Happy Birthday J-Drizzle!

Mwah ha ha (evil laugh)!

I successfully hacked into Jessica's blog to pay tribute to her awesomeness on her special day.

(This is her sister Andrea, btw).

I called everyone in the family and had them tell me reasons why they love Jessica and things they love about her. Here are their responses:

Adam: "It's so easy to make her laugh. She has a hilarious laugh when you really get her going. She is so easy to talk to and so much fun."

Andrea: "Jessica is the world's best sister. She cares just as much about your problems as you do. She is so loyal. I also love how she seriously struggles at making normal faces in pictures. Her picture face is rarely how she looks in real life. But seriously, the girl is drop dead gorgeous!"

Mom: "Jessica is so thoughtful and kind. She instinctively knows what people need without even having to be told. She is a fantastic listener. She is the most incredible wife to Scooter. She can understand his work. She helps him organize his life. She is also a fabulous trip planner."

Rachelle: "I love her snotty rich girl eyebrows. Also, I'm jealous at the amazing color of her eyes. They are blue and green and hazel all at the same time. I love when she gets so excited that she claps her hands together really fast and bounces up and down."

Lauren: "I love Jessica's Mary Poppins bag (aka her purse). It's amazing how much she can fit in there and how she always has what you need in there. I am insanely jealous of her incredible tan and how her lips are always perfectly glossy."

Dad: "She is a natural born leader. She is terrific at organizing and carrying out tasks. She is musical. She loves to listen to music and play music and has a terrific musical ear. She is athletic. She desires to serve people and make everyone happy. She is someone who does not think about herself. She also recognizes the spirit."

Scooter: "Jessica always thinks about other people before herself. She is always concerned about making sure people are content. She is a wonderful cook. She is a very good nurturer. She is good at budgeting the family finances. She is extremely involved and supportive of schoolwork. I love that she's a scientist and that she loves to play tennis."

Happy Birthday Jessica!

WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

I love my family

I'm going through my photos from my weekend trip to Utah. Just thought I would share one of my favorites.

I sure love my family.

More photos to come.

Thoughtful

Scooter and I got home from work/school the other day and went straight out to the front yard to do a little yard work. I spotted something on the porch. A mysterious package! We didn't recognize the sender, which was a company of some sort. I curiously opened the package and found these inside. Piano books! The perfect books for me. The one on the left is full of classic songs that are so familiar to me. The one on the right is the best piano exercise book ever.

I searched the papers inside for a name. Who had sent me this wonderful surprise?! Guess who it was? My sweet cousin Lindsay! Wasn't that the most thoughtful thing you've ever heard? I am now endeavoring to be more like her.

Thanks Lindsay!

Final Four

Scooter's mom bought the best present EVER for her sons this Christmas - tickets to the Final Four of the NCAA Basketball Championship. Seriously awesome mom, right? They think so. This weekend they met at home in Chicago and drove to Indianapolis for the day. They had a great time. I begged Scooter to take the camera and get some photos. I was only hoping for a few so I was thrilled when he came home with 72 photos! I thought I'd share some of them.



They found the stadium and celebrated by...


There really aren't words...


The brothers: Skipper, Skeeter, and Scooter. Say that five times fast.


Apparently pondering the wonders inside.


Nice stadium.


Nearing the entrance. They actually also had tickets to the "Fan Experience" which, from Scooter's description consisted of bands, sports personalities, and hot dogs. The focus being on the hot dogs, of course. Apparently, everyone at the Fan Experience had coupons redeemable for one hot dog, one bag of chips, and one soda or beer. Well, many people only wanted the beer and got in lines hundreds of people long to get their free beer. Many of these people just threw their coupons for hot dogs on the ground. Well, our resourceful young Plowman men didn't want those tickets to go to waste, so they used as many as they possibly could. It was a good thing they did too, because the food in the stadium was so expensive that they refused to buy any for the next seven hours.


Inside the stadium, which is normally the football stadium for the Colts.






The tickets were good for both the Michigan State/Butler game as well as the West Virginia/Duke game. They started with a flag presentation.



After the games started they must have gotten too into the games to take any pictures because this is the last one I have.


They had a fabulous time together. Maybe again next year...?

Un-Valentine's Day and Other News

My husband is not a huge fan of Valentine's Day. He thinks he should be expected to do nice things for me at random times throughout the year. We usually skip the presents but at least try to have a date night. This year it was test week for him so we just kinda skipped it all together. This week he found this lovely thing on Craig's List and decided to buy it for me as an Un-Valentine's Day gift.
I took lessons for eleven years (that's right isn't it, mom?) but haven't really had a chance to play much for the last five or six years. It's kinda hard to practice when you don't have a piano. Thanks to everyone that helped get it picked up and into our house. I love it! The lady that we bought it from took such good care of it and was so happy to see it go to someone who would play it a lot. We LOVE Craig's List.
I played it all night.

Yes, I'm using my laptop for music because I don't have any yet. I'm so glad this is a picture and not a video because I really need some practice - I'm so rusty!

Also, please try to pretend that the huge pile of boxes isn't there, that my hair looks like I care about it, and that the piano isn't the sole piece of furniture in the room.
In other news, I got a second job about a month ago. I work about fifteen hours a week at Nordstrom now in addition to my full-time job at the hospital.

Some days it makes me feel crazy, but for the most part I think it is a really good thing. It gives us a little extra money (who couldn't use that?), it keeps me out of Scooter's hair so he can study more, and it forces me to wear clothes other than scrubs a few days a week. Scooter is still warming to the idea of two jobs, but my first paycheck helped him a bit.

The other news of the week is that I already turned in my vacation request for Christmas/New Years. A little early, but I was determined to be home for Christmas this year!

We also lived the American dream yesterday and fired up our grill (another Craig's List purchase) and had a little BBQ in our backyard. We felt like it was a life milestone of some kind. I hope we have seen the end of winter for good. May it never come back!

Tiling Phase Two: Floor

Today we did Tiling Phase Two: Floor. It was a lot of fun. The weather almost stopped our plans though. This scene is starting to look really familiar. Doesn't it seem a little late in the year for weather like this though? We probably got six inches!Here's the "before" picture.We felt really comfortable and able to do it without any help since we had done the shower last Saturday. I was the designated tile saw operator and did every cut by myself. Scooter did everything else. I couldn't get any photos of him because I would have been tiled into the bathroom...
(and yes, he was wearing my Wicked sweatshirt...)

See it fits!


I was laughing at how cold I was and how the saw was spraying water all over me and running down my shirt, but after a few minutes it stopped being funny and started getting really cold.

I finally got smart and started covering myself with a towel to try and stay dry. I soaked through three towels before we were done. I had to keep my lips closed to prevent little tile chips and dirty water from flying into my mouth - learned that the hard way. Turns out I was the perfect height to have the saw flipping water into my face. I was the picture of loveliness - goggles, earplugs, towel, rubber gloves, etc.

Lest you think I only did straight cuts. I was proud of this one.
The finished product. Next is Tiling Phase Three: Paint and Grout
(no, we're not keeping the lovely lavender - I know you are disappointed!)

Tiling Phase One: Shower

We finished Phase One: Shower today. We learned a TON but are really happy with the results. Let me show you. Here is the bathroom pre-destruction. It is hard to get pictures of it because of its size, but you get the idea. Plain white tile in the shower with gross grout. Half carpet and half laminate. I am personally opposed to carpet in the bathroom and would rather use rugs to stand on for warmth. Also, lest you think we chose the lovely lavender color - we didn't. Just wanted to clear that up.
Here goes the destruction! I was so nervous about this because there was no going back after we ripped it out. Look at the nasty semi-rotting carpet pad underneath!
Here is the original flooring that was under two other layers. Wow.
Our poor shower. We actually ended up removing the drywall as well, but when we started the destruction phase we thought we needed to preserve it - you don't. Actually you shouldn't have regular drywall behind tile in a shower, it should be cement board. What can we say? We learned A TON on this project!
Now you can see the cement board starting to be put up. Scooter and his friend are doing a bit of plumbing work. They decided to raise the shower head a couple feet. And fix a small leak.
Our poor counter was probably so confused by the non-bathroomy items covering it.
Scooter laying the first tile.
An hour later he started working in the mosaic border.

We had help from three really great friends. We absolutely never could have done it without their support and help. Literally they spent hours and hours at our house this past week. We were really nervous to take on this project because it was our first big project that involved something that wasn't basically just painting. They helped us feel confident enough to do it.
This is Matt.
Vohn.
and Kade.
We even had Matt's wife, Reagan contributing.
Kade and his wonderful table tile saw.
We were so so lucky for some reason we had to make very very few cuts. We only had to cut about an inch off the bottom row and some notches for the plumbing. Amazing!

The last row and some difficult cuts.
Even the mud worked out perfectly. We used every last bit, but didn't have a ton extra.
Laying the last tile.
Phase One: Shower - Completed!

Next up? Phase Two: Floor