Republican State Convention

This past weekend we had a great opportunity to attend the Republican State Convention! It was held Thursday, Friday and Saturday, here in Houston at the George R Brown. I was a delegate and Jeff was an alternate, but he got to vote quite a bit because for some reason not all the delegates came! Crazy people, you don't even have to travel for it! There were about 5,000 people there each day and it is the largest State convention in the US (Democratic ones included)! We got to rub elbows with some big names in politics, including Senator John Cornyn and Railroad Commissioner, Michael Williams. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee were the big speakers, along with Governor Rick Perry. We didn't meet these big names, but we meet a lot of state politicians. My favorite pictures in the slide show are the one of us with President Reagan and the one with me and Mike Huckabee's bald spot. No, this was not the real Reagan, but it was as close as we could get. That is the real Mike Huckabee, bald spot and all! All in all, the weekend was long and tiring, but it was a great experience and I would definitely do it again!

The last picture in the slide show is some flowers I received from one of my families that adopted a precious 3 year old child last Tuesday! I can't show the sweet pictures of him giving me the flowers or the big hug he gave, but I can tell you that being a part of helping him find a forever family was one of the most rewarding things I have done in my 2 1/2 years of social work! YAY for happy endings!

First Home Improvement Project is a success!

This blog post is dedicated first to my husband, who is my other half and the best partner I could ask for. My weaknesses are his strengths and vice versa. It's the perfect combination! The post is also dedicated to Wendy and Jonathan, the master home improvement team that inspired us to try for ourselves.

Okay, we have been married for a year now and we bought the house a year and a half ago, so I'm sure you are thinking...what took them so long?! First of all, after planning the wedding and adjusting to married life, our jobs got crazy. Things are starting to settle down and when we got back from our anniversary trip, Jeff told me he wanted to start by painting our guest bathroom. Those of you who know Jeff, know that when Jeff says he's ready to do something, he means he's ready right now. We got home from our trip on a Friday night and Saturday we went to Home Depot to get supplies. Wendy gave us a time frame, one week, to complete the project. We did it!

First of all, this room was awful! I don't know what they were thinking when they picked the wall paper and they put it directly on the drywall. Therefore, we couldn't remove it without incurring a lot of expense and needless effort. So, we used a couple of coats of oil based primer to cover the paper, after Jeff had spackled and sanded nail wholes and glued down pieces of the paper that had peeled up. Taping and doing that took a whole day! The next day we primed one coat, then waited 24 hours before priming again.

After four days of 5-6 hours per day of work, we finished and it looks great! Wendy is a interior designer and when she came over on Sunday, she raved about the job we did! It was Jeff's very first time painting and if I recall I did a really poor job last time I tried and was demoted to the taping girl. Jeff did most of the work, I have to confess. I handed him paint brushes with paint on them while he reached for the high places from the ladder. He cleaned brushes and worked until he was sore. I worked on the low spots and again was the "taping girl." He let me pretend we were putting in an equal amount of work, but really it was all him! You can tell because he has sweat pouring from his shower cap (my idea after he got a reverse skunk stripe in his hair the first day of painting primer).

After all of this, we celebrated by defrosting the top of our wedding cake and sharing some surprisingly delicious long awaited cake! Cheers to TEAM ALBUS!