Mark and I celebrated our 2nd Anniversary this past May 12th. With everything thats going on in our lives right now - house projects and preparing for baby we didn't quite get to turn our anniversary into a little babymoon/getaway like we were thinking about back in March. But we didn't need to, we enjoyed a beautiful day together down at the beach with our pup instead.
  

 I had to get in for a little bit too - but not too deep because the water was freezing!

Ingredients:
2.5 tbsp Light brown sugar (or dark if you don't have it)
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Pepper
1.5 tbsp Paprika
1/2 tsp Chili powder
1 cup BBQ sauce - I didn't really measure this, I just poured some on! (We like to use Sweet Baby Rays!)
2-2.5 lb pork [baby back] ribs

• Mix all of the dry ingredients in a bowl - making sure to mash up the brown sugar so it isn't clumpy
• Cut your ribs in half, leave the membranes on to keep them together, 
• Rub the dry mix on the ribs - front and back
• Stick the ribs in the crockpot with the top thicker part towards the outside of the crockpot and the thicker side down.
• Pour your BBQ sauce all over the ribs
• Stick the lid on and wait 6-8 hours

So I definitely didn't follow through with my original plan of posting pictures through out the process of laying new floors down.

Not only did I not do regular updates during the project - I haven't posted ANYTHING in over a MONTH. *hangs head* Why am I finding blogging so difficult lately? Especially with all of the fun and exciting things happening this summer for our family....you'd think I'd be more on top of it.

I guess late is better than never though, so finally here are pictures of the finished project!





Here is just a quick picture of the floors in our dining room. I love the way it looks with our table and chairs... I just need to figure out if I want a rug in here or not.

Mark still has to lay all of the quarter round along the edges of floor to finish the project off - but other than that it is done! He got it all finished in a week and then a second weekend to finish the dining room. He did it almost all by himself - with the help of his dad 1 day and then I tried to help in the evenings after getting off work. I'm impressed with all that my man did that week - learning the new skill of putting in floors and then completing the project beautifully! Very thankful for his handy man abilities that save us money.

Hoping your May isn't speeding by too fast! I can't believe Memorial Day is this weekend! Hopefully I'll be a little more regular around here, maybe even post some baby bump pictures???

Phase I:

• Step 1: Tear up tile in foyer/back door way and carpet in family room/hallway - COMPLETE
• Step 2: Replace some of the subfloor particle board - this step is a new one thanks to finding some wet/swollen? particle board after pulling up the carpet. Projects are never as easy as you think they're going to be are they? Mark plans to finish this step tomorrow and start on step 3
• Step 3: Lay the laminate flooring in the family room, hallway and foyer

Piper likes to photobomb my pictures... she apparently needed to go outside... :)


 AND here's what it looks like now:

A super big project is actually commencing at the house on Stockleybridge this week. We are putting in the new laminate wood flooring that I talked about in my last post. Getting new floors was always on our "eventually" list when we bought the house 2 1/2 years ago. Its not that we hated what we had (carpet in the living area, hallway and dining room, laminate in the kitchen and tile in the foyer and back door way) its just that I never LOVED the color of tile, the style of laminate in the kitchen or having carpet in the dining room. Not to mention after we got a puppy, the carpet started to gross me out in a way it never really had before. You know, puppies have accidents, and even with all of the scrubbing and carpet cleaning I never liked the thought of the "mess" having soaked in to the padding during those potty training days. Also - our dog sheds like she's putting on a new outfit every day.  Even with daily vacuuming I never seem to get all of her hair up. So keeping those things in mind - knowing that we have a baby on the way that will be crawling all over said floors by next year - we decided to use our tax return money to put in new floors this year! I also won't be working much, if it all, after the baby is born, so we are using the extra money from my paychecks to get some things done before we lose that second income. We know major projects might come to a stall following baby as we adjust our budget to one income.

Anyways, enough rambling on about why we're getting new floors. I could go in to more details, but you get the gist...

Here's the wood flooring we picked out:

As an older sister to 4 younger siblings I like to proudly think that I've got a little bit of a head start on this mommy thing, as in, I won't be a total newbie when it comes to caring for a baby. And thanks to my upbringing of being homeschooled and always knowing I would end up staying home with my kids I have in fact read similar books growing up during school. HOWEVER, when it hits you that you will be the primary care-giver aka giver of baby's life aka sustainer of baby's life aka mommy - it makes you want to go back a really read and glean any information you can get your hands on. So far I'm liking everything I've read in this book so far in regards to parent directed feeding and scheduling. That will definitely be my plan. But we still have a long way to go...


We are just at 16 weeks today and had our 4 month appointment this past Wednesday. Baby Poindexter's heartbeat came in at 150 beats per minute - on the higher end of the spectrum - which according to old wives tales indicates that Baby Poindexter is a girl... ?!?!? We will have our answer April 23rd!

Aside from baby news we are prepping for a pretty major project at the house. In the next few weeks we are going to be ripping up the flooring in every room in our house except the bedrooms to replace the carpet/tile/old laminate with brand spanking new laminate wood flooring! I'm so excited and can't wait to share pictures of the before/during/after! Hopefully I get myself back into a better blogging schedule : )

Wow! Its been 2 months since I've posted anything. I definitely didn't mean to be away from my blog for so long. But I have a good excuse...

Lots of happy things are happening here at the Poindexter house and it all revolves around this little announcement: