The Latest

We've been having fun rearranging our furniture lately. It's amazing how moving a few things around can make your home feel fresh again without costing a dime! We initially started moving things around when we were trying to determine the best place to put the piano. Yes, we finally have a piano! We ended up rearranging our entire upstairs living room, the office, and the downstairs living area. The piano found a new home in what used to be our office. The office had become somewhat obsolete over the last year. Once Tom finished grad school and after we purchased a lap top, there really wasn't any reason for us to be in the office. We decided to get an external hard drive and move all the data from our behemoth of a desktop onto the hard drive so we could put the desk top computer to rest in the crawl space. This meant the desk and office chair were also pretty much useless so we took them apart as well. We moved the filing cabinet and printer into the closet to make room for the papasan chair. We moved the piano in early last week and it looks great in the old office. The room has been re-purposed into a music/reading room. We're going to build a couple more bookshelves to create some more vertical storage for all our books and maybe get a music stand so I can use that room for playing piano and clarinet. Since the room has french doors, I'll hopefully be able to keep most of the sound inside the room. That room does not have any common walls with our neighbors so I hope none of them are bothered by my practicing.
I am so excited about this piano! We ended up getting it for free from one of my co workers. His mother was downsizing into an apartment and could not bring the piano with her. It is an older Wurlitzer console but it's in good working condition and has a nice response. It's in desperate need of a tuning, but other than that it sounds pretty good. The home it came from was home to smokers at some point and the piano mover could tell by looking at the strings. I don't think it smells like smoke. At least I haven't been able to notice it yet. You can't beat FREE so I'm going to have to overlook the few flaws that it has. I've played it several hours already this week. Even though it is out of tune, it makes me happy. It's like a small piece of my soul is back now that I've got music back in my life. I've had a perma-grin plastered on my face ever since the piano moved in ;) Weston likes it too. Whenever I'm in there, he stands at the door and says, "Pay peeno! Pay peeno!".

Please excuse the mess. We're still tidying up from all the rearranging. Isn't the piano pretty?

In other news, Tom joined a softball league that starts up in a couple weeks. He decided it was only fair that he get to participate in his favorite hobby (baseball) now that I get to participate in mine (piano). I'm looking forward to going to his games and watching him play again. The games will be one night a week just down the street at a local field that is connected to a really nice playground. I'm looking forward to taking Weston to the games!

Here are some more pictures from the last couple of weeks:

We took some family pictures this week. I just took a few photos from what was posted online so they look really grainy/banded but you all get the general idea. We'll be able to pick up what we ordered in a week or so. It was incredibly challenging to get Weston to sit still for any length of time. The photographer was pretty much a miracle worker because we actually got a couple good shots. Weston doesn't turn 2 until June 10th, but we are going to use these photos as his 2 year photos.
This photo might need some explaining. This is Tom attempting to get all the magnetic ABCs out from beneath the refrigerator. Weston loves to sing the ABCs and can recognize some letters so we thought it would be a good idea to get him some fridge magnets. Apparently, he's not ready for them yet because all he did was stuff them all under the refrigerator. He can also count to 10 now! I have it on video and I'll try to post it within the next week or two. He even recognizes written numbers. He tells me what aisle number we are in when we are at the store.

We spent Easter Sunday in Buffalo with Tom's family this year. This is Grandpa and Weston reading the "I Spy" book. Weston could not get enough of this book.

Chocolate :)

Grams and Weston with W's electric car. Weston is very into cars right now.