A Vacation from Cooking!

One of the drawbacks of living in a house under construction(besides the obvious) is not having the ability to do normal everything tasks like, oh I don't know, cook in your kitchen! We have a fabulous kitchen with a professional stove (which scares me a little, but that's for another post), but the stove is inoperable at the present time because there is no gas to the house as of yet.
Now considering that our actual move in date was pushed back a month and a half, one would think that KUB would have been notified and that a gas line would have been run all before we had moved in and set up house. Not so much. KUB did not arrive on the scene until Thursday and told us it would be another two weeks before we would have a gas line. NICE!

So, by default, I am on a vacation from cooking until such time that we have an operable stove. In the mean time we have been dining at one of our favorite places to eat, Panera.

I feel like perhaps we should own stock in Panera with how much we frequent it.

We even know how many balls of mozzarella cheese should be in the tomato, basil, mozzarella salad and will send it back if it is not up to par.

It will be nice when we are able to cook in our lovely kitchen. Until then I suppose I should enjoy my vacation.

EC enjoying one of her favorite things, an everything bagel.

Makes me hungry just looking at this picture!

Progress!

So the house is coming along . . . so to speak. I have unpacked, shuffled, and rearranged boxes until we are living box free on the first two levels of our house. Yes, our house has levels, we are a quadralevel house now with the new addition, not to be confused with the split level, just levels. But I digress. Pictures have been hung in the new media/play room downstairs which is beginning to feel like home. Some pictures and artwork have been hung in other parts of the house which is also making us feel more like we are at home. The furniture I ordered from four (yes four) different furniture stores is arriving and surprisingly coordinates well together. It is all coming together on our end. On the construction side of things, stone has been hung, steps built, and cedar shake begun. I have become quite good friends with our general contractor Devin as well as the trim and siding specialist Pete and Sean. Other subcontractors, not so much. Kenny Rogers (gone way wrong) and his crew arrived yesterday to hang the dry wall and do the sheet rock in the garage and our new master suite. Let's just say, they were a site to behold. But they did awesome work so it's all good. We are getting there! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, surrounded by mud, nails, and sheet rock, but I can definitely see a light. Here are a few pics of the latest accomplishments on the house.

The Family Room/Sun Room. I love all of these windows!
Looking into the sun room from the kitchen. Howie is very proud of his new giant, giant TV. I am digging the stone on the fireplace.

Dining room. The little settee will not stay and we will have curtains, but they are on order. The farmhouse table arrived Tuesday and I LOVE it! It was my birthday present which was ordered back in March. I am so glad I still like it!

Cedar shake going up on the addition.

This is Pete. He is a great person and an awesome carpenter!

This is Sean. Another great carpenter and person.

View from the street. Howie is talking to Devin, our contractor, who has been great through all of this. Picture a portico at the entrance of our house to define where that is. It looks hidden currently, but is right next to the newly stoned chimney. So there we are, nearing the end with ALOT still to do. But we are getting there!

Sophie's 3 Year Check-Up

Before our move, Sophie had her three year check up at Dr. Shults' office. She had a great visit and is doing very well. Sophie weighed in at 26 pounds putting her in the 3rd percentile for weight and she measured 35inches tall putting her again in the 3rd percentile for height. We always laugh at how different Emma-Caroline and Sophie are in height but we also love that they are so different. Here are the photo highlights from her visit.

35 inches tall!

26 pounds

Getting a hug on her arm.

Strong heartbeat

Eyes looking good!

Lately . . . and a trip to the ER

I have not had the chance to post anything lately because of the whirlwind of activities that have been occurring at the The Avery House. Since a week and a half ago, we have packed up the corporate apartment, moved our stuff from storage to our new home, set up beds, Internet service, TV's, etc. (you know, all the important things that are necessary in life), made a dent in the mountain of boxes that need to be unpacked, had furniture delivered, and the list goes on an on. Not a bad list, just a busy one in which posting to the blog was not a part of until today.

In the midst of all this I had a terrible fall out on the "construction site" at our house. I'd love to be able to tell an amazing story of how I was scaling the side of the new rock wall that the stone masons have so meticulously laid at the foundation of my home, or to tell you that I had a wild hair and thought about trying my hand at construction work. But alas, that is not the real story of how I came to fall here at the new homestead. I unfortunately was doing the mundane household chore of taking out the trash. In order to take out the trash one must trudge through a foot of mud and standing water outside the basement door. Some nice person had the idea of placing the enormous box lids, that cover the boxes of stone for our house, on top of the mud in order for people to be able to walk without getting their feet dirty. The only problem with that is that those boxes are coated with a wax like substance to keep water from penetrating them. This works great, however, when they are wet and you step on them, it is essentially like stepping on a sheet of solid ice, which brings me back to the falling incident. So there I was taking out the trash when I slipped and fell HARD. My arm came down on the box lid and was sliced open in two spots. Those of you who know me know that I was most definitely in a dress or skirt, so at the time of the fall, I was more concerned about the spectacle I had created with my skirt over my head than whether or not I was injured. I scooped up my pride, stepped back shakily into the house and came upstairs to assess the damage. Since I couldn't see the back of my arm, I couldn't tell how deep my injury was except to realize that it was gushing lots of blood. I called my neighbor who was unavailable and then Howie. Howie came home and administered first aid since I could not reach my arm. He also told me that the wound looked pretty bad and that I probably should head to the ER. I remained unconvinced until about 1:00pm after lunch and after consulting with my friend Vaiden and my doctor friend Angela who said, "Um yeah you need to go to the ER. What are you waiting for." So off I went and finally got to peek at the infamous wound. Yep, pretty bad. The doctor I saw was so kind and gentle. I have never had injury stitches before so it was all new to me. The worst part was just getting the shot to numb my arm. I'm not afraid of shots, but that numbing medicine stung like the Dickens! After it was all done, I walked away with 8 stitches, an antibiotic, and an advisory to not walk on construction site walkways. And perhaps a good story. So in a nutshell, there is our life as it is occurring day, by day. I will post pics (not of the injury) as soon as I can find my USB cable, which I hope is sooner than later. Until next time!

Colorathons!

We have been having some much needed rain the last several days here in Knoxville. With the rain means a diversion of our usual outdoor activities to ones we are able to do indoors. While the rain turned to a sprinkle we darted into Target and bought some new coloring books and markers since ours are all in storage.
The girls have been non-stop coloring ever since only taking breaks to sleep for a few hours at night (hee, hee!) I even found Emma-Caroline cuddling up next to her coloring book and markers last night when I went in to check on her.

I have dubbed it the "Avery Colorathon".

It reminds me of when I was a little girl when I would go to week long family reunions in Eupora, Mississippi where it was was so sticky hot, and where there was nothing but the Dollar General and Sonic in "town" that all of us cousins would sit on the sofa for hours with our boxes of Crayola crayons and new Care Bear coloring books and color every last inch of each page of those books!

We took great pride in those coloring books and I have fond memories of us comparing our skills and complimenting one another.

I'm glad my girls are having as much fun as I did with their coloring books and having their own colorathons.

Summer Fun!

When we moved into the corporate apartment I imagined a wonderful reprieve from all things that had to do with packing, unpacking, setting up a house, etc. At the time it seemed we were actually going to have a "stay-cation" vacation in which we spent every day actually going to the pool and having loads of summer fun. Not so much! We do venture to the pool a few times a week, but our days are mostly filled with driving 2o mins. one way several times a day back and forth to our new home to check it's progress as well as attend to a large "hurdle" that was placed in the road. Let's just say the "hurdle" involves legal matters of which I will not go into detail. We have prevailed, but it has been an exhausting experience. All this to say, that my vision of a mini vacation has disappeared.

With the girls deserving to have Summer fun, I headed out with them to the Splash Park yesterday.

It was a great day for the Splash Park with cloudy skies so as not to scorch their delicate skin despite the loads of sunscreen slathered on it. It was also not so hot so we all didn't wilt in the blazing heat that has been the norm this summer.

Emma-Caroline has always loved playing in the water.

Sophie, on the other hand, likes to observe the fun from a safe distance.

She is such a prissy little thing!

We saw some of our friends, Sam and Charlie there who lived next door to us at our old house. It was great to see them and we had a really fun time together.

Since Emma-Caroline starts school in 4 weeks, we are going to dedicate our time to more summer fun. Stay-cation here we come!

Happy 4th of July!

Yesterday, we had a wonderful 4th of July Celebration with many of our new neighbors at the neighborhood's 47th annual 4th of July celebration. There were parties, parades, pony rides, competitions, races, softball games, a blue grass band, snow cones, barbecue, and more. It definitely was a grand celebration and we all had a wonderful time! It was nice meeting a lot of the families that live in the new neighborhood as well as many of the children there. Some will even be in kindergarten with Emma-Caroline in the fall. We hope you all had a wonderful 4th too! Enjoy the many pics from the day!

Picking wildflowers for Mommy!

Sweet Sophie Rose!

Getting ready to play softball.

Neighborhood tee-shirt. The neighborhood has had this annual celebration for 47 years!

Super star pitcher in the softball game!

This is Howie right before he made a home run in the softball game!

Getting ready for the parade.

The parade line up. This was just the beginning of the kids that participated. There were hundreds of kids it seemed!

Each child was announced individually and got to ride out in the parade. Here is EC after her name was called.

Emma-Caroline and her friend from preschool, Andie. We didn't realize Andie lives in our new neighborhood. The girls will be in kindergarten together too.

Sophie getting her turn to ride in the parade!

Emma-Caroline LOVED the pony rides!

Sophie loved riding too!

The snow cones were a HUGE hit!

The kids of the neighborhood all gathered for a 4th of July pic.

The girls were exhausted and lay down with Daddy for a while before dinner.

The bluegrass band was awesome!

So was the food!

Emma-Caroline especially liked her chocolate cupcake with red white and blue sprinkles. It was a great 4th of July Celebration!