Catching up!

here's the updates on our crazy life! since we last posted (April 8th), we've had a lot going on! let's see:

- birthing classes
- Brooke finished her pharmacy school project and presentation, and subsequently graduated!
- Baylee and Ella spent the night with us
- Brooke went and visited her best friend from high school in Arkansas
- Dinner with my old college roommate and his wife
- Visited with my mom and grandparents for Mother's day
- Haleigh, Baylee and Ella's recital
- multiple showers for Caroline
- i hit 2 homers in one night in church softball
- upstairs guest bathroom remodel (in progress)
- Brooke accepted a part-time as needed fill-in job with Publix as a pharmacist (after she passes her boards in mid-June)
- my peach tree i planted last year has about 50 baby peaches on it!
- Spring Gospel meeting with Cecil May

phew! i'm tired just typing all that! here are some various pics from the above craziness!




28 weeks


30 weeks


32 weeks


Schaeffer Shower

Painting Bedrooms

guess what we did this weekend?

-scrapped popcorn off of ceiling
-patched minor cracks on ceiling and walls
-painted 3 ceilings
-painted 2 coats on trim in 3 bedrooms
-painted 2 bedrooms (all except detail trim)
-wore ourselves slap out

that's about it. :)




^^ original wall colors


^^ Caroline's room color


^^ Upstairs guest bedroom color


^^ Remodeling maniacs!!!

Time to catch up!!!

i am a terrible blogger. let's just get that out there in the open. it's not from laziness, and i can prove it with the following pictures and stories. but i am terribly sorry for slacking.

so, have you ever been cutting your grass on a beautiful sunny day, only to feel a drop of rain fall on your back? but then you realize, that there are ZERO clouds and you were standing under a tree. that's when the light bulb comes on and you realize that you just got pooped on by a bird. and this is what it looks like:



i had to take a picture b/c i knew Brooke wouldn't believe me. :) anyhoo, speaking of my amazing wife, she is stinkin' awesome. she started her 4th year of pharmacy school this month. her 4th year is entirely clinical....no tests or class. she is LOVING it so far. i'm so proud of her!

we recently finished our "Bama Room". my dad came up and helped get the chair rail back up. to celebrate the completion, Brooke got me my most coveted Alabama picture:



we're still trying to find the best place to hang it. meanwhile, brooke and i took a trip to the ATL for a Braves game. we had awesome seats in right field. if you're watching the game at home, just look right above the 390 sign in RF, just next to the Braves bullpen. we were on the 2nd row. the Braves lost 9-0 to the Rockies. Kris Medlin made his MLB debut. we were so close to Francoeur, i could have spit on him:



our annual Senior Member Appreciation Dinner (SMAD) was this past Saturday, June 6th. our theme this year was "Chinese Dinner Theater". we wrote a script and everything. it was so much fun, and the senior members seemed to really enjoy themselves. we are so blessed to have them! don't worry.....we hope to have a copy of the video on YouTube before too long. and i promise to provide a link. :) here is our couple shot:



and last, but certainly not least, we are soooooo close to being done with our master bathroom. remember how things looked before we started the remodel? how bout how things looked after everything got demolished? well, we have painted, laid floor tile and shower tile. i plan to grout Saturday afternoon. then, it's literally just a matter of moving the vanity and shower curtain and toilet in place. then we are D-O-N-E!!!!! that day, there will be much rejoicing.

here's a picture of the shower tiling. i had never done wall tiles before. we used "Rialto White" tiles from Lowe's. the floor tiles were from Mazer's. they are the large 18" tiles. we decided to add some accents to the white brick pattern. so, i cut the scrap pieces from the floor tiles into rounded 4" tiles to add some pizazz to the shower. i even cut some corner shelfs as well. it was stank-hard, but i'm very proud of how it looks.

Let it snow!!!

we woke up to a white world this morning! i got up and got my shower at 7:00 am like normal. i didn't even start to think about how it was supposed to snow overnight. brooke had said something about it maybe snowing, but in typical Williams fashion, i said, "i'll believe it when i see it!" well, i saw it!





at first, i just wanted to stand outside and watch the snow fall. then, i had to start walking around in it. then, i couldn't help myself.....i went inside and changed, and played in the snow like a kid! brooke and i had a snowball fight, and then we made a mini-snowman. yes, those are raisinets and a baby carrot for the nose.

we didn't have much trouble getting to church this morning. the roads were a little slushy in places, but not bad at all. our numbers were down at church (only 37 for bible class and 56 for worship), but it was still great. Randy Lyon was our fill-in preacher for Mel (he's at a Gospel Meeting today). he always does a good job. after church, we had a glorious snowball fight outside. way fun.

a big highlight this weekend was that Ben and Amy Boyd came back to visit! they were members with us at Shades Mountain for 4+ years while in pharmacy school. they have since moved back to Florida. this was their first time back to visit. it was so good to see them again!

One room down! (update)

we finally completed the dining room. brooke got some awesome curtains sunday. here are the pics:

"Lemme lemme update-update ya"....

kinda like Beyonce sings in that DirecTV "upgrade ya" commercial. that just owns me for some reason.

what a great signing day for Bama! back-to-back #1 recruiting classes per Rivals.com! i know that these are just 17 and 18 year old kids, but you have to like Bama's odds of being competitive in the next few years. that's alot of good talent coming in to T'town! plus, we stole a few recruits from Louisiana and LSU to knock them out of the top spot. that was sweet. those Bama/LSU games should be awesome in the next few years.

speaking of Bama, our "Bama Room" is almost painted. just a word of advice to anyone considering painting a room crimson or any shade of red: be prepared for MULTIPLE coats. the first primer coat looked streaky and pink once it dried. so did the 2nd one. i put the 3rd coat of Sunday afternoon, and it's looking pretty good. it will still need 1 or 2 more coats before it's done. but it's looking really really good. i promise the next post will have pictures of it. :)

brooke is doing awesome in school. she's in her last semester of classwork. then, she has one year of clinical rotations left before she's DONE!!! she's already got her schedule for her rotations, and she is pumped. i'm so proud of her hard work. she's hosting Bunco for our girls from church tonight. woohoo!

our master bathroom is also coming along nicely. i've got 2 more pieces of sheetrock to put up. then, i can start building the knee wall and painting. we've already got the tile for the floor. it won't be long from here!

Bathroom update

you may remember our rotted subflooring from where our shower pan was leaking. well, i had to remove it and another large section of subflooring that was damaged. so, i needed to use my saw. i don't have any earplugs, so i made my own little get up, seen below. i took a headband of Brooke's and stuffed 2 socks over my ears. and of course, i had my old racquetball goggles for eye protection. i told Brooke, "i should invent a helmet that would protect your ears and your eyes..." hmm....maybe i'll work on that one day.




so in the next 2 pictures, you can see the 2 pieces of 1/2 inch plywood i put down. brooke was worried that i would fall through the open floor, but i didn't. :)






so the next step is to put the new sheetrock on the walls. i have 2 larger pieces to place in where the former shower was. i will put 3 pieces of what's called "greenboard" around the tub (seen below). it's supposed to be better for areas where water might get through to it. you can see where our new copper pipe has been run up for our new shower head. and, you can see the recessed light we just got put in.





so we're making progress!!! woohoo!!! we just started on the office in the front of the house that we will refer to as "The Bama Room". stay tuned for pictures soon!

One room down!

i mean, what a "before and after"!!! the only things we lack are the new flooring and new curtains. those will come soon. but the dining room is now usable again! doesn't it look so much bigger???

New Look Dining Room!!! Pictures!!!

don't get too excited! we're far from over, but much further than we've been! this weekend, brooke and i finished spackling and sanding the walls in the dining room. so we primed the walls last night. this afternoon, we stopped by Lowe's and got our paint and painted the walls! the color looks alot better in person than on the pictures. we've still got to paint the trim and windows white, but we're thrilled at how good it looks so far!!!


you can see above how well the primer covered our spotted wall.





it looks great!!!

Remodeling pics

after painting the ceiling. notice how smoky it is in there....that was from sanding some of the spackling off the walls. our house is thinly coated with spackling dust in about 5 rooms.


this is the "before" picture of the ceiling.


this is where the shower once stood in our bathroom. i've still got to tear down the white concrete walls and replace it with sheetrock. the shower pan has been removed, leaving the bare subflooring (which i'll need to replace).


this view is similar to the "Avios Avocado" picture. since this picture was taken, i've removed the toilet and broken up about 2/3 of the remaining floor tile.

Remodeling update (with photos!)

we have been tearing up our bathrooms in our house, but in a good way. we had started pulling down the wallpaper in our master bathroom. that came down MUCH easier than we thought. so today, i finally disassembled the old shower stall. that's where i'm standing on the ladder in the first picture. we have decided to remove that shower b/c there is a leak in the shower pan. it would cost an estimated $3,000 to get that repaired. we don't like the layout of the bathroom as it is right now, so we'll move stuff around. we'll put a shower head with the current tub, and move the toilet to where the shower is now. it already looks much better with those glass doors down. then, we started scraping off the popcorn ceiling in the master bathroom. that, again, is alot easier than i thought it would be. so we got that done.

then, we pulled off the wallpaper in the half bath downstairs and the full bath upstairs (the old cherry wallpaper). again, that came off REALLY easy. we were pumped. we wanted to keep working, so we started to pull the wallpaper off in the foyer at the front door.

big mistake.

that stuff is stuck on firm. as easy as the rest of the wallpaper has been, this wallpaper is that stuck on. so, we halted for the night. we'll have to score it, and soak it with wet newspaper to get it off. that will be a chore. but we got really lucky not having to do that for all our bathrooms.

so we've made progress. we can't wait to get all the popcorn off and the paint on the walls!

the other day, i got a wild hair...

well, we got our foundation fixed last week. so that means we can get started on remodeling. so one night this week, i went to our master bathroom to try to peel some loose wallpaper. much to my delight, the glue must have broken down over the years, and the wallpaper just peeled off completely. this was a major relief. we vividly remember how difficult it was to remove the old wallpaper at our house in Alabaster....scoring it and soaking it with DIF gel. it was a nightmare. so now, we've got bare sheetrock to work with. :)

stay tuned for updates on how we're planning to reconfigure our master bath.

Happy Halloween!!!

we had some friends over for a halloween party Saturday night. i think we counted 33 total. so getting ready for this party forced us to get the new house somewhat in order more quickly. we had taco salad and LOTS of halloween candy. we watched some football and played our annual game of Celebrity. we had a great time, plus, we got an extra hour of sleep that night from the time change. woohoo! check out my facebook profile for more pics.

we've had some issues come up (quite literally) with the house. our first night, we slept without heat b/c i couldn't figure out how to get the pilot light to come on at the furnace. our master shower isn't working right, so we have to climb the stairs to the guest bathroom for our morning showers. and to top it all off, our sewage line was clogged, and "poo-water" spilled everywhere in our laundry room (and dripped into the unfinished basement). we've almost got that resolved. the clog is gone, but the stench remains. but, we're loving how close we are to work/school/church. it's been wonderful.

now that our halloween party is done, we can start our projects. be watching for more pictures soon.

ps.....how bout my Crimson Tide?!?!?!?! if you could jump in a time machine, travel back to 1/3/2007 (the day Saban was hired), and tell the masses that Bama would be ranked #1 in 2008 the week Saban returns to Baton Rouge to play LSU, you would be locked away in the crazy house. but here we are. we may lose to LSU, Miss State, Auburn, and Florida, but i'm enjoying this ride. i do think we're playing a little over our heads, but i believe we can make it undefeated to the SEC championship game. then, i'll be scared to death of Florida. they are good.