End of 2013

Birthday Girl

This month has been all about Christmas and friends and of course, Miss Molly.  Worked on a few homemade gifts to surprise my nieces and sister.  Made a robe for my daughter.  And did a lot of baking.

The month started with Molly's 2nd birthday on the 5th.  Can't believe she's two already.   She is talking up a storm now.  You could tell she was bursting to talk and once the words started to come....they haven't stopped.  She's even pointed to the word "box" on a storage box, and read it out loud.  Such a genius, my granddaughter. :)
Alissa out did herself painting a kitchen set for Miss Molly.  She has a refrigerator, oven, sink and table and chairs.  Her other grandmother (Nana) bought her wooden "food".  Molly spends a lot of time playing house.  We gave her the red tricycle.

Bruce and I went to Ikea to buy a counter top to put in the closet in Bruce's office. He needed a replacement for the roll top he gave me. He's built himself a nice little space. He's also created a play area for Molly.  The room still needs to be painted.  Pictures are hung where ever he could find space just to get them off the floor where they've been stacked for months.  One of these days we'll get around to putting up pictures in an orderly manner.  To me it's just more dusting off of sheetrock dust when the next project starts.

The trip to Ikea gave him a brilliant idea.  Instead of building my cutting table from scratch, we could use 4 kitchen cabinets and 2 counter tops.  So we went back to Ikea and bought two plain cabinet bases with shelves and two with doors and drawers.  Bruce built a base to raise them up to the right height and to give me a "toe kick" space.  I've managed to get ALL my plastic bins inside and get rid of the tall wood shelf unit.  I still have 5 boxes to sort through and either find a home or get rid of.  But I do have empty space in the new cabinets.

We've also ordered a new unfinished wood lateral file cabinet to put next to the roll top.  We'll finish it to match.  I can get rid of the two metal cabinets in my sewing room.  The wood will look so much nicer when you enter the house.



Nick, Molly & Rosie

Our dear friends Bob and Bonnie Littleton came down from Washington to meet their new granddaughter, Emilia.  Bonnie's son, Tony and DIL, Gretchen live here in Ventura.  Bob and Bruce go back to the 4th grade.  Alissa and Tony knew each other in high school.  So we had all three generations together for dinner.  It was fun watching Tony and Gretchen's daughter Rosie (3) and Molly (2) interact.  It was a slow start, but by the end of the evening they were having so much fun neither wanted to leave.  The next time Molly came over she kept asking for Rosie.

Bob, Alissa, Bruce, Bonnie & Rosie

We had a lovely Christmas on the 24th at Nick and Alissa's.  His parents and oldest sister Kate were there too.  Just having her birthday, Molly knew all about opening presents.  All Grampa wanted were toys for Molly, so she was helping him.  Molly is wearing the Santa hat that Dad Bailey had worn for years.

Nana and Poppa gave her a play house.  She and her Mama were having a bit of lunch inside.



Making friends

Christmas the girls came for breakfast.  Mama went home to get clothes for Molly and get ready to  see Daddy at the fire station for lunch.  I gave Molly a bath and put her in Bruce's sweatshirt till Mama got back with clothes.  Molly came back for a nap here while Mommy cleaned house from the day before.  They had dinner with us Christmas night and played with her new train set.  Bruce was so glad when I packed away Snoopy and the singing penguin ---->

Bruce doesn't feel that the house looks like we've done much.  Painted 3 bedrooms.  But when you look back through the blog, each room had at least one wall taken down to the studs.  Getting rid of the texture has been a major project in itself.  Plus we've had a lot of Molly time.  And that's the reason we're here, to spend as much time with our girls and Nick as possible.

Here it is the end of December and it's 75* outside.  Bruce and I had lunch down at the sea side and took a nice walk along the ocean.

With all the work, with all the changes......there's not much I can complain about. Life is good. I imagine 2014 will bring more changes and more happiness. How could it not!

Happy New Year to all of you!  May you live your dreams.