The last time you checked in to this blog, you found that we had finally ordered kitchen cabinets. In order to make the most of the time I currently have to blog, here is a list of things that have kept me away/accomplishments we've made in our renovating:
#1. Our cabinets came in! Woohoo! They sit unassembled in our mud room, but they're pretty!
#2. We went to Bolivia. It's true, we did. We sort of halted our renovation due to the trip. For those of you who may not know this, Andrew and I feel that one day we will be living overseas, probably working to provide clean water or doing some other manual labor to better under-developed communities. We have both traveled a good bit stateside and overseas working, but this was our first trip together. We decided in early April to apply with Samaritan's Purse for a trip to Bolivia, thinking we would be leaving in July. They called mid-April to ask us to go in May, so we stopped all excess spending until after the trip. We spent a week at 13-14,000 feet digging wells and wrestling llamas and alpacas. I'll post some pictures below.
#3. We celebrated my 26th birthday--first in Miami beach during our layover, then at 1:30 a.m. when I came home to find my office completely cleaned out and decorated by my three awesome friends Kristin, Laura and Sarah, then again the day after our trip with breakfast, a movie, tile shopping, burritos and another movie. Andrew conspired with Kristin to redo my office, which was currently full of boxes, bags and random stuff. I've been planning to clean it out, but I just haven't found the time. They spent less than $100 I think on everything. I'll post pics from it in another post and link to their blog so you can get the full story. Most everything was taken out of people's trash or bought at junk stores and repurposed.
#4. Related to my office, I built my desk. IKEA has a desk that is basically fancy sawhorses with a long panel that sits on top. I didn't want to pay for it, so I decided to create my own. I built two sawhorses and bought a door for $5 at Restor for the actual desk part. Before we left for Bolivia, Andrew snuck around and sanded the door and carved our initials in it so the desk would be finished for the girls to decorate.
#5. I left one job and started another. Long story short, Andrew and I felt it was time for me to leave my position at Valley Church, and I found a reporting job for a community newspaper in Connecticut. I've been working there for about 6 weeks now.
#6. I'll do a separate post for this, but we gutted our kitchen today! All the nasty paneling, cabinets, two layers of carpet and ceiling tiles are gone. We only ingested a few toxins.
So there have been at least six very "good" reasons why I haven't posted in two months. Things seem to actually be rolling around here now with the kitchen so hopefully we'll have plenty of material to talk about. I'll leave you with a few of my favorite pictures from Bolivia.
A door that I really liked :)
Sunset over the first well site we visited the night before we started work
We finished digging and placed concrete rings for a well for this boy's family
We rode mountain bikes down the world's most dangerous road, which is in Bolivia--this is our group at a scenic "overlook"
Houses in the Altiplano
Me riding one of the rings down into the hole
Digging in the mud
Mount Sajama in the background
Andrew bailing out mud and water
The road in the middle of the picture is what we rode down
A woman and her son bringing us bales of sticks for a fire
I grabbed this shot from the car window riding back into La Paz
