flight, we bought a new car seat, although Riley thinks it's his seat. We bought the Britax roundabout since it got top marks and was smaller than their Marathon model. We bought the seat from Albeebaby.com.

I'm 9 months old now!

I can sit up, crawl, stand up in my crib, climb the monkey bars, clap, wave goodbye, make clicking noises with my tongue, and next week, I'll be swimming in the Pacific Ocean. :)

2 steps forward, 1 step back

We have made some more progress but only to discover that some things need to be fixed. The framer installed this access panel so that we can change the air pump or electronics for the tub. The plumbers also finished the shower plumbing and setting the tub in concrete.


Here you can see all the rough plumbing and the insulation that I put around the pipes.


Here I relocated the pump closer to the access panel for easy services. I also mounted the electronics near the door as well as wired up an outlet for the pump and lights.


Here you can see the duct work and exhaust fan that I installed. The long duct is going to the shower where we have another exhaust fan. I'm so glad I don't have to breath in that insulation anymore.


After I finished installing the duct work, adding 2 more recessed lights, and moving the pump, the drywallers were ready to hang. Here you can see the cementboard (gray) and the drywall.



Here's the inside of the shower with the rough plumbing. If you look closely, you'll notice that the plumbing is not centered on the wall. It's off by like 1 inch to 1.5 inches depending on the item. The light in the ceiling is centered. We might have the plumbers come back and fix this. Unfortunately I didn't catch this before the drywallers hung the cementboard.


Here we installed one of our medicine cabinets so that we could check the height. It turns out that the opening is a tad too high for a certain someone so we are going to get the framer to lower the opening 3 inches and then I'm going to lower the light outlets 5 inches. Hopefully all this rework won't take too long.

Olympics 2024

First sitting, then crawling, and now the monkey bars.



So this is grass. I'm not quite sure I like how it feels.

My first restaurant highchair

Where's my food!

Catch me if you can

Lauren is officially crawling now. We still need to do some more baby proofing and have mentally accepted fingerprints all over the house but....



...I wasn't quite expecting this.