a bit of alison and tony

I’ve really been enjoying the commute to/from work on my bike. I feel energized all morning when I bike to work, and the ride home is great for unwinding. I actually look forward to the ride now, rather than think of reasons I should drive instead. I’ve got my time down to between 20-25 minutes at around 15mph total which is pretty good on a mountain bike… I’ve created a new page to keep track of my times. Last week I had to replace a broken pedal on my bike, fortunately it broke slowly and i was able to make it home okay. I also picked up a handlebar end mirror to help me stay track of traffic around me better. Glancing back over my shoulder didn’t work too well since I’d be looking around my glasses which means the cars were blurry blobs… More rides to come. Stay tuned!

One of my goals while I am off of work this summer is to paint all or most of our house. We painted our living room this spring, but had yet to paint anything else until last week.

Dana stayed with Tony and I for a few days and the two of us decided to paint one of the guest bedrooms that I have had a “vision” for for quite some time. The room isn’t put together yet, but here is what we have so far: (I don’t have any specific before pictures, but here is a picture of the other bedroom that looked exactly like the bedroom we painted)

And here is a picture of the newly painted room:

We love it! I could just stay in there all day. My goal was to find a light, icy blue color that was NOT a baby blue, and I we definitely got it right! The color is much brighter in person; the picture doesn’t do it justice. Now I just need to hang shelves and pictures and paint a nightstand to match and the room will be complete!

A day or two later I was still in the painting groove, so I painted our front hallway the same color as the living room. We are really happy with the way it turned out (aside from a few touch-ups I need to take care of!)

Next on my painting list:
~ The kitchen: some form of a burnt orange color
~ The staircase and upstairs hallway: same color as the living room or a shade lighter
~ Our bedroom: some form of tangerine orange

Bring it on!

Due to the wicked storms and 16 hour power outage last Wednesday, Tony and I (who am I kidding…mostly Tony) had to keep an eye on the sump pump to make sure it didn’t overflow into our basement. Tony, an amazingly creative problem solver :) , came up with a way to quickly siphon the sump pump using a hose leading from the sump pump outside to the almost end of our yard. It worked like a charm!

Before we got ready for bed, I asked Tony if he was going to set the alarm to check the sump pump in the middle of the night. He casually replied that he’ll just make an alarm that will go off when the water reaches the danger zone. After spending a short 15 minutes, or maybe even less, he came up with a system in which a piece of wood with a light ball attached to the end would raise up with the water level in the sump pump and loudly ring a bell when the water reached a certain point. Here’s a clip of how it ended up looking and working. It’s dark, but fun to watch just the same!

Sure enough at one in the morning Tony woke me up saying, “Alison! The alarm is going off!” He went downstairs, used his hose system to siphon the water out of the sump pump, and came back to bed knowing that he didn’t need to worry about it overflowing. His newly created alarm system would let him know if he was needed in the basement again!

On Monday I finally put aside all the excuses and biked the commute to and from work. It was a great feeling of accomplishment just to make it there and home again. Special thanks to Dan’s post inspiring me to just do it.

I biked to work for the 2nd time yesterday (Wednesday). The ride was great, even a few minutes faster than the first time on Monday. I have a lot of gradual hills in my commute, but i think the biggest challenge is the stop lights. Cruising down a long hill just to stop for a red light at the bottom is a bummer! I also learned the hard way that I should use more than just my bedroom window to check the weather in the morning… Fortunately, Alison was able to come pick me up after work and rescue me from the torrential rainstorms! I’m working on figuring out a good way to track all the stats coming from my GPS- i’m a geek like that…

One thing that Tony and I love to do is listen to live music, and we have had the privilege of enjoy a lot of it this summer!

In addition to spending some time at the Grand Rapids Arts Festival a couple weekends ago and we had the opportunity to listen to the band Righteous play at our friends Jeff and Jess’s wedding reception. Tony and I know the lead singer David from church, and David called Tony to the dance floor to play the cowbell for a song. Tony, of course, totally rocked it. He never ceases to amaze me with all of his hidden talents :)

Last weekend we went to a festival called Cutlerville Days where we saw the band AG Silver perform. Tony’s brother-in-law Phil played bass with them at a festival last summer and Tony and Phil know the guys in the band, so it’s fun to watch them play.

Sunday afternoon we attended a small group leader’s celebration that our church puts on for all the small group leaders every summer. The afternoon was planned to a 50’s theme and the organizers went all out! Tony played a 50’s set, mostly Elvis and Johnny Cash, with three other musicians. It was a blast!

Last night we drove to Ann Arbor to see Grahm, Tony’s friend from high school, play with Matthew Santos. They put on an awesome show and were followed by an Australian band called The Waifs. We didn’t know what to expect, but we were really impressed!

I started a post the other day backtracking all that we have done since the last time I posted, but I ran out of steam and never got around to finishing it. I figure I’ll start from today and hopefully keep up from here!

Grand Rapids puts together a sweet arts festival every summer, and Tony had the opportunity to perform at the festival with two different bands from church- Matt Bell and Band, and The Crisi Band. A lot of friends and family came out to see him play, and we had a great time! Tony rocked out and the bands impressed a lot of people in the audience. It was exciting for Tony to perform and exciting for me to watch him! We’re praying he’ll have more opportunities like that in the future!

Last week I fired up the sprinkler system we put in last summer.  It was very rewarding to have everything work right away without any problems.   Our baby hydroseeded grass still has a lot of growing to do, it seems so far the weeks are doing a better job growing… I want to wait a bit before i put more chemicals on the lawn, so for now nature must run its course.  Special thanks to Kenny for giving us the lawn mower!

It’s been a while! My mid-April resolution is to start keeping up with our website again. Here we go! I took a last minute trip to Florida this week during my spring break to soak up some sun rays and spend some time with my aunt Wendy and uncle Bill. Unfortunately Tony wasn’t able to come with me, but My Yiayia came and we had a great time together! The weather was beautiful and so is the area! I can’t believe people get to live there all the time!

Tony and I took our first bike ride of the season today. Last week we discovered a new park in our neighborhood and today we took time to go explore it. We were very impressed! We followed about a mile worth of nicely paved paths through the beautiful trees surrounding the ravine. The trails begin at a park equipped with a basketball court, restrooms, and a pavilion. We’re assuming that they will add playground equipment to make it a complete park! It will be great place to hang out this summer and take our nephew Caiden and new niece or nephew once he or she arrives!

Last weekend while Tony was hanging out with the boys I decided to try some paint on one of our living room walls. Kim was here and helped me! We all really like the color, and we’re planning on painting the rest of the walls soon. I’m also looking online to get some ideas of some fun painting we can do. Maybe diamonds or squares on one of our small walls? I’m also trying to figure out how to use different colors in the room to make it more fun. I’m open to any ideas!

The paint color looks different in real life. And I just realized from looking at the picture that our couch isn’t centered against the wall…I’ll need to go fix that!

Tony celebrated another birthday this weekend! We celebrated by (Tony) completing a couple projects around the house, a dinner at Outback, and a super bowl party with friends.

Our first project was in the laundry room. We unstacked the washer and dryer, and hung two extra shelves to add more storage space. The project only cost $15, but it feels like we gained a whole new room in our house!

Tony then spent some time in the basement installing can lights. They look great, and give a lot of light to the area. We’re still thinking about how we want to do the lighting in the stairway and hallway.

Later that night we went to Outback for Tony’s birthday dinner, thanks to a birthday gift certificate from Jody and Scott! We had a great meal and a great time together!

We had fun Sunday night with friends playing rock band and watching the super bowl. I tried to feel my new niece or nephew kicking, but he or she wasn’t kicking hard enough.

I am at home enjoying my third snow day in two weeks! In the past 6 school days we have had 3 snow days and 2 2-hour delays! Last year I needed snow days to recover from the stress of my classroom. I have a much better class this year, so I can use my snow days to work and plan from home. And watch TLC :)

After much ado, we finally got our whole ebay/light switch shenanigans worked out! Now we are the proud owners of a remote control fan/light dimmer switch in our bedroom! I installed it last night, and I like it so much Alison thought she might wake up in the middle of the night to find me playing with the remote… Andrea will be glad to hear I turned off the circuit breaker before I installed the switch… no sparks this time… The new switch replaced two analog switches, so until i can find a blank Lutron style rectangle filler wall plate I put an electrical outlet next to our switch… (see photo). It’s not quite ideal, visually, but it works anyway for the time being until Alison let’s me tear a new hole in the wall for a single switch box… neat…

Thanks, Yiayia, for the great gift!