Satisfied Stecher's

Friday was a satisfying day for all 3 Stecher's. Not only was it the start of a needed weekend from school but some major accomplishments happened around the house.

BUDDY:
Buddy has been making gains in his "recovery" (see previous post). However, now it has been determined that the can food is too expensive to continue on with. Travis' parents gave a helpful culinary tip to try to get Buddy to eat his dry food. Wet it, microwave it, hid it with a piece of cheese on top. So I tried...

It stunk up our microwave, our kitchen, and eventually our house....bon appetit!
First he ate all the cheese off the top, go figure...
Then he started on the rest of the food!

Good to the last bite!

MISTY

I have been using our vacuum to help clean up kitchen debris. As a result it has ruined our filter, however, I can not justify purchasing a new one until the kitchen is finally finished...So I asked Kay to bring the Dyson down. For those of you who do not know the Dyson is the be all end all of vacuum's....

This is the pet hair version. It is FABULOUS!

This thing worked like a dream. It was utterly disgusting how GROSS our living room carpet was. I'll spare you the photo....It is now on a future wish list. It must be good if I'm putting a VACUUM on a wish list! :)

TRAVIS

Ahhhh...the kitchen. Will it ever end? Travis has been hard at work making all last minute dry wall, Spackle, mud, etc. necessities in order for us to paint.

We are now ready to wipe all the walls/ceilings, prime and finally PAINT! I'm shooting for tomorrow!
We also went to LOWES today and picked out, and purchased the cabinets. They will be ready for pick up next weekend. Cross your fingers that the little piece of filler wood that has to come from somewhere other than Lowes comes in sooner than the 2 weeks they told us today :(
Travis is ready for some cabinets! (Misty too! :)

Buddy Update

Buddy is doing much better! He is now getting up and down off of all furniture and stairs by himself. He is now eating a combination of wet and dry food where as just a week ago it had to be all wet food. He is also not tilting his head as much as he was. I think he just needed some spring like weather! :)

The kitchen remodel moves forward! Travis and his dad finished all the behind the scenes work last weekend and cleared the way for us to finish hanging a few pieces of dry wall, Spackle and begin painting. We have chosen a green color for the kitchen walls. The cabinets are hickory so they will be very light. We are hoping the green will make the room look very warm and homey! I'll post pictures as soon as we begin to paint!

The wonderful spring like weather last week has landed me with another round of winter illness. I now have a full blown head cold. It started in the middle of the night Friday. Yesterday I was miserable, today I'm better than yesterday but still not feeling good. I'm hoping this will be a short cold and I'll be better by school on Tuesday.

Travis has begun his weight loss challenge with the team of football coaches from Dist. #205. The guys are hoping for a three peat. They have won the 2 years previously, however, this year they have some real competition. There are several other "football" teams vying for the title. He is doing a great job and is working hard with his team. They have been out walk/jogging, watching what they eat, and Travis has even bypassed DQ several times I've suggested it.

There's the update on all 3 Stecher's for this week! Hope everyone is doing well and not getting this cold or the nasty flu that's out and about!

Sick and Stuff...

Yuck! What a bummer of a weekend! I have been fighting what I self diagnosed as strep throat since Thursday. I was to cheap to go to Prompt Care on the Weekend because they would send my labs to about 5 different places saying with the weekend they had no other choice. I was going to just wait it out.
The worst day was Saturday. I felt like my throat was literally going to close shut. Being the drama queen that I am, I was just sure that Travis would have to frantically dial 911 because my throat was going to swell shut. Needless to say it didn't, but I was not much company all day while laying on the couch.
We had dinner and after dinner plans Saturday night, but only barely made it to half of our plans. We went to the Barnstormer for dinner to celebrate Travis and my brother Justin's birthday's both in January, however, my throat was so sore and I was so out of it I could barely enjoy the dinner. I think I had 3 bites of my salad and perhaps an equal amount of baked potato. Thank heavens for to go bags!
After dinner we were going to go to Mark and Carol Parrish's for a get together with several people from church, however, after barely surviving dinner, I just wanted to go home. I was asleep by 8AM and didn't rise until 10 the next morning.
Sunday wasn't much better, and unfortunately it seemed as though something was wrong with Buddy. His back legs were not supporting him and he was falling down a lot. We decided he would have to go to the vet on Monday. We spent a lot of time cuddling him and loving him up on Sunday.
Monday morning, I went to work, my throat was feeling a bit better, however, after fighting the sore throat all weekend I was exhausted which is ironic seeing how all I did this weekend was sleep.

Anyway, I am now on the mend but the Budster is another story. :(
Buddy just turned 14. We noticed Monday morning that he seemed to be tilted to the side. When we took him to the vet yesterday the vet confirmed that Buddy has had some neurological damage done. Most likely a stroke has occurred to impair his right side. He no longer has feeling in his right hind leg, which is the cause of the falling over, and his right eye is struggling to close, when he pants his tongue hangs out to the right side. He really is a sight! However, even with all these issues, the vet did say he was quite "spiry" for an old man. That was a positive!
Unfortunately, we were also told we needed to prepare ourselves for what is to come down the road. He will most likely have another stroke, or begin to have more frequent seizures, both of which could cause his "good side" to go. When that happens it will be time to put Buddy down.
While this is a horribly sad turn of events, I am so thankful that we didn't have to do it yesterday, I thought we might! We have Buddy now and there is a small chance he could heal himself. If that's going to happen it will be in 5-7 days. For now, we're continuing to love and cuddle him and spoil him ROTTEN! :)

Destruction Zone

Wow! I had no clue what kitchen remodeling entailed! You're probably going to hear me say that about a million more times before this is all done! :)

Sunday AM, Travis' mom and dad (Ben and Kay) came down to help.

I thought the goal for Sunday was to take down the remaining cabinets and oven hood....

That project was finished so quickly the boys decided to continue on...and remove the soffit's up above.

The first cut through plaster walls that were built when the house was build around 1940.

Full Demo mode

Buddy wanted to help too!

Buddy: If you'd let me in I could be a real big help!

Buddy: I'll hold the drill for you.

The soffit and cabinets were built right into the walls in the 40's, so Ben and Travis will have to do some patching before we add cabinets to the top. The goal is to have little cabinets all around the top for extra space, and then larger cabinets down below.

That plaster stuff was EVERYWHERE! We didn't think to block off the kitchen while demo was being done so it was really everywhere!

This is our dining room. This is pretty much what the whole house looked like! The pictures that are blurry are not becuase of a bad camera, but because of all the dust that was swirling around the house!

After Ben and Kay left, Travis decided to take off all the tiles and sand down where they used to be. I started washing all the floors, and dusting the house down. We got smart though...

This is the tarp we put up the 2nd time around to keep all the dust in the kitchen! :)

Sunday was quite a messy and exhausting day, more so for Travis than I. However, I can assure you that we both woke up this morning sore and exhausted still.

Travis and Ben assure me that most of the messy work is finished.

We did pick a "short list" of paint and counter tops last night! It's going to be a long road for sure!

Kitchen 101

Today we started the kitchen makeover. Last week we got new appliances, and this week began this demolition. We...or I should say Travis started with the upper cabinets on the refrigerator side. We...again, Travis....got everything down in about 2 1/2 hours. We are wanting to tear out the little soffit on the top near the ceiling in order to make room for more cabinets for our little kitchen, but Travis thinks that the soffit is made of dry wall, so we must call in reinforcements....We're going to try to persuade his dad to come down in the near future to help out.
It has begun!

The "old" kitchen before

The first hit of demo

After 2.5 hours all the upper cabinets on the West side of the kitchen are gone.

Gone is a figurative term...they are in the garage in pieces waiting for the spring clean up day when we can load our curbside with garbage and watch all the trash diggers come by go through looking for things they may want.

Before and After

Happy New Year!

We had a great New Years Eve with some wonderful friends...the Nelson's. Since becoming parents in late September, Travis and I haven't gotten a chance to really "hang out" with the new family of 3 so we were excited to have them come to Galesburg for New Year's.

We ordered Applebee's Curbside to Go for dinner and the guys went to get it. Yum!

Carter watched Baby Einstein while we ate, but our couch ate him! :)

Then Carter and Misty talked all about the fun we'll have when she babysits on Wednesday. I don't know who's more excited.....wellllllllllllll....actually I do :)

The guys played some Wii and Josh finally let Travis win.

Then we played this great new game called Would You Rather...., hence the box! What a fun game! I highly recommend it to anyone/everyone!

The grown ups made it to midnight, but Carter tuckered out early and spend his first New Year's sleeping on our bed. He is really too cute!

We had a great time with the Nelson's and can't wait to get together again soon!