Renovating. Already?

Yes...you heard me right.  We are already renovating & we aren't even finished with the house!  Ever since we moved in, our biggest complaint has been that we don't get enough natural light in the front door/den area.  Well, here's what it looks like from the inside right now:

The plastic is there because there is a giant hole in my ceiling that goes into the (very hot) attic.  We are hoping to take advantage of one of our dormers to let in a little extra natural light.

Check out my front porch...

If you look in the lower left corner, you will notice that there is a refrigerator on my porch!!!  What a great idea!  (hehehe)  Did you ever see the episode of King of Queens when Doug decided to put a refrigerator in their bedroom and use it as an end table?  At first, it seemed like a great idea to him because he could lay in bed and get something to drink without getting up.  Later, when he turned the light out to go to sleep...the fridge kicked on and it was loud.  Carrie was not happy.  I could so see that happening!  By the way, why does the word refrigerator have no "d" in it when the word "fridge" does?  I have always been confused by this.

OK...something is very wrong with this picture...

My TV is missing!  Scott decided that he doesn't like hanging the tv on the wall so they are going to cut a hole in  the wall for the tv to sit in. 

I have no idea how long this renovation will take but I already have a headache.  :-)  I'll be glad when things get back to "normal".  I only wish my friend Melanie (yes YOU Melanie) would decorate my house for me.  I'm not very creative myself.  If I had a lot of money I'm sure that my house would look like Pottery Barn threw up in it.

Sophie's Pool

Anytime the weather forecaster uses the word "oppressive" to describe the forecast - well, it isn't a good thing.  After hearing just how hot and sticky it was going to be this weekend, I decided to go buy the infamous Sophie (my brother's dog) a pool.  Let's just say that she wasn't as excited as I thought she would be.  Here's the pool...

And here's Sophie.  She seems to think that it's just a giant water bowl for her to drink from.  I had to take the picture really fast because she took a quick drink and walked away.  It wasn't the reaction I had hoped for.  I wanted her to plop down and splash around.  Oh well, maybe she'll figure it out someday.  Oh, and I'd like to send a shout out to my Dad for driving me in his truck to pick up the pool.  Boy, these things are a lot smaller than I remembered.  I could have picked the thing up in a Mini Cooper if I had wanted to. 

Update on an earlier post....Rana, Laura & Daniel have arrived safely in Damascus.  Here's a picture that Rana took on the plane: 

We miss you.  Mom and Dad are bored.  :-)  Kevin is actually downstairs watching a movie with Scott as I type this. 

I'm doing a 7 week online Bible study with Beth Moore.  Time to go watch Beth...  Hopefully, I'll have pictures of Sophie IN the pool tomorrow. 

Wordless Wednesday

Kevin (my brother) took these pictures outside his office:

Sunday Soup

Scott found a recipe, for pulled pork bbq, in this month's Better Homes and Gardens magazine that he wanted to try out -so- we invited my family, Scott's family, and his friend Eric over for dinner Saturday night.  Here's our grill master:

I took this picture of the pork while he was "pulling" it: 

He also made some (rather hot) sauce.  It was really good.  Here's a picture of some of our guests:

Laura really enjoyed getting to know Scott's uncle, Ken, while Daniel informed us when the lights were turned off or on.  ("Light" is his favorite word.)  All of the other pictures I took seemed to show people with food in their mouths; maybe I won't post any of those.  Changing the subject:  Here's a picture of Scott eating Cocoa Puffs:

Here he is on a different day: 

Did you notice that Greta has her paw on Scott's shoulder?  How about a totally different day.  Are you noticing a pattern here?

I'm pretty sure that if I walked into my den right now, I would see pretty much the same scenario. Greta has to be with one of us at all times.  :-)  Tomorrow, my sister-in-law, Rana, is taking Daniel and Laura to Damascus for 7 weeks.  Allow me to indulge myself for the rest of the post.  I took a bunch of pictures of them today.  I'm going to miss the three of them very much!

 Have a great trip Rana/Laura/Daniel.  I love you.  See you in 7 weeks!

Photography 101

Tonight I took my very first photography class.  The class lasted almost 3 hours so I am still trying to process everything that I learned.  Looking around the classroom of about 20 students, I observed that almost everyone there owned a Nikon camera.  It was quite humorous how some of the students with the biggest lenses knew the least about how to use their camera.  Here are a few of my pictures from tonight.  We'll start out with our main teacher, Brian.  This isn't a great shot of Brian - I'm not sure what I was practicing here - but nevertheless, here he is.  I enjoyed his teaching.  He kept everything very simple (which is what I needed) but also made it very interesting.   

Don't adjust your tv screen....I took this picture with a very low ISO.  

See, I'm just proving to you that I learned my vocabulary.  In this picture I blurred the background:

I know.  It isn't very exciting looking at pictures taken in a dark classroom.  Here's a picture I took with a fast shutter speed.  See how I was able to stop the tennis ball...

Now see how I am able to show movement...

I know...it needs some work.  I really enjoyed taking this basic class and I look forward to the next one.  I think I'm going to wait until Fall to sign up for Intermediate though because I learned so much and have much to practice.  This school offers a lot of different classes and also offers many "field trips" with the teachers to include waterfall expeditions and trips to Oregon.  I look forward to practicing my new hobby.  I will end this post with a picture of a strawberry cake that Scott made this weekend.  It sort of fell, but it sure was AWESOME!  Hungry?