The Nelson Narrative

It's New Year's Eve, and normally we would be going to the same friend's house that we've been going to for the last 10 years, but she had to cancel at the last minute, so we are just going to be relaxing at home with popcorn and movies. So, I've hardly blogged all year.  I just haven't been into it at all, but I'm determined to keep this thing going until the girls graduate from high school.  I realized a few weeks ago that I never finished blogging about our Boston/DC trip.  So hopefully I will get to that in the next few days.  Meanwhile, here are a few highlights of our year. The girls turned 14 in February.  We had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with Paul's mom and a bunch of their friends. Not a great picture but the only one I got In June they graduated from 8th grade and a few days later we went with several other graduates from all 3 middle schools in the district to Boston and DC.  You can read part one here and part two will hopefully be po...

In late June, the girls and I went to DC and Boston.  Our school district plans this trip every year for the 8th graders.  It's through a third party, World Strides, is optional and they don't necessarily always go to Boston (sometimes it's NYC or Philadelphia), but always DC. Anyway, we started out on a red eye flight to Boston on a Friday night, landing around 7 AM and going straight to the Hard Rock Cafe (which I believe closed permanently right after) for breakfast. Then we went to Concord, Lexington, Harvard and Fenway Park. The next day we did part of the Freedom Trail (Massachusetts State House, Boston Massacre site, Granary Burying Ground, and other stuff. but unfortunately not Paul Revere's house) and then Plimoth Patuxet Museum, Plymoth Rock and the Mayflower II (replica), then flew to DC. The North Bridge in Concord, where the first shots of the American Revolution were fired. A dorm at Harvard, possibly where Matt Damon lived, I think they said) Our group in...

Well, I am really behind.  Since I last posted, the girls graduated from 8th grade, we went to Boston and DC (not Paul), we went to Crescent Bar a few times, we went to Orlando/Disney World with a friend and her daughter, and the girls started high school. Yes, we have two freshmen.  They are 3 weeks in so far and loving it.  They are getting involved and doing all the things.  A few football games so far and they've ordered their homecoming dresses.  It should be a fun year. (The last few years they have insisted on having the pets in their first-day-of-school photos.)

Friday (the 13th!) was our 16th Anniversary.  We took the day off and headed for the ocean, to a town called Ocean Shores.  I hadn't been there since 1986 when I was a junior in high school and we went there on band tour (the only time I had been there until now). On our way stopped at a nearby oceanfront town called Seabrook. It's a cute little town with all these Cape Cod-style vacation homes and just a few cute shops, restaurants and bars.  We walked around for a bit, got an ice cream cone and then headed down to Ocean Shores. Once settled in our room we went to the pool and hot tub, then out to dinner at Bennett's Fish Shack where we enjoyed awesome fish and chips.  On Saturday we had breakfast in our room and then went for a walk on the  beach.  The weather on the Washington coast this time of year is notoriously cold and wet, but we lucked out with a few sun breaks and not too much rain or wind.  Later, we browsed some of the shops, h...

I had been wanting to paint our downstairs, if not the entire house, for YEARS, but I never had time to figure out colors (I wanted more than one) and we couldn't really afford to hire painters.  Doing it ourselves wasn't really going to work because we have one wall that spans two floors and we don't have a ladder that's tall enough. I also wanted all new living room furniture and hardwood (or luxury vinyl) floors.  We would have had to do everything a little at a time for budget reasons, but then my mom passed away in 2019 and we got a little inheritance, so we decided to get it all done at once.  I've blogged about it a little but haven't gotten around to everything yet.  So today I am finally going to post about our living room. When we bought our home in 2007, it was new construction so we were able to choose all of the finishes.  For budget reasons, we went with carpet vs. hardwood and we were planning on doing some accent walls so we went with plain white...