Orange

Orange you feeling much better? 

Ha! I crack myself up.  After posting our survey (if you haven't voted, click here!), I feel much better.  Not because of the answers to the survey, but because it's like this pressure valve has been released.  It was just building and building and building.  I think I'm going to be able to live in my orange(ish) house.  I still don't love it.  I'm not sure I ever will, however, I am getting closer to tolerating it.

A few people have made additional suggests as to how we can spend even more money.  While the suggestions may be valid, that isn't going to happen.  I think we will be darkening the stain on the deck since the deck stain and the house color are fighting each other.  The stain was always on the orangey side, but both D and I seem to like orangey wood (who knew?)  In any case, staining the deck darker = no money; repainting house = lots of money.  The front door also needs to be either painted the color of the trim or stained darker too, opinion, but we'll probably wait on that until things are done on the house.

If anyone is interested in reading the comments to the survey, just email me and I'll share the document with you. I think this chart and the stats below will automatically update as people keep voting, but I'm not positive.

I do think the voting is a bit skewed because the pictures on the blog don't seem quite as orange as it seems in person. I'm not sure if it's that the house is actually oranger in person, or that because we're surrounded by "suburban big house taupes" our orangey house stands out like a sore thumb. 

Miniature Golf

I'm going to try to edit the video of this tomorrow, but to document, Avery, Nain, and I went miniature golfing today.  I was quite impressed with a few things Avery did.  First, she is very persistent.  She got very frustrated on one hole, but for the most part, she just kept trying until her ball went in the hole.  Second, when she did get frustrated to the point that she picked up her ball, she didn't put it in the hole as I expected she would; she would place it closer to the hole and then proceed to putt it in.  Third, she seemed to grasp that there are rules to the game and accept those rules without protest.  Clearly we didn't enforce all the rules, or else I wouldn't have let her pick up her ball, but I did tell her she got to play each hole only once.  

Nain

We had our Heathens' Brunch (which was a BBQ this time around) this afternoon.  The kids had a great time playing with this bubble mixture that my mom (Nain to Avery) put together.  I told Mom I am going to set up a few "Grandma Smackdowns" because I think Mom would win quite a few of those competitions if she keeps coming up with these fun activities.