I know she is with us

Tricia, you are greatly missed. Three years ago, Tricia was taken from us. She was taken too early by breast cancer. I miss my sister-in-law. Though she is not present on earth with us, I know that she is here watching over us.

I was thinking of her this morning. As I was thinking of her something wonderful happened. Somehow she came to my rescue. I truly believe she was my angel to make things happen. We have been preparing for our move next week and I have been trying to arrange for Baby Bear's care so that I can focus on the move. Trust me it will be so much easier if she is not here, she is a busy girl and will most likely get into everything that she is not supposed to. I had most days covered except for Thursday, which happens to be the day that we move most everything. I got a call this morning from my mother-in-law and her appointment that prevented her from taking Baby Bear was canceled. This all happened as I was thinking of Tricia. Coincidence or not, I believe that Tricia was watching over us and helping to lift some stress from our lives. Thank you Tricia. I love you and I miss you.

So much to do this Holiday Season

I love the holidays. This year is no different despite the chaos. We are hoping to move into our newly remodeled home next week. Just days before Christmas. And yes we are going to spend Christmas in our home. We may not be totally moved in but we will have Christmas in our house!

Papa Bear has been working like crazy to get it all done. There are painters, electricians, and carpenters (oh my!) at the house. Everything is all scheduled and hopefully the rain will clear up by early next week so that we can move in. I am excited and overwhelmed all at the same time. I have so much to do, I have to pack, move, and then unpack before people come on Christmas day. The day after we are hosting a holiday party. I have to cook and bake, wrap Christmas presents, get a Christmas tree, decorate, and many things that I can't even wrap my head around.

It is hard to prioritize what to do since space is limited and many things are being packed up. Do I wrap presents now? If I do then where do I put them so they don't get ruined or lost while moving. I am not sure. I am trying to pack but is also hard to organize myself. I know there is much that we no longer need, so I should sort as I pack. It is just all overwhelming.

Overwhelming as it may be, it will all be okay. We may not be totally moved in but we will definitely have a memorable Christmas as a family in our house. That to me feels really good.

Our Kitchen: Refrigerator purchased

We bought our new refrigerator tonight. I am very excited and can't wait to use it in my new kitchen. We picked out the Samsung 28.0 Cu. Ft. French Door Refrigerator in Stainless-Steel. It is a really nice looking fridge and I really like the FlexZone drawer feature that will come in handy when Baby Bear is older. It will be a great place for her snacks and drinks. It has a lot of great features that we really liked. I hope it will work as well as we hope it will. It will be delivered next Tuesday!



Everything is starting to come together.

Our Kitchen: More progress

Lots of progress is being made very quickly. We are planning to host our annual Christmas party with a group of close friends. The evite went out on December 1st, so there is no turning back now. We are committed. We have been slated to host for years, but have put it off since we didn't have the space. This year we said we would be ready to host and Papa Bear is working very hard to get us there. These photos were taken last month and much more progress has been made since then. Here are a few photos of the kitchen.

The hardwood floors are in.



The glass tile backsplash was installed. It looks kind of green in the photo, but it is actually more of beige color in real life.



Since this picture was taken the dishwasher has been installed in that hole.



We are getting closer and closer every day.

The New Rules of Lifting for Women

My mother-in-law recently gave me a copy of The New Rules of Lifting for Women (NROLFW). I had heard of it before and wanted to check it out, so I was really excited that she had an extra copy and gave it to me. I finally got the chance to sit down and read it (it is not often in the last year that I have had the opportunity to read anything that was not baby related).

I really enjoyed what the book had to say. It dispels many of the myths of lifting weights for women. I have always known the benefits of lifting and actually preferring strength training to cardio, so I really liked what the authors had to say. I agreed with much of what they had to say and learned some new things as well.

The workout plan seems very doable. I have been looking to make a change in my workout routine and needed a good plan to follow to see better results. I have just been winging it in terms of my strength training. I knew I needed something that would fit into my busy schedule as a working mother. NROLFW is just what I need. It is a routine that is done 2-3 times a week and it is a full body workout that can be done in less than an hour. Perfect for my schedule. With my schedule and commitments, I have 4 mornings available to workout. The ideal is to follow their plan 3 days a week with a full rest day between workouts, however I only have 2 days with a rest in between to devote with my schedule. The other 2 days I have will be my cardio (rest) days. It is a 6 month program doing it 3 days a week, so it will be a little longer for me. That is just fine with me, I realize and understand that it takes time. My goals are long term.

I really appreciate that the plan is efficient use of time. They talk about doing functional exercises that not just isolate but work several muscles at a time. That makes a lot of sense to me. It really isn't an efficient use of my time to do bicep curls that only work my biceps when I can do a push up that works so much more. Plus, I actually love push ups. I know I am crazy.

So I look forward to going through this program and started this week and so far so good. My legs are definitely feeling it. I think I may need to increase the weight to feel it in my upper body. I do think I can keep this up. I am not very good at following programs on my own, but I really think this is something I can do. This program is very doable.

Our Kitchen: Before and in progress

The granite counter tops are in!!! Here are some photos with the new cabinets (still need to get the backsplash in):





Some close-up photos of the granite. I love it!





We still have to get the glass tile backsplash up. We had a sample of the white glass tile backsplash, but I didn't like how it looked, it was too stark white with the granite. We just need a color that is closer to the color of the granite, an off-white or cream, which shouldn't be a problem. There is still much work to do, but we have come a long way. Take a look at some before shots of the kitchen:





Here is a picture of the kitchen after Mr. Bear tore out the wall joining the dining room and kitchen.

Our Kitchen: The granite

We went to Arizona Tile in Ontario, CA to pick out granite for our kitchen counter tops over the weekend. What a great showroom and a painless experience. I thought that I had an idea in my head of what I wanted. I wanted lighter colored granite. But after walking around and looking at all the beautiful granite, I started to become unsure. There were many options and they were all so beautiful. Granite really is beautiful. Papa Bear told me to pick out what ever I wanted and he said that there really was no way to go wrong with granite since it is just beautiful. So it really was up to me to find the right fit for our kitchen.

I had found one that I really liked and Papa Bear agreed it was very special, but it had a lot of variations within the slab. It was called Typhoon Bordeaux; it started off with some browns and golds with burgundy on the top half and then gradually changed to a cream with gray, burgundy, and gold on the bottom half. It was indeed beautiful with all the variations in the granite, but Papa Bear reminded me that we would be using about a 2 foot part of the slab for the counter tops so not all of the variations that I liked would show up (the slabs were really big, maybe 7-8 feet tall and 10 feet wide). I am glad he brought that up. I really liked the cream part of the slab especially since I was sure I wanted to go with light granite; but we would have to get the entire slab. A little disappointed, I walked around more to take another look while Papa Bear went off with Baby Bear. He went and talked to the sales person and he told the sales person what I was looking for. The sales person mentioned that he had some slabs of that same granite that was just the cream colored part. It was the same but the cut of granite only had the lighter part.

Meanwhile, I walked around and looked at all the granite again. I found two lighter colored granite styles that I kind of liked and asked Papa Bear to look at a couple of them. He mentioned that the original one we liked came in just the lighter variation of the granite. So we asked them to pull out a few different slabs so that I could take a better look at them and make a final decision. We picked the Typhoon Bordeaux that was all cream. I am so glad that Papa Bear mentioned to the sales person what I liked because they only had 3 slabs left. We need only need 2 slabs but they like to reserve 3 slab just in case something happens along the way. Granite can break and when working with the heavy large slabs you never know what will happen.

Here it is.



These pictures are from the website (the second photo shows it close up):

The pictures does not do it any justice, it is really beautiful with some burgundy, gold, and gray in it. It really is special and exactly what I was looking for. I thought it would be so much harder to pick something out. And before I saw this one; I had narrowed it down to 2 others that I liked but but did not love. Thank goodness Papa Bear likes to talk to people, because as soon as they brought this one out, I told Papa Bear: "That is it!." I had no doubts. I can't wait to see it with my cabinets.

Kitchen Design

Our new (new to us) custom kitchen cabinet are all in and Papa Bear purchased our cast iron kitchen sink and faucet. I am excited to have this large sink.



I have always loved the look of white cabinets with a white tile backsplash. But our cabinets are a beautiful cherry wood and so I had to do a little research on what look color counter tops to go with these cabinets. We will have oak wood floors put in to match our existing oak floors in the rest of the house. So that is a lot of wood and darkness especially considering that the kitchen doesn't have a lot of natural light; we only have one big garden window. So I thought that light colored granite counter tops would brighten up the kitchen and would go nicely with our cast iron sink.

I haven't found a picture of a kitchen that clearly depicts how I picture it in my head. This kitchen is fairly close. It has light colored counter tops and simple white tile backsplash, which is along the lines of what I am going for. Plus the island is white cabinets, which we have a cabinet that joins the kitchen and dining room that will also be white. This picture shows me that all those parts can go together.



I shared my thoughts with Papa Bear and while he like the idea of light granite to brighten up the darker woods, he wasn't too thrilled about the white tile backsplash. He had installed some under the cabinet lighting and he wanted a backsplash that would pick up the light and be a little more exciting. He wanted something a little more special.

He suggested glass tile. I wasn't quite sure about the glass tile backsplash, the glass tile I had seen are usually small and look like mosaics. While beautiful, it just wasn't my style nor was it the classic look that I was going for. Then he found this white glass tile backsplash (the white tiles beneath the cabinets in the picture below).



It is a white glass tile that is larger in size than the smaller tiles you usually see with glass tile. I love it. It brings a modern touch to a classic traditional white tile backsplash. Plus, the under the cabinet lighting will really make these tile pop and bring a little specialness to the whole design. Those are the ideas for now, as we go things may change as a I am sure they will. Papa Bear ordered some samples of the glass tile and soon we will go pick out granite. I may totally fall in love with something else as time goes by.

Home remodel back on track!

For three years, we have been living in the back apartment while the front house was undergoing a remodel. We put the remodel on hold when the recession started and Papa Bear's business slowed down. Then I got pregnant and we once again started on the remodel. But Papa Bear's work starting to pick up again and when there is work, Papa Bear has to work. We had hoped to be in the house by the time Baby Bear was born, but that did not happen since Papa Bear was pretty busy with work. It was a good thing that Papa Bear was busy because that meant income, which is important when you have a baby.

Now Baby Bear is a one year old and walking! Papa Bear is really motivated to get us in the front house and has told me that we will be there by Labor Day. Papa Bear has been working really hard the last few weeks and has taken some time off to devote to our home remodel (usually he is working on other people's homes, so our home usually falls down on the priority list).

Our house was built in 1913 and Papa Bear has had the electrical work redone in our garage, had the exterior paint touched up and finished, had the rock work on our chimney and porch fixed, and had our hardwood oak floors patched up. Papa Bear has made a lot of progress on our kitchen. Initially, we did not plan to replace our cabinets since that was out of our budget. So we were going to live with the old cabinets for the time being. But Papa Bear was able to get us some beautiful custom built cherry wood cabinets for our kitchen for almost free! A client was tearing out these beautiful kitchen cabinets and replacing them. Papa Bear offered to demolition the kitchen for free and in doing so was able to take the kitchen cabinets. So we got custom cabinets for the cost of labor to have some of his workers remove the cabinets. Papa Bear measured out all the cabinets and got out his trusty pencil, graph paper, and ruler to design a kitchen that would work with the cabinets and he did a wonderful job! It was almost as if those cabinets were custom made for our kitchen.

Over the weekend, Papa Bear demolished our existing kitchen cabinets with the help of his father and he installed the cabinets. The other day he purchased our new stainless steel LG kitchen appliances:




Aren't they beautiful. They go very nicely with the dishwasher that we got from the Ellen Show last year (which Papa Bear designed the cabinets around). I am so excited to have a beautiful kitchen. I can't wait to use them.

There is still much for Papa Bear to do: granite counter tops and tile backsplash, our bathroom, refinishing the hardwood floors, paint, etc. We are well underway. I will post some kitchen in progress pictures soon. I am so lucky to have such a talented husband.

Ran fo the Red!

I completed my 10K yesterday. My legs are a little sore today. I ran the 10K in 1:12 and I feel really good about that time. My goal was to do it in under 1:20 and I was hoping for 1:15, so I made it well within my goal. It is the first 10K I have done since Baby Bear was born and the last one I did was 4 days after finding out I was pregnant and I did that in 1:11. So I didn't do too bad.

It was a great run through the Claremont Colleges. Fortunately, I know the terrain well. No crazy hills, just a nice scenic run through the colleges. It was the first annual Run for the Red and for the first time putting on the event, it was organized very nicely and had a nice turn out. I think I will do this one again. It is close to home and it is at work. I run this area every week, so no real surprises. Just a fun run.

A few friends ran as well and did really well. For my friend, Aileen, it was her first 10K and she did a wonderful job. We had been training on the weekends and she does better and better every week as we add distance. I am very proud of her! What an accomplishment.

Despite being a little sore (I didn't really stretch after the run, which was a mistake), I feel great. It was nice to have Baby Bear and Papa Bear at the finish line cheering me on. I am ready for the next one!