This is it...

Well, it looks like we're moving on Saturday! The living room and breakfast area won't be finished and neither will one upstairs bathroom, but everything else is pretty much done and waiting on cleaning and touchup paint! And, of course, all the million tiny little things that crop up unexpectedly (like painting switch covers which I just remembered). So, this week's going to be something else. I still have to pack most of this house, haha.

I'm going to be pretty unavailable the next week to 10 days, just so everyone knows. We're all hard at work, as you can imagine. No one is safe from getting sucked into house work. Not even brothers who visit from Kansas City:


Autumn's been working hard, too. She wanted to paint with Uncle Brad so I gave her a roller and a closed bucket of paint and told her to pretend. It worked out pretty well. To the point that she was a little put out that Nanny was using her roller.


Autumn has also been helping me take tape down after painting the trim. Friday we did a good chunk of the house so this is what Autumn collected:


She even babysat Beebee Woxie. :P Well, entertained her a little is more like it. My mom and my sister Valerie came over and helped me with some of the paint stained floors.


Now, before you think we are working the little miss to death...she *is* getting some playtime...


I thought it might be kind of fun to show everyone the before and after of one or two of the rooms. This is the master bedroom before any work.


The picture of Autumn with the paint roller is kind of an in the middle pic because all the carpet is out but the walls are already painted. This is the after. It's a different blue, all the walls are blue (instead of the one brown wall), the ceilings have been scraped and painted, crown molding has been added, the intercoms have been removed and the carpets are new. Also, the fan is no longer hanging by a couple of wires like it was when we bought the house and there are four new cans lights thanks to Papa D. Ooh, and new windows.


This one's Autumn's room. It took two coats of primer to cover this green. The lights were odd in several rooms. For some reason, they were all off-center. Almost like someone had moved the walls and left the lights. Autumn had two lights. One was offcenter in the middle of the room and one was a random light next to a wall. Papa D centered the middle light, patched the random extra one, and put in two cans. He and Manuel also made her closet bigger by making the adjacent playroom closet smaller. Craziness, huh?


And here's the after. This was the second go-round with pink, haha. The first was so nuclear that you could see it glowing from down the hall. Same deal as the master, crown molding, no intercom, new doorknobs and hinges, new carpets and windows, scraped ceilings. Major plus about all this carpeting and all the new paint? No more dog urine smell. Score!


So that's what we've been doing! In every single room. Busy, busy. Thanks for putting up with us during all this stress. Moving won't make it over because there will still be more going on but hopefully not having to deal with two houses and keeping up for house showings will help a lot!

More Conversations with Autumn

What Autumn said: "Mama has a booboo! On her face!"
Lainey: "She does?"
Autumn: "Papa did it!"


What really happened:
During one of my practice tests, I let Stephan's hand get too close to my face while I was apply a joint lock and his thumbnail cut my chin.

What Autumn said: "Lainey pinched me!"


What really happened:
Autumn: "Lainey pinched me!"
Me: "She did? Was it when she put you in the car seat? It was an accident?"
Autumn: "Yes."
Me: "So are you okay? Did she say sorry?"
Autumn: "Yeah. I'm okay. She said sorry."

Prayers with Autumn:
"Dear God." mumblemublegibberish. "Lainey. P.D." mumblemublegibberish. "Amen."


:D So, the moral of the story is, if Autumn says something crazy, ask for clarification.

Also, that first photo is from our Twilight night! We had so. much. fun. and I have no idea why we don't go out to eat more often! Also, the movie wasn't terrible. Bonus! And another bonus! Autumn. In a Belle costume. Playing the drums. :D

One step closer

No booklover post tonight because I have cool photos! Some of you have seen this on Facebook already...


On Saturday, I tested for a rank called ikkyu in Japanese. We generally call it first kyu (kyu=grade or rank) but it'll make sense to most people as the rank right before black belt. We don't do colored belts, before you ask, so I have worn a white belt for the last 5.5 years. :P Because our aikido school is very young, I'm one of the original beginners and I am the first of Stephan's students to test for first kyu.


It was pretty stressful preparing for this test. It's been over 2 years since my last rank test because Aikido schools have a rigid set of requirements for testing. I had to have a minimum of 150 training days and the test itself is laid out by the international association we belong to so I had to make sure I knew everything on the list without hesitation (the without hesitation part is where I had some trouble). This will also be the last rank test that Stephan can administer. For my black belt test, I'll either have to fly to California or we'll have to fly someone here. Crazy, huh? Anyway, a test begins with a bow-in. First, the entire class bows in and then the tester and the first uke, or person who'll be attacking and being thrown, do a formal bow-in.


The first part of the test is a technical demonstration. The teacher calls out an attack and a throw. So my partner (or uke) has to do that particular attack and I have to do that particular throw. It can be stressful to be a test uke.


Every technique ends in either a throw


Or a pin.


I also have to show that I can do the techniques from a kneeling position. I call this Japanese bar fighting. :D Also, I'm leaning too far forward in this photo.


The second part of the test is less stuffy than the first part. Each of my partners are allowed to do any attack and I can do any technique against it. Stephan decided to spice things up and pulled a knife on me. For the most part, despite being surprised, I still managed relatively textbook techniques.


Except for once but it still ended up okay. Will, one of my kali instructors, will be pleased to know that when one attempt went terribly wrong, I was able to revert to some of our "Die Less Often" Dog Brothers material. It was awesome! I didn't get "stabbed" and I managed to still disarm the knife. I'm so pleased that I don't care if it was ugly.


By this point, I thought I was going to throw up, lol, because this section goes fast and you cycle through every person who is there. Sometimes twice. But the end of free flowing section is multiple person randori (kind of like aikido's version of sparring). I like this photo because I've just redirected Dave and I'm watching for Stephan who is right behind him.


After it's all over, we repeat all the formal bowing, cheer, and then take a group picture.


Those are some tall dudes, huh?

It's a little anti-climactic to get to the end of a test for me. It feels like I spend so much time preparing and anticipating and being nervous that at the end, I'm a touch empty. The timing of this test was good, though. We're hoping to move into the new house in the next two weeks so I'm swamped with little things. And one big thing: packing. It just dawned on me that we're moving. Which means I have a house to pack. T_T

We're all busy! Even Miss Autumn:


Anyway, thank you to all the ukes for my test and thank you to the ones who didn't make it Saturday but let me throw them over and over and over again trying to perfect those koshinages. Thank you to Mike for supporting me and getting up early on Saturday mornings with Autumn while I go to class and to my mom for spending her day off watching Autumn while I learn how to crank arms. And especially thank you to Stephan who is an awesome teacher, mentor, and honorary dad.

Confessions of a Book Lover: Vampires

I have a confession. Again. Tomorrow night I'm going to go see the latest Twilight movie Eclipse. Now, before you start Team Edward and Team Jacob-ing and telling me how much you wish someone would love you like Edward loves Bella then, please, don't. No one (especially Mike) wants me to hop up on my soap box about how the Twilight vampires are more like fairies and how the series is like a how-to book on horribly unhealthy relationships. I can go on forever and bore you all to death, if I haven't already done so. However, I can appreciate the entertainment value of the Twilight series and I really think that with a good editor and no fourth book (a baby? seriously? seriously?), they could have been really good. But if you go back to my Good Trash post, I consider Twilight Bad Trash which isn't all bad in limited quantities. Kinda like McDonald's or, say, cheesecake.

So, all that to say, I like Twilight the way some of the guys I train with love horrible martial arts movies. It's like a train wreck--fascinating and terrible and you can't look away. From the movie or the fans.

BUT I've always loved vampire books. Long before the craze and long before all these books that I haven't read like the Vampire Diaries and all the other such books that are raging in popularity. Loving vampire books is why I gave in and read Twilight in the first place even though my literary snobbiness tried to prevent me. Anyway, my all-time favorite vampire book ever? Well:


The cover quote is Neil Gaiman for you Gaiman fans, "pretty much perfect." Seriously, it is. Every time I reread this book, it lands me right into Sunshine's alternative current times and when I get to the end and it's all over, I don't want it to be. People keep asking Robin McKinley to write a sequel (this might be her only adult book, she mostly writes for young adults so current fans be warned that this is not a book for kids/young teens). I don't want her to because I think the ending is just crazy perfect but I get why people want more. They just want to be immersed a little bit longer.

Next up is Carmilla:


Carmilla is interesting because it is a novella that predates Dracula by a quarter century. It's been a while since I read it but I remember it being creepy. Like, thrilling, read-with-the-side-lamp-on-during-a-thunderstorm creepy. If you like HP Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson, try this one out.

There are 2 or 3 other books I could go into but I guess I'll save those for another vampire post. Either next week or before the next movie, ha! Also, people who are going to see it or have seen the others, if you've never noticed it before, check out how much Bella blinks. It's like she has a tic based on how emotional she's supposed to be. Tamara and I like to blink at each other for fun. I'm sure everyone else thinks we're insane. And they are likely right.

In the meantime, have some Autumn helping her P'd fix the floors in the new house. Kali people, check out her island baby squat. haha.


And her book of choice this week is:
Only in Dreams

Phoning it in...

I don't feel good so excuse me while I whine and then follow it up with the laziest blog post ever. :P I have a headache and I think I've knocked one or more of my ribs out of joint practicing for my aikido test which is going to be in two parts on Wednesday and Saturday. My mom was kinda making fun of me until she watched my practice video (filmed so I can see my mistakes, lol). She said, "Oooooh. Yeah. I see why you hurt." Anyway, have some Faces of the Waterslide:





The first run is very cold.










You okay, Papa?


Oh, and here's a little leg for ya:

Yeah I'm weird....

So I think this is hilarious and too true:



And a second one to tie in that I'm posting even though I saw it on Lauren's blog just cause I find it stupidly funny:

Toodles' Silly Photo Shop

I'm sure you're so sad to be missing Confessions of a Book Lover: Vampires for some more picture from Autumn's party. Right? Right! Haha, anyway, one of my big ideas that ended up being smaller but still pretty cool was the photo shop. I wanted to do a full-on photo booth with a computer, printer, and camera setup buuuut laziness won out so I just set up a clothing rack with hula skirts and a bucket full of leis and a coconut bra.


I was pretty happy to see that a lot of people took pictures in the costumes! These are just the ones that were on my camera--if anyone has any photo shop pictures, send them to me! I'm just going to start with the best because, well, it's the best:


I mean, we can all call it a night now, right? Haha. We won't, although not much is going to top that one. Thanks for being good sports, Tamara and Landon. :D I was sad that P'd didn't wear a grass skirt, but this will do!


The best part about all of the photos I'm going to post here are the smiles on everyone's faces.


Even Roxie. She's all, "what. the. heck. I am two months old and what kind of mess does my lula have me in??"


I am soooo sad that I missed Cathy and Eric in grass skirts and I am soooo thankful that Tamara took my camera so she could get pictures of things I missed while hostessing.


Here's Stephan with his filipina ladies. Hehe. Small world story that I may have already told here: Elena is the mother of Autumn's best friend at school Angelee. Angelee is Stephan's goddaughter. I didn't even know Angelee went to Mullins until I ran into Elena there a couple months after Autumn started attending so it is completely unorchestrated that Stephan's honorary granddaughter and his goddaughter would become friends.


Mike must have been in a really good mood Saturday. You guys would have been amazed. He did the host rounds, played in the water, shuttled gifts, and even posed in a grass skirt with no protest. O.O


Oh, here's Angelee and Autumn (I'm just posting these in the order I uploaded them, haha). They are so darn cute together. Angelee just moved into the next classroom because Mrs. Lauren's class is packed out right now. Autumn will join her in the fall. I kind of miss hearing "Autumn and Angelee" stories from their teacher. :) The most common one was, "we had to make sure Autumn and Angelee didn't nap together because they just giggle and whisper at each other the whole time."


And, of course, the little girly girls had to have multiple costume changes. If you look in the corner of this picture, you'll see a blue skirt. That's Angelee's third hula skirt change. :D


More to come, probably!

Oh, and I took photos of the new house today. If anyone's interested in the "partway done" shots, here's a slideshow: