Newest Tile

Hello everyone! Today was a fairly relaxing day for us. Grace was at her Aunt's house for most of the day, so we got to sleep in a little this morning. Then we went to the tile store to pick out some new tile that would work better in our entryway. We found a good one! Here is the picture:




Unfortunately, or fortunately, we really can't use a border strip with these tiles, so it will just be a straight tile job. That's good because it will be less expensive, but not so good because we really liked some of the borders we saw. So the details are that this tile is also porcelain and is 12" x 12". I'll need to return the old tile to Lowe's as soon as possible because if I don't I'll end up waiting too long and not be able to return it.

After that we went to the shoe store. I got some new shoes and Julie got some new work shoes. At first I dropped Julie off and ran by the bike store to drop off a poster and some fliers for a bike race we're going to next month. It's called Rolling on the River. You should check it out. It should be a lot of fun. We're planning to go and camp there and are volunteering to help out.

Then we stopped at Best Buy on the way home because I had seen a laptop holder in their ad this week that I may have been able to modify and use in the car. But after we actually saw it we both agreed that it wasn't going to work and that we'll have to just wait and see how the other case we ordered works out.

After a quick lunch and my Aunt bringing Grace home, we headed to my sister's house for some cake and ice cream. They were having a little get-together for my BIL and their daughter's birthdays. Just minutes after getting in the car to drive over there, Grace fell fast asleep and I got a quick picture of her.



Isn't she just adorable? We think so but we are biased. She had a great time at the party with her cousins and we had a good time too talking with everyone. My BIL's father got a new bike recently and so we were talking about biking a lot. My BIL got himself an iPhone for his birthday present. I got to check it out and play with it. WOW is it ever cool. Julie got to talk on it and said the sound quality and reception was good. It's just really cool! If they'd just do the next step and add the few features it's missing (which I didn't know about until today) it might be a must buy for me. But for now considering the price and the fact that our cell phone contracts with Verizon aren't up until late March, it's not feasible for us to even consider it.

For those that are interested, the things it's missing are: GPS capability; It has built-in mapping functions but no GPS so you can't use it for directions from your current location, etc. There is no chat client, only text messaging. You can't personalize the main menu the way you want it, although it might not be necessary. You can't use it as a modem for your laptop. The largest capacity you can buy for the iPod functions is 8 Gb which would be plenty for me for the music I like to carry, but if you want to carry movies or TV shows to watch that's pretty useless. The user interface, while VERY slick, is a little confusing at first. There is only one navigation button and it takes you to the main menu every time you press it. So if you are surfing the internet, it leaves that application running and takes you back to the main menu. I found myself clicking a lot to get to something different. You can't edit or do anything with office documents like Word or Excel files. It doesn't have a To-Do list and it requires a 2-year contract even though you've thrown $500+ on the phone itself. Please note this doesn't mean I don't like it. I REALLY like it, I'm just pointing out the things I noticed that it didn't have that I WISH it did.

Oh, I forgot to mention yesterday that we finally bought an indoor bike trainer to use in the winter or on bad weather days. We of course don't really have room to use it in the exercise area of our basement yet, but we will. I'm really excited to finally have one. I've been wanting one for years and it was finally just the right price so we got it. I've got it put together already but haven't tried it out yet. It's a rim-drive model because since I have a mountain bike that's the only type of trainer I can use. Julie has a hybrid (part mountain bike, part road bike) and so she could have used pretty much any trainer, but I needed the rim drive one.

I also forgot to mention that we went and picked out paint colors for our family room yesterday! Can you hardly believe it? I'm really excited about that too. The medium color is the upper portion of the walls. The lightest color is for the trim and the darker color is for the bottom of the walls which will have a special textured wallpaper hung first. They only had one gallon of the black paint for the ceiling so we'll have to go back and get the second gallon later. But that's alright because we still have to install some recessed lighting and hang the wallpaper on the ceiling before we can paint it anyway. Here is how they look together:



So this means I can finally paint the bookcase I made and we can start using it! YEA! And our room will start to look the way we want it too instead of "builder beige." I'm so very sick of that color! I swear every room in our house was that color when we moved in. It has got to go! No more builder beige!

Well, that'll have to be enough for today as I'm falling asleep now. Goodnight!