Busy Weekend

It was a crazy busy weekend at Michael Delving. Last weekend, the Mayor replaced the window and the two doors and pulled up the carpet in the hobbitling bedroom. The Mayor, inspired by his own success, decided that since last weekend was so productive, this weekend he would tear off all the drywall, install new wiring and insulation, and hang new drywall.
Here's what the room looked like on Saturday afternoon...And here's the hobbitling room on Sunday night. New wiring, insulation, and drywall successfuly installed.
And here's the young hobbitling building inspector, hands in pockets. He's learning to use his engineer's work gloves from an early age!

Bath Time

Boookie got his mandatory, once-a-week, whether-he-needs-it-or-not bath tonight. He splashed (a lot, which is why Daddy just takes his shirt off), played with his bath toys (a knot of frogs and a flush of ducks), got all washed, then said 'bye-bye bath.' Mommy and Daddy were clipping his nails and sitting there talking afterward, when he blurted out "peas, clothes?"

Career Choices

Here's a couple of careers that Boookie has been investigating recently. He has a Fisher-Price fire truck and a dump truck that make noise when you press a button (no thanks to GranDma and Grandpa Weber!). Boookie likes to play with both at the same time, and he'll cycle through so both trucks are playing their little song, and he'll dance for 10 seconds while the songs play, cycle through the sounds again to get to the songs, and repeat.

The offending trucks, also known as "crux"
Fire truck song (to the tune of "This Old Man")
Up and down, down and up, watch my ladder lift the pup! With a beep-beep, honk-honk, all around the town, up and down and round and round. [bark, bark]
Dump truck song (to the tune of "This Old Man")
In and out, in and out, that's what dump trucks are about! With a beep-beep, honk-honk, all around the town, in and out and round and round.
Catchy, no?

Seattle Center

Saturday was a nice day (by Seattle standards), so we took advantage of the beautiful weather to go into Seattle for the day. We stopped by the Center for Wooden Boats to look around...

Then we went to Seattle Center to go on the rides...
And then we walked around Seattle Center.

Welcome to Michael Delving!

Welcome to Michael Delving - our humble home in Mountlake Terrace, Washington. We decided that it had to be a hobbit-dwelling because, well, we're hobbits. But a problem arose when we considered that although the house is partially dug into a hill (daylight basement), it has two levels. That ruled out Bag End and other names of hobbit holes. Brandybuck Hall has multiple levels, but the name doesn't fit. We finally settled on Michael Delving.

Here is our home as we first saw it. We got the keys in May 2006 and immediately set to work...

The bathroom was the first to get gentle remodeling attention. Tim originally thought a week, two weeks maximum to finish this project.
After nearly 2 months of showering at Jen's apartment or at work, and going to the bathroom in our overgrown yard or in the Honey Bucket...
Once the bathroom was more or less completed, Tim's attention turned to the kitchen. He tore out the kitchen to get to the plumbing while redoing the bathroom. The logic was, "as long as we're doing this, we might as well do that..." Famous last words for homeowners! During this kitchen-less period, we turned to Jen's hospitality, as well as the lure of Subway and McDonalds.
More than seven months after starting on the kitchen, the last lights were installed...
The kitchen is MOSTLY done. There is still some drywall patching and painting to do, but it is a lot better than what we had before.