The Sprayberries

155 lbs and Still Rising!!

[ty]

For the first time in her life Jordanna has broken the glass ceiling that divides those of us whose weight resides above 12^2 and those plebians who live out their mundane existences at or below 11^2.

For months now I have been promising a deluge of pictures from various exciting adventures including but not limited to: walshy visit, bathroom remodel, the blizzard of aught 7 and my pregnant wife. I am both pleased to announce that a few pictures will make it into this post and chagrined to admit that there are almost 800 pictures that will not because I forgot the password to our website. Um...yeah. I'm working on that. Anyway, without further ado...


Here is our "master" bathroom just a few short weeks ago. It's called the master bathroom because with a little practice you can "master" the technique of leaning your head against the wall while you poop thereby allowing yourself to fall asleep on the toilet. Sweet.

Here you can clearly see how solidly the previous shower pan was constructed. It took me an hour with an angle grinder, cold chisel, and a 3lb sledge to break it up into pieces I could barely move.
Full propers should be given here to Zak who hauled his butt out to Tucson to work like a dog for 5 days straight. Having had very little experience with home remodeling his "can-do" attitude and lack of "screw this" demeanor was a sharp counterpoint to Tyson's rennovation-weary work ethic. Hence, a great deal of work was actually completed.

The aforementioned work completed. This is the 7th step (out of 42) in laying a new shower pan. There's something in this picture worth mentioning to the uninitiated. Pay particular attention to the gray plastic membrane rising out of the concrete on the far side of the pan. This plastic sucked. The book Zak and I followed while building this pan (heretofore referred to as The Bible) stressed on no less than 4 occasions that you should use Elastomeric Caulk when joining two pieces of that plastic membrane together. So that's what we did. Why? Because that's what the freaking book said. I don't put in shower pan liners for a living. Not even as a hobby. That's why I buy books by people who DO do it for a living. Of course it didn't work at all, not even a little. So what's the first thing my Dad said when I called him for my thrice-daily check in? "Elastomeric caulk?!? No, no. Don't use that. That's bad. " Um...its already buried 2.75" deep in rapidly curing concrete Dad. How bad is bad?

Things eventually worked out OK with the membrane (because seriously, were we going to jackhammer out a 3x4 concrete pan?) and we continued with our ill-advised shower installation.


When two people remodel a house together there are bound to be some disagreements regarding various style decisions. I was of the opinion that the grout color should be a subdued grayish shade. JD was more in favor of the reddish brown you see in the photo. We took our argument to the tile supply company and as neutral arbitraters they collectively laughed at me and my grout choice. Seriously. One guy brought over his pal and together they mocked my color sense. It was the best.


With the shower tiling grouted my job was to lay the floor tile. Never again will I tile with anything less than 17" tiles. It was wonderful. The entire floor was only 16 tiles. Notice the sexy diagonal. Oooooh, aaaaah. Diagonal.

The bathroom as it stands now.


This last Sunday night Tucson was "blanketed" by what is known hereabouts as the Blizzard of Aught Seven. To be fair nobody else uses the phrase Aught but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be coming back into common parlance. I love the term Aught. For all my life it's belonged to super old people who could use it in phrases like "Back in Aught Four we fought the Kaiser to a standstill using nothing but our skivvies and movable type." I say we Take It Back!!

Anyway, this pathetic amount of snow actually caused schools to be cancelled Monday. It's like living in Foster/Gloster.

Here it is my friends. The soon-to-be-famous shot of Brian (aka Smoove-B, aka BriBri, aka Brian the Lion) throwing down with Henry to see who has the biggest baby. Turns out Bri does. In theory he should be delivering sometime around March. He's registered in Golden Colorado c/o the Silver Bullet.


This is as of two days ago. JD's belly has grown enormously in the last 2 weeks (see above photo). She is feeling fine and as of her doctor's appt. yesterday all is well.

Sorry it took me so long to put up these pics. Of course there are 790 more that are just as good but the only way to see them is to haul your ass down here. Or you can wait for me to remember my website password. :)