Cursed Birds!

It has been a busy week around here so far. Hard to believe it's only Wednesday. As much as I have avoided doing it for various reasons, I finally decided that since the weather was going to be sunny, warm, and beautiful here in Seattle all week I had to seize the days and finish up my back deck/front porch projects before the late Fall rains arrive. Yes, it would have been better to have finished this project early in the Summer, but hey, that is how we roll around here.

Basically, I needed to replace a few more boards, make a few other minor finishing touches, sand those repairs, and then finish them all off with a couple of fresh coats of paint. Had this been a complete rebuild, I may have opted to only stain the beautiful cedar decking. However, the previous owners of our house painted the deck the house colors, so this was my only real option too. Oddly, only about an hour after I finished the project, someone knocked on our door and asked for the paint color, calling it beautiful. Unfortunately though, I came home this evening and a couple opportunistic birds decided to play target practice with my new paint job. Cursed birds!

I know this may sound like a small feat, but this was a full two day day job with most of Sunday spent doing prep work, and Monday dropping Lukas off at daycare before getting the meat of the painting in. I feel a tremendous sense of relief right now, finally having this project behind me before the Fall/Winter season. I also followed up getting this project done with a couple of days concentrating on various other home tasks/projects that have recently fallen by the way side. It's amazing just how good it feels to take a few days to catch up on life's details after focusing on other things (like having a fun Summer) for so long.

In other news, Mrs. LIAYF and I left Lukas with a babysitter Saturday for only the second night in his 14 months with us. We went to a wedding for a very nice couple we met in our PEPS group. We hadn't realized during our PEPS meetings that they were not yet married, so it was a nice surprise to get invited to their wedding. We actually missed the ceremony while getting Lukas to bed, but the reception was a lot of fun with plenty of great food, cold beverages, happy people, and a crowded dance floor. We were surprised that we were the only other PEPS couple from our group to attend, but reasoned to ourselves that it was because we were the other "cool" couple of the group. (Hey, we need only convince ourselves!!))

With all that behind us, its time to enjoy more of the beautiful early Fall weather we are having here in Seattle. Carpe Diem!