Let the Nesting Begin!

Whew! Stage I complete. We have finished the remodel on what was our guest bedroom and is now the boys' new bedroom. Our house was built in the 1920's and this room was added on in recent years by a previous owner. It had a set of french doors that went out to the backyard and another door that went out to the driveway. The room has its own bathroom, which is nice, but the only closet for the room was a tiny one in the bathroom. Also it had a large set of windows on one wall. This room is on the back of our house (the west side) and gets a lot of afternoon sun, so it was hard to keep it cool. Needless to say, not only was it not a very functional room, but definitely not for a kids room. So, we made a few changes.

We completely removed the french doors and walled that in. We walled in where the other exterior door was and made that area a closet. We removed the large set of windows and replaced them with 2 smaller ones. Lastly, we removed the carpet, added wood, a ceiling fan and a fresh coat of paint. Along with some new furniture, the room is complete. There is even more room than I anticipated! It never ceases to amaze me how rooms look bigger once you move the furniture in than they do when they are empty. The boys love their new space.

Now we have approximately 2 months to get the nursery (boys' old room) ready for Baby Girl Norris. Yes, we do have a name, but we always like to keep it to ourselves until the big day. We will post pictures of the finished product on the nursery when its done.



I forgot to take a before pictures, so this is actually from right after we bought the house. It was the only one could find.



After, same view. The room was empty for a few weeks while we waited for furniture and the boys loved playing (and yelling) in here. Ollie loved the echoes and sweeping.



New closet, sorry I forgot to flip this before posting it.


Since we would like to keep Ollie in a crib as long as possible, we borrowed this crib from our friend Ann and kept our crib in the nursery. Thanks Ann!!




Between the closet, new dressers and new shelving unit, we have a lot more storage space.

Nashville Reunion

Every two years my extended family gets together somewhere for a destination family reunion which gives us a chance to visit w/ aunts, uncles, cousins, and new cousins that otherwise we probably would never get to see. This year Nashville was selected as the destination. We braved the 12 hour car trip (in one day both ways) and made our way there. The trip was fun, but not without issues. The first morning we were there Sam was acting like he did not feel well and then began dry heaving. He is physically unable to vomit due to the surgery he had for reflux as a baby. So he and Tony stayed at the hotel most of the day where he then proceeded to have diarrhea all day :) Ollie and I went to the zoo for the afternoon and then they were able to join us for dinner that evening. The next day Sam was feeling better and we played at Bicentennial Park and then had a picnic lunch there with the whole family. Sat afternoon we took a river boat ride on the Cumberland river. It began raining half-way through, but there was plenty of covering and a country band playing on board. The weather was cool, very enjoyable. That evening we ate at the Aquarium restaurant. The next day, Sunday, Sam was complaining of his feet hurting and refused to walk, at all. I mean he insisted we carry him 2 ft if he had to go that far. We could not figure out what was going on and this was not like him. So, ultimately we decided to head home a day early. There wasn't much left to do anyway and we definitely did not want to be carrying him around all day. The next day he was fine, who knows :) I have posted a bunch of pics on this one, just realized there aren't any of Sam. He wasn't real into having his picture taken, he was either sick or busy.


Ollie at the Zoo

The Loveless cafe, Tony's favorite part of the trip. According to Martha Stewart this place has the best biscuits she has ever tasted. I must agree they were pretty good.

Bicentennial park. This is actually the capital building looking up from the park. Sam insisted on climbing up all the steps to get up here, I think Tony said there were 150 steps. If you look to the far right in the middle of the picture you can see Tony and Sam.

Ollie was fearless with these fountains

He definitely played hard that morning

The Music City Queen

This was our group minus one family who left early that morning.