The Week of the Dude

This was the week of the dude. It started with “Dudes & Donuts” at Adelaide’s preschool and ended with a bachelor party in Milwaukee.

Adelaide’s preschool, like most preschools, have themed days at least once a week. “Wear your favorite hat day.” “Wear mismatched socks day.” “Crazy hair day.” Stuff like that. This week happened to be “Dudes & Donuts Week”. A time for “dudes” in the kids’ lives to come to their school, eat a donut, and see how a typical school day runs.

Emerson and I got to be Adelaide’s “dudes”. Emerson ate two donuts and had fun playing with the cool toys. He wasn’t a very good listener during circle time. Adelaide seemed to enjoy showing us what she does at school. It was pretty worthwhile.

While looking through “Facebook Memories” this week, we saw an old photo of of our main living area as viewed from the front door. (The top picture). We never formally shared the progress we’d made, so we snapped an updated photo from the same view this week. It’s pretty amazing how far we’ve come, even when it feels like we’ve stalled lately. The work we did to get from “Before” to “After” includes demo, drywall & paint, flooring, moving a wall or two, adding a sliding door, new windows, painting the cabinets, new countertops, and new banister/railing.

The second set of pictures is of our Master Bathroom. I mentioned it in a video a few weeks ago and shared more pictures there, if you’re interested. But what we accomplished in the bathroom is amazing. We replaced everything except the tile flooring. The shower was about 3’x3′ and had a 6′ ceiling. Next to it (above the toilet) was a huge built-in shelving unit. And there was a big header over all of it. We removed the shelving and header and combined it into a new 6’x3′ shower with a ceiling that is now just a few inches shorter than those in the rest of the room. We have 3 shower heads and a beautiful sliding glass shower door. It’s my favorite shower ever.

Over our holiday RV trip to Florida, Emerson fell in love with his Lion Guard shirt. It’s a bright yellow/green one. He refused to take it off even to swim. He now wears it a few time a week. Karissa decided to get him some more Lion Guard shirts. 3 arrived in one package and he wanted all 3 of them on at the same time. They’re size 5T and he’s only wearing 2T, but if it makes him happy, he can wear them.

A few weeks back, recall that Karissa went to a bachelorette party. I was honored to get invited to the bachelor party for the groom-to-be. We’ve been playing volleyball with them for over 2 years and have become good friends. A group of 8 guys headed to Milwaukee for a weekend of fun. We had a blast. The highlights of the trip were playing NBA Jam at an arcade bar and the brewery tour (and afternoon of drinking beer) at Lakefront Brewery. It was a good time. I think the wedding will be more fun knowing a few more people beforehand.

It seems like Karissa had fun with the kids at home this weekend. She cleaned the house, helped the bride-to-be with some sort of wedding paraphernalia, and took care of poor Emerson who got his first real fever on Thursday night and into Friday.

This coming week will be on for recovery. We’re down to 1x/week of volleyball and will be watching for the weather to make a more obvious turn towards spring. It looks like each day will be warmer than the previous day, so that’s good news!

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