Extreme Home Makeover is in Pekin!!

Who would have thought that Extreme Home Makeover would be filming in Pekin?? Not me...but they are! It has been really neat to see the progress of this house being built in a week. It truly is amazing that so many people are volunteering their time and money to such a great and worthy cause. If you want to read about the family visit the Peoria Journal Star.

I've tried to go to the house every day, but I have missed a few, so I'll take you through the progression...

Here's the original house still standing on Tuesday morning (photo courtesy of PJStar).

Here's the house on Wednesday evening...as you can see it's gone. They were using three backhoes and filling a huge dumpster about every 15-20 minutes. Notice who's equipment they're using...but also notice what they did to hide the name...butt munchers!

Here's the new house on Friday evening...what a transformation!

And, here's the house as of Sunday morning.

As we were driving by the location on Saturday morning, we were lucky enough to get to see one of the carpenters of the show, Ed Sanders. He's the bald one on the right. We're still not sure if the guy on the left is important or not.

Then on Sunday morning, Michael Moloney was signing autographs. We didn't get one because we didn't have anything for him to sign, but I did get quite a few pictures.

I'll have more pictures as the days pass. They'll be completely finished with the house on Tuesday. Unbelieveable...a 4,000 square foot, 7 bedroom, 4 bathroom house in 1 week...

My first apple pie...

I'm a big fan of apple pies, and after Jason and I picked apples yesterday, I just had to attempt to make one. The crust design was awesome, but it wasn't the best pie...probably because I deviated from the ingredient list...oops! We had some ground cloves in the spice cabinet, and I thought what the hay...let's add some cloves. Probably a bad idea. Something was definitely overpowering, and I'm betting that the culprit was the cloves. Nonetheless, it's still edible...but...I've been informed by Jason that he's going to buy some ice cream tomorrow to go along with our pie. Why do you ask?? He claims that you only put ice cream on apple pie if the pie itself isn't good...what a supportive husband!

Fun at Tanner's Orchard

Since today is Columbus Day, I didn't have to work...woohoo! Jason decided to take the day off too, so we went to Tanner's Orchard north of Peoria. We had a great time picking apples and a couple pumpkins. Jason of course had to try out the apples before we picked any. He approved!


Come to find out this orchard is right next to a huge wind farm. Jason is absolutely fascinated with the wind turbines, so he thought that was the best part of making the trip and wanted the turbines in every picture.

They also had some billy goats, llamas, and ponies for the little kids to pet and feed. They even had a little bridge for the billy goats to cross from one side to the other.

And of course Jason couldn't resist this...

Grand Central

Grand Central is a cool telephone service that Google bought and provides to anyone for free. We use it instead of our cellphones so that we don't have to worry about dropped calls or using our minutes. Jason uses it to ring our house phone, then Google will call his parent's house phone. No long distance charges either.

To call us, click the Call Me button below and then type in your name and the phone number of the phone you want to use. Click "Call me" again and Google will call the phone number you entered and will then call our phone number.

Jason's baking experiment

We were at Wal-Mart this morning, and Jason wanted to buy some yeast but he wouldn't tell me what for. So we bought two little packets of yeast, and when we came home I wasn't allowed in the kitchen. He told me that he was going to have to put flour on the counter top, and I was really worried and very curious at that point. You can tell how much baking he's done by himself because he had to ask me if he needed to pre-heat the oven. I said yes, and he replies back that the recipe doesn't tell him to.

So anyways...a little bit later, he comes back down and says that he thinks he needs my assistance. He finally had to tell me that he was trying to make pretzels. So I went upstairs and his "dough" was the consistency of pancake batter. You certainly can't knead that. Come to find out, he added 1 3/4 cups of water instead of just 3/4 cups of water. Oops! So then he made another batch...luckily he had bought that 2nd package of yeast. Then he needed my help again because he didn't know how to shape the pretzels. He was trying to do it all fancy and spin the dough in the air, but it definitely wasn't working. So I just shaped them lying on the cookie sheet.

They turned out really well (but they kinda looked like piles of dog poo) and tasted pretty good, but we didn't have any course salt which would have made them better. Next time, I think we're going to make four giant pretzels instead of the smaller ones.

The year of weddings continues...

On Saturday we set out in a different direction than we have all year...St. Louis. I've been so used to going to Chicago for weddings that it was a nice change. Our friends, Andrew and Jamie, got married, and we were able to catch up with a lot of my friends from high school. Fun was definitely had by all!

Landscaping is finally done!

Mom and Dad came to visit us this weekend, and we put them to work. On Friday night we had 7 tons of rock delivered...that's a lot of rock! We got started around 8:00 on Saturday morning and we were done with the project by 5:00. Our friend Matt also came over to help, so that made things go faster too.

When Jason and I were picking up the original rock, we found a bunch of flagstone that was hidden by our huge hostas. We thought we might use it, but ended up not needed it. So on Saturday evening we set it out by the street with a for sale sign on it. Around 10:00 on Sunday morning, a guy came by and bought it all. How lucky is that?? Anyways, here are some pictures from the weekend.













We still have a few places where I want to put some more flowers or plants, but we may just wait until next spring to do that. We're both a little tired of working on this project and have other things that need done...like our school work! At least this was only a month project...the bathroom remodel took us five months!

Disc golf!

Jason and I tried out a new sport this evening...disc golf...and it was a lot of fun! There were 18 "holes" just like in real golf, but we only played 16 because our hands were getting sore from throwing the disc (an expensive frisbee). The holes wound us around a wooded area that had nice trails to walk on if you weren't playing disc golf.

Luckily we only lost Jason's disc once (he had a wicked curve), but my keen eye found it after about 5 minutes of searching. We've determined that a yellow disc is not the best color. It really blended in with all the greenery and when the sun hit it, you could barely see it. Mine is a bright pink color, so it was pretty easy to spot.

As promised...

As promised, here are the pictures of our new plants in the front.

What a busy day!!

Jason took today off, and it was fun and filled. We started out around 7:00 this morning by going to my school. He helped me hang up posters, and I sure did appreciate it. We got done in about 2 1/2 hours compared to probably 3-4 hours if I would have done it by myself.

We left the school around 10:00 and stopped at the landscaping place on the way home to look at plants for the front. We made some notes and took it home to discuss (can't rush into anything with Jason). We decided on what we wanted to do, and then ate lunch around noon.

At 12:30 we went to the golf club house...to rent a golf cart!! I told Jason that I would go with him if we got a cart. He obliged (thankfully!). It was a little slow going at first. There were a ton of people out there, and we got stuck behind a group of three and a guy by himself. After the first two holes, the guy in front of us said that Jason could hit with him if he wanted to. We had a great time as you can see from the photos below.



We got done on the golf course around 4:45, rushed home, and left again. We had talked about the plants while Jason was golfing and decided to go ahead with them. So we rushed to the landscaping place since they closed at 5:30. We ended up buying two hydrangeas, two boxwoods, and two rhododendrons (pictures to come!). After we unloaded the plants from the car, we went to Subway for supper, and then headed to Menards to get some dirt. Got home around 7:00 and immediately started planting. We worked until we couldn't see anything anymore. Unfortunately we only got three plants in the ground, so we'll finish up tomorrow and I'll post some pictures then. What a busy day!

All in a day's work

We started working on the landscaping project this morning around 10. It was sprinkling, so we worked in the front since there's a lot of tree cover. I guess you could say we did a little bit more than anticipated. It started out that this project was just rock/mulch removal. Now it seems that we're doing a full blown landscaping remodel. See the 'pretty' bushes in the front??

Now you don't! It looks totally different and sooo much better. The rock removal was being hindered by the bushes, and I hated them anyway. Jason was like, you wanna take those out? I excitedly said absolutely! So they're gone! And boy was it tough work. Those stumps and roots were a pain to dig out. We'll be sore tomorrow!

I have no idea what happened, but during one of our drink breaks, Jason dropped his can. It was the fastest I'd seen him move all day. I guess he didn't want to waste too much of his precious beer.

Landscaping...a back-breaking project

This morning we started a landscaping project that's going to be a lot more work and take a lot more time than I anticipated. I knew it'd be hard work, but geesh...this is rough! I think that when it's finished, it'll look really nice though. We're replacing all of the timbers with small boulders and all of the mulch/river rock with something else. We haven't decided what kind of rock we're going to put down, but we don't want mulch and the bigger rock isn't conducive to growing plants, so we thought it was time for something new.

Unfortunately, we don't have a truck. Jason's poor little car was loaded to the max (well maybe not, but we didn't want to test the max out). In our first trip, we hauled 506 pounds. Can you believe that just around that tree is a quarter of a ton of rock?? Crazy! Then we went back and hauled another 464 pounds of rock. We put the rock in the trunk and in the backseat to distribute the weight, so that we weren't dragging the ground.


Today, we just laid down the edging around one tree, so here's the before...

...during (Jason is obviously slacking off a little bit)...

...and here's the after!

Fun with Matt!

On Friday night, we went out with our friend Matt. We met for dinner at Kelleher's, an Irish pub on the riverfront, and then we went to a Peoria Chiefs baseball game. It was probably one of the best we'd been to...no we didn't win, but the entertainment was phenomenal.

Here's a really funny video of one of the ushers. During every break in the game, he would be doing this...I don't see how he wasn't exhausted or injured by the end of the game! The guy is wearing a blue shirt in the middle of the screen, so look past the heads of the two women in the forefront. Hilarious...



This was actually one of the "real" entertainers for the evening. His name was Myron Noodleman, and he had about three or four little routines, but this was was the best.



After the game, we went back to Matt's apartment for a little Guitar Hero!

They were definitely in concentration mode here.


So, we couldn't help but take a picture of our "band". Notice that my microphone is wireless, but the guitars aren't. Well actually...my microphone is a flashlight...but it looks pretty good, don't you think??