Hester Happenings

Operation: Clean Gross Cabinets! So one of my track out projects was cleaning our kitchen cabinets because they were so gross! I didn't really notice how disgusting they were until just recently. Here are before pictures: As you can see: grime on the bottom ledge and white food streaks all over. I looked up ideas for the best way to clean cabinets because knowing my klutzy self, I would ruin them. I mixed vinegar, boiling water, and some dish soap in a jar. Then I used some elbow grease and scrubbed those gross cabinets.  \ All nice and clean now! Operation: Welcome Baby Lear!! Another track-out project has been helping my sister with her baby room. First we had to move all the old furniture and dog stuff our of the room and closet. Step 2 was to patch up holes, put painter's tape down, and vacuum the room. Step 3 was to paint all but one of the walls gray. This made a HUGE difference because the color ...

I stared a new decoration project for the house. Jeff and I want a family tree up in our house with real pictures of relatives. We started at my parent's house the other night. Here are some neat pictures that we dug up. Dad's Side: Great Great Grandparents-Wierzalis Great Grandma Clara Grandpa Riegel Clara We weren't sure this is...any family members know? Great Grandpa Salvatore  Salvatore and Clara with my dad and two aunts Anthony Fulginiti and his family-13 kids! Mom's Side: Great Uncle Bud Great Grandpa Huck My grandparents My great grandma Laura with my mom My great grandma Marie on the left and great great grandma Laura on the right Great Grandpa Vernon Von Wolf My great great grandma Myrtle Johns on the right and her sister Zelma on the left. Maybe it's just the history nerd in me, but it was so much fun looking through old pictures! Up next...Jeff's fam...

Last weekend we started a yard project: edging our flower beds in the front yard. We got the part finished around the bushes on the left side of the house. This weekend we finished the little plot to the left of the garage, the two trees, and the right side of the house. Here is the left side of the house: Right side of the house: Jeff said that I had to have a picture of myself taken since he was in the last post. We both like the final results of the edging stones! Now it's flower and mulch time. There won't be a brown pit for much longer! 

Spring time means yard work...So last year we pulled out a gazillion bushes. This is what it looked like last year: Basically the bushes were taking up the entire front of the house. It looked overgrown, so we pulled a lot of them out and moved a couple to a new spot. This is how it looked with all our flowers: This year this is how the front of the house looked: Because the flowers haven't bloomed yet it looks like a big dirt pit. The flowers we planted last year haven't bloomed yet and a lot of the mulch washed away. We decided this year that we needed some kind of border to keep the mulch and dirt in place. We picked up 3 different edgers at the store to see which one we liked the best. Then we went back to the store and got enough for one part of our yard. We figured that doing a little bit at a time is better than doing the whole yard at once. So this weekend this is what we accomplished: Next weekend we plan on doing the rest of the...

Our last 2 days on our cruise were spend out at sea. One exciting thing we did on day 6 was go to see an ice carving. It only took this guy about 15 minutes to completely turn an ice block into a Native American head. The bottom picture is the finished product: On this night Jeff and I were able to visit the on-board Steak House. As you can see just from the salads...this place was very fancy! And yummy!  The towel animal for the day: a monkey. On our last day we said goodbye to our wonderful wait staff: Michael, Gede, and Arnold. They took such great care of us in the dining room! On this night the waiters actually sang goodbye to us! Jeff and I both feel so blessed to have been able to go on such an awesome anniversary trip!

On day 5 we landed in St. Martin on a gorgeous day! We started by shopping at the local stores to see if we could get any goodies. This was our only day that we actually had time to souvenir shop, so we took full advantage of it! In order to get into town we had to take a water taxi: After shopping we went back to the ship to grab our suits! We then headed to the French side of the island to visit Orient beach. We had heard many stories about this beach...if you don't know, you need to look it up! Surprisingly at first we were pleasantly surprised because everyone had suits on! Below is a picture of where we had lunch: Then we tried to go snorkeling because there was supposed to be a lot of fish here....but no fishies! We looked for a while but we only spotted a few zebra fish. When we moved to a 'better' snorkeling spot we COMPLETELY understood the stories about this beach then! OH MY! We quickly walked out of there and went to the beach closer to the shi...