Karen's Kanines

Thought You Beer Drinkers Would Like This One

2008-07-12T23:44:00.001-04:00

Updates

2008-06-28T11:43:00.005-04:00

Wow ... didn't realize it had been so long since I've updated the blog. Will catch you up real quick and try to do a better job of updating in the future.

This is my son, DJ. He was on the Morris baseball team and they actually were the champions this year. He has become one of the power hitters for the team. He is now in summer training for football and will be a linebacker. He is one of the four biggest boys on the 7th grade football team. He is really enjoying it, but I sure was afraid he would quit football because the summer workout is really hard. He has also been walking/running on the treadmill two miles about three times a week and then does situps and pushups also. He's working hard to make sure he's not one of the boys that has to sit the bench. (smile)

Well, the grandson is sure growing up quick. He is now 17 months old and walking and starting to try to talk and getting into trouble as little boys do. (smile) Skyler and Crystal are living in Augusta, Georgia so I don't get to see them as much as I would like to. I try to get Skyler for a week at a time every other month at least, but now that I will have to be going back to work, my time to spend with him is going to be shortened, which I hate. Here is a picture of Skyler reading his book. And yes, he is a biiigggg boy and going to be a linebacker!

(Here is a picture of the new house we are going to buy in August.)

We have now moved to Alabama and are staying with the in-laws for now. The house in South Carolina is on the market to sell, but has been for sale longer than we had hoped. We have a contract on a house here in Alabama and should close sometime in August, so hoping the other one sells soon or we'll have two mortgages. The house we are buying is not completely finished. The man who lived there died before he got it completely done. It is about 80 or 85 percent finished. Will take about 20 or 25,000 dollars to finish. It comes with 13 acres of land also. The photo above is how it looks right now before we have done anything. Will keep you updated on the progress.

So there's your quick update and will continue to update as often as I can.

Work on House - 2/12/08

2008-02-12T20:16:00.000-05:00

Didn't get quite as much done today as I had wanted. I finally got the first coat of paint finished on the kitchen ceiling. I got the first coat on the upstairs bathroom and got the vanity primed. The master closet is primed and partially painted. I had to make a ton of phone calls today; trying to get my son into baseball in Alabama, talking to the counselor at new school, emailing current teachers for syllabus, checking on car insurance for my daughter. So needless to say, didn't get quite as much done as I had hoped, but tomorrow is another day.

Need to get into the attic tomorrow and get some packing done up there and get rid of some stuff on freecycle (check out freecycle to get free stuff and give free stuff). I also need to do second coat in kitchen, second coat and cut-in work in bathroom, first coat on vanity and finish the closet. I also have to paint a portion in the livingroom my husband decided to repatch, which I have already painted previously, but now the paint doesn't match exactly so not sure what I'm going to do with that right now. Not sure I'll get all this done, but that's my goal at least. I also have to find out where I need to go to get a copy of a deed for our adjacent lot, as the original one has been misplaced somewhere. And on top of everything else, I have to go out and get a baby gift for a luncheon on Friday for a lady I used to work with. Has anyone figured out how to get a few extra hours in a day yet?

Anyway, that's my update for today and will do another tomorrow if I'm not toooo wore out.

Work on House - 2/11/08

2008-02-11T21:33:00.000-05:00

Well, have been quite busy today on the house. Husband sanded the kitchen ceiling yesterday, so today I used Kilz and primed the entire ceiling and have painted 3/4 of the first coat so far. I also got the master bedroom closet primed and the hall bathroom upstairs finished priming. I had to do some Internet searching to get more info on the new school for my son and will call them tomorrow to see if their classes are ahead or behind the classes my son is in now. Also got info to get him onto the local baseball team. Been checking on a portable dumpster to use to get rid of a bunch of junk around here, but they are quite expensive. It is like 350 bucks for seven days. Going to do a little more checking on this tomorrow to see if I can find a better rate. Don't want to pay that much to haul my junk off. Got another busy day tomorrow around the house, so will update more then!

Update on Grandson

2008-02-11T09:17:00.000-05:00

This is an updated picture of my daughter, Crystal, and my grandson, Skyler. This was taken around Christmas, so he would have been 11 months old. He is now walking, saying a few words, has 7 teeth, and on regular whole milk. She got really lucky that he is such a good baby. He is really a mama's boy too. Every time Crystal comes in from work he will start crying and yelling for her to come and pick him up. He will grab and try to crawl up her legs a lot of times too. He is such a goober. (laughing) Will upload the first birthday cake pictures soon.

My Other Blog

2008-02-09T20:06:00.000-05:00

Started a new geocaching blog to try and keep this one just for family stuff and the other one strictly my geocaching stuff. If you want to check out what's going on with me on my caching, click the link on the sidebar called Ballentine Buddies' Geocaching. Never know what kind of tales I might be telling on there!

Work on House

2008-02-09T19:51:00.001-05:00

Well, I have been doing a ton of work on our house trying to get it ready to sell before our move to Birmingham, Alabama. I have already painted the whole downstairs of the house and also the master bedroom. I have pulled the carpet off the stairs and sanded and varnished them. That sure was a big job!

Yesterday and today, after draining the inground pool, my son and I powerwashed it to get it ready to be painted. It was a big job because about a month or so ago the pump blew up so the pool was had a nice green slimey look to it. I have also in the past couple of days stripped the wallpaper off one of the bathrooms, patched all holes and dents, sanded, and used Kilz (kills stains on walls) and it is now ready to paint. Today I patched, sanded, and primed the master walk-in closet and is ready to paint.

Tomorrow on my list is: Sand kitchen ceiling (was just sheetrocked, which I helped do previously), use some Kilzl on it because we had a leak that we didn't know about until after the first mudding (had to pull off 3 layers of shingles, fix the leak, and reshingle, which I helped do also). Will probably paint the kitchen ceiling on Monday to let the Kilz have time to dry. Going to paint the bathroom and closet also tomorrow, on top of watching the grandbaby for a few hours while my daughter goes to work.

Still have to pull up carpet in the master and my son's bedroom and the office, do some touch-up painting that I have noticed needed to be done, scrape some old paint (not done by me) off woodwork and clean and Murphy Oil it, and do TONS of packing still. Have been doing a bunch of packing already, but still have more to do in the main house and haven't even touched the two attics yet.

So needless to say, I have a bunch of work ahead of me as we plan to move the last weekend of this month. Now, when am I going to get a little geocaching in with all this work to do? I thought when you retired, you're supposed to have fun and play all the time. If this is retirement, I wanna go back to work!!

Moving

2007-12-09T00:10:00.000-05:00

Have been quite busy packing, painting, cleaning, and everything else you have to do when you're trying to get a house ready for the market to move. My husband has already moved and left me here to get the house finished up and on the market and then will be moving to a small town north of Birmingham, Alabama. Will try and update more here when the chance comes around again.

Been Busy

2007-07-11T15:01:00.000-04:00

This is me signing a cache log.

Have been quite busy lately with work, the new grandbaby, and my newest adventures of geocaching. Will update you all with geocaching adventures as soon as I have a bit of time to sit down and type. In the mean time, why don't you just check out what geocaching is at http://www.geocaching.com/ .

Cystal and Skyler

2007-02-26T20:08:00.000-05:00

Crystal and Skyler at 1 month old

Update Photo of Skyler

2007-02-26T19:54:00.000-05:00

Skyler at 1 Month Old

New Grandson - Skyler James

2007-01-28T11:00:00.000-05:00

I am now a proud Nana. (grin) Skyler was born on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at 4:55 p.m. He weighed 6 pds 13 ozs and was 19 inches long. Crystal and Skyler are both home now and doing great!

Ooooh ... Expensive

2006-11-11T22:50:00.000-05:00

As most of you know, I am expecting my first grandchild, a boy, in January. My twenty-one year old daughter, Crystal, and I have been registering for her baby shower which will be the beginning of December. Now, remind you, my youngest child is ten years old and boy have things changed in ten years. As we were registering and she was picking things out, my eyeballs were about to bug out of my skull. I couldn't believe the prices of some of the stuff. And for that matter, how much stuff they have today that when my kids were babies we never had. How did I ever do without that baby bottle warmer? How did I ever do without that two hundred buck padded glider with a padded foot stool? And how did I do without the monitor where you can see exactly what the baby is doing? (Gagging while she looks at her empty wallet.) Anyway, we have had fun picking out all kinds of stuff for the baby and are very excited about his arrival.

He already doesn't like Nana (me) because EVERY time he starts moving around and Crystal says, "Mom, he's moving, hurry up", and I run to feel her belly, the instant my hand touches her belly he stops. See, he's already being a brat. (giggle) We are all really excited to finally get to see him and his ten year old uncle can't wait to prop him up in front of the PlayStation to teach him a few things. Don't worry, I'll post of picture of that one. So until the brat arrives ....

Thought For The Day ...

2006-09-15T23:20:00.000-04:00

My Crown Was Stolen

2006-09-04T09:20:00.000-04:00

My crown was stolen and I'm having a world of a time getting it back. As you can see, it is a very expensive crown adorned with tons of gold and you can see just how happy I am wearing it. I'll give you the lowdown so maybe you can help me find it. There are these people who follow me around .... just joking. About a month ago, my sister got me onto another blog site called Dead Guy on the Sidebar. This is a site where you have to guess who the dead guy is by asking questions. When you do guess who the dead guy is, you get your name on the sidebar with these cute little crowns on each letter of you name. Don't worry about going to the site, I have enough competition as it is now that I can't get my crown back. (smile) Okay, okay. Here it is, but don't blame me if you get addicted: www.deadguyonthesidebar.com

My oldest sister had this crown and I just couldn't resist putting it on and even having Shannon take the picture. I had to torture her somehow since she is the competition. (grin) Now ..... it's back to Dead Guy to find my crown again!!

The Tomato Thiefs?

2006-08-04T12:08:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I was out in my yard piddling around. My house has tons of woods around it with all kinds of animals. I noticed four woodpeckers and decided to sit and watch for a bit. These were the bigest woodpeckers I have ever seen and what seem so weird was that they were acting like young birds and not older ones. They stayed in pairs of two and were acting like they were learning to peck on the trees. I got a picture of these two. It was really hard to show in the picture, but they are just absolutely huge. Never in my life have I seen them this big. Wonder if there's something in my woods that they're feeding on that made them so big ... or are they the ones who have been stealing my ripe tomoatos? Time to do some investigative work. Stayed tuned for the update on the tomato thiefs.

The Dreaded Dumpster

2006-08-02T20:27:00.000-04:00

THE DREADED DUMPSTER

Notice anything wrong with this picture? Well, during a roadtrip with my sister, she went into McDonald's to get us some lunch while I took the dog for a potty break. Needless to say, being a court reporter, I always read signs and I just cringe when I see signs like this. So now I will tell you all what is wrong with this picture, but first a little hint: Guess you need to make sure you're quiet while dumping, eh? Still don't get it? Okay. For all you nonspellers, ALLOWED is what it should be and not ALOUD. I think they should just fire the proofreader of this sign. Watch the blog for future boo-boos.

I'm possesed!!

2006-08-02T18:15:00.000-04:00

Well, here is the start of my blog. Not sure what in the world possesed me to do this, but what the heck, time to have some fun!!