Mini Jim Brickman

F truly loves piano. He picked one really easy and one really challenging piece for his spring recital this year. The challenging one, an arrangement of the Jim Brickman song Rocket to the Moon, marks the first time he hasn't had his recital piece 100% memorized,  but it's also the longest/most complicated piece he's played. 

When he chose this song we came to an agreement - he could perform it only if he put in extra practice so he would be prepared come recital day. Boy, did he ever practice. Most days it was about an hour and he only complained once  (he bargained for practice a different time of day, not to give it up altogether). It paid off! 

I want to give a very special shout out to my aunt Pam who decided F would be a good recipient for my grandma's piano. I hope you know how wonderful that made F feel and I believe that having a piano that is his very own is part of what makes music so special to him. 

Demo Complete

Stage 1 is done, with demolition completed and the first part of new framing underway. We also ran into our first hiccup...

Everything out, wiring exposed, noticed some holes in the sub-floor. No biggie, provides wiring access and easily patched.

Plumbing all capped off and ready for next step, moving it all over the room.

 Existing pocket door exposed and ready to be taken out.

Master view of torn out wall and existing pocket door.

Making extra sure we like the way our new layout is going to look by using F's art paper and drawing out tub and vanity to scale. Tried out the look of the new tub filler, too bad it'll get mostly covered up by the tub, it's pretty!

New framing for the new pocket door location. Our first hiccup, they added a 2x4 to the header and it made the door opening small enough that now Travis has to duck. They'll be back in during the next framing stage to correct.

Master bedroom view of new pocket door location.

The Before for Before and After

We've lived in our house 5.5 years now (the longest I've ever lived in one place) and our 35 year old house has some parts that are just wearing out. Like this:

That's my super disgusting rusting master bath sink. Note the painted over tile surrounding it.

The bathroom wasn't bad when we moved in, the tile paint update had been done recently so it was still in good shape and the previous owners had updated the plumbing and light fixtures with big box grade items. But over time the sinks are rusting, the tile finish is cracking, the big box fixtures are failing, and the non-functioning jetted tub is just too darn small for a decent soak.  After my sink took a turn for the worse we decided to push back our planned kitchen remodel and instead of patching up the bath just tear the whole thing out and do it the way we want it. 

We started getting bids early this year, picked out fixtures and finishes, drew up a plan, and this week we finally kick off demo.  Already all the lights are gone (Travis is our electrical contractor).

 The door on the right leads to the master bedroom. It's going to shift toward where the bath/shower are now to make room for a soaking tub. Where the shower walls are now will shrink to just shower size (now it's shower and tub together) and we'll have a vanity in between where the sink is in the above photo.

See that nasty tub? That's sort of almond colored? That's because the whole bathroom used to be almond colored until they painted over the tile and added white vinyl wainscot. You can see the almond tile in the places where the coating is cracking off.

We've moved into the guest room for the time being. Next week is demo and framing, week 1 of a nearly 2 month project.

Mother's Day Composition

This morning I was presented with a lovely card and an announcement that in my honor FFM was releasing his first ever composition on Mother's Day. He's been working on it for a few weeks and yesterday he finalized it. Presenting, "Shooting Star" by F. Moore.

Disney

For the first time ever (since we've become real grownups) we took a spring break vacation. We've mostly skied during our spring break in the past, which if you know us isn't any different than a regular winter weekend around here.  This year we went all out with a blockbuster Disney World/Disney Cruise vaca.

(A warning - tainted by the insanely overpriced airfare to Florida, I didn't start out with the best attitude on this vacation. I managed to overcome.)

Being from a state prone to blizzards in March, we left Denver a couple night prior to our ship departure to give a little wiggle room in case we got stuck somewhere. The weather was gorgeous all the way around so after a late Friday night arrival in Orlando we hit the Disney parks on Saturday. We all have fond memories of Disney World just a couple years ago, so our target this trip was Epcot. The day was hot, steamy, and windless but we managed to have a good time. (Even locals were griping about the insane humidity that day, we desert folk were a sticky mess).

Being good parents we previewed the schedule of character meet and greets and were surprised when FFM announced he wasn't really interested in meeting any of the characters. Except Mary Poppins would be nice to meet, maybe we could find Mary Poppins. And we did! With her dancing penguin pal.

We spent the morning on the "countries" side of Epcot, and the afternoon riding rides and doing experiences in the front. 

 One thing we learned from our previous Disney trip, meal reservations are a good idea. A real meal can increase child stamina by at least 3000%. We opted for a late lunch in Italy, and were pleased to be seating right across from the flaming giant pizza ovens. Super cool. We're not sure our back yard is big enough, but if we ever manage to squeeze in a wood fired pizza oven it'll be in the shape of a giant's mouth for sure.

After a fun filled, meltdown free and sunburn free day at the park we crashed back at our hotel. The next morning the buses for the ship arrived and we were on our way!

Here's the thing, we're really bad about stopping to take pictures of the fun things we do, so for an entire week of swimming, water slides, beaches, snorkeling, eating, making new friends, quiet reading time, loud party time, shows, more eating, even more water slides we have a grand total of about a dozen pictures. Here are our favorites!

Swimming at the beach in Cozumel

Giant inflatable ocean toy thingy that was fun but caused many injuries.

Tendering from our ship (background) in Grand Cayman.

FFM first ever real snorkel trip! We snorkeled a ship wreck and Cheeseburger Reef. 

 Grand Cayman was by far and away our favorite stop. The weather, ocean, lunch, all perfect. We headed out for a day of snorkeling with a great guide. FFM has been begging to snorkel for years now, and tried a couple years ago when we were on the Gulf side of Florida, an area known for gorgeous beaches and murky water. This was picture perfect, and after the initial hyperventilating he took to it like a kid with salt water in his veins. Our first stop was a shallow reef, so far from the 80,000' drop off (seriously?) that I wasn't worried about anyone having a drop off panic attack. We were warned that there were BIG fish that would be swimming around all the little fish, but they were game fish, NOT SHARKS.

The second stop was a modern (70 years old) ship wreck. A ship carrying a load of rice started leaking when it was almost at the dock.  Before long the ship was underwater and splitting at the seams as the rice expanded. The ship was declared a total loss, and just sat there for decades. Recently the Royal Navy agreed to dynamite it so it wouldn't be sticking out of the water anymore. It makes a great dive site for beginners as there aren't very many bits sticking up. FFM figured out pretty fast that he could dive down for a closer look. He reported to Travis that it was much better to dive down than stay at the top and Dad should just spit his snorkel out and get down close to the fish/wreck.

Salt water in his veins

 Our last stop was the famous Disney Island, Castaway Cay. We had clear skies but rough seas most of the trip and this day they were the worst. We woke up and the ship hadn't docked yet, never a good sign. It took four attempts and was well after lunch before we could finally get on to the island, at which point all excursions had been cancelled so everyone was funneled to the beach. Luckily it's a huge beach so we didn't feel too crowded. We were sad to miss out on another snorkel adventure plus our afternoon with sting rays, but the water was so murky from the swells that it wasn't good viewing anyway.

While we were all rested and relaxed at the end of our trip, we decided we're pretty much done with Disney for now. FFM is already planning an all snorkeling vacation and a cruise that doesn't revolve around characters dancing around a ship.