And so it begins…

Fall that is. In the next couple weeks everyone will be back in school – meaning no more mid-week Ali/Mom/Lisa romps. Its been so much fun this summer, having my sister and mom to go rummaging with, shopping with and Beth-wrangling with So, in honor of the season, we had to band together to get one last set of projects done. On Tuesday and Wednesday we worked to get Ali’s classroom together. Please note that she had to move classrooms, creating tons of work, and the school is not air conditioned, creating gorgeous Wilcox hair Still, we had a lot of fun and put together one helluva second grade classroom, if I do say so myself!

On Thursday, we met at my house to put together some shelves for our basement. Mom and I had started this project on an earlier visit, but I unfortunately could not muster the ability to complete it on my own. Thanks to Mom’s shelf-building and Ali’s Beth-wrangling, we now have an organized basement, which is totally ready for treadmill installation (**hint hint, Noah**).

The basement organization is part of a larger organization effort. Last weekend, I conquered the master bathroom. I will not bore you with pictures of the TP, towels and sheets, stacked beautifully in the linen closet, or the easily-grabbable cosmetics now living beneath the sink. Just know, organization can be an art form, and the resulting bathroom drawers, cabinets and linen closet were the first thing I had to show Mom and Ali when they visited. The next frontier: our closets! Now for a gratuitous Beth smile

Taste testing

Recently, Noah and I took a little beer tour. I picked up a variety of dark beers from HyVee. Most (5 of the 6) are Colorado beers.

4 were porters and 2 were stouts. We each rated them based on a 5 star scale. While I didn’t think any of them were as good as the Empyrean ales we get up the street (thank goodness we live so close to Lazlo’s!), some were quite good. I thought I’d share the results – just for kicks

Beer	Noah’s rating	Lisa’s rating
Breckenridge Oatmeal Stout	***	***
Left Hand Milk Stout	*****	**
Left Hand Blackjack Porter	*****	****
Boulder Planet Porter	****	***
O’Dell Cutthroat Porter	****	*****
Sierra Nevada Porter	****	*****

In other news, my little potted veggie plants have started to produce. I used these crops to make the most delicious pasta dish. I’m sure there’s a fancy name for pasta with veggies and olive oil – but I just call it hot and naked!

Baptism

On July 12, Bethany was baptized. I was very proud of her. She slept through the water part and giggled when the priest welcomed her to the congregation. I uploaded some pictures to flickr. Check ‘em out

A great weekend

We had a great weekend. All the college friends were in town and in fine form. Between the nerf guns, Cali’s nose-spinning talents, and the Clark’s new home, some great memories were made. It was so great to connect with everyone and catch up before the Gaceks go International. I can hardly wait to hear/see about the Parisian adventures.

On Sunday, as all the friends were attending to family or headed towards home, we took Beth over to a friend’s pool. How much fun! At first, Beth wasn’t too sure about the water (see left) but she warmed up to the idea.

Special thanks go out to Ali, without whom I would not have had the awesome shopping day I had last Thursday, I would not have had swimsuits for Beth and I and we would not have gone swimming. And of course, thanks to Hansi for letting us swim.

Since my last post…

We celebrated our 5th anniversary. Thank you for the wonderful memories, sweetie, I look forward to all the things to come.

We enjoyed family and friends over Memorial Day weekend. Noah made some spectacular steaks. Look at those gawgeous grill lines. Definitely worth cracking open that V. Sattui Gamay we’d been saving.

We bought a new car. Noah is so pleased with himself.

We saw our first Beth smiles. So special. She’s smiling more and more these days as we’ve figured out that she has reflux and a dairy intolerance – so her tummy is feeling better now that I know what to do. I’ve added some pictures to flickr if you’d like to take a look.