You can call him Al

Last year we welcomed a new member to our family...Alexander. You can call him Al.

I had a crazy idea in my head that we needed to adopt another cat. But I knew that the old house wasn't big enough for two adults, two kids, a dog, and three cats. When we moved to the new house we certainly had the room. My sister volunteers with Fancy Cats Rescue Team at our local Petsmart taking care of the too many cats who need forever homes. I never paid attention to them really until we would visit Molly during her cleaning and feeding of the cats. Many touched my heart. And Alexander was one of them. He had been in the "cage" for WAY TO LONG. And he needed a family.

We started making the preparations and in June 2011 we made the adoption. He lived in Jaime's room for about a week during the transition. After which we swapped Ben and Roosie and Al between the basement and the first and the second floors to allow additional time for Al to become familiar with the house and Ben and Roosie's scents (and vice versa). After three weeks or so we opened up the doors for all the animals to move freely. It didn't go over so well. Not at all. Let's just say some of the best advice I can give is not to go into a cat fight without gloves. I have the scars and phone calls from Fairfax County public health services to prove it.

Roosie constantly freaked out, Ben will always howl with the most heart wrenching cries, and Al just appears to want to play. Al sleeps in the basement at night with the door closed to allow Ben and Roosie the "freedom" of the second and the first floor. During the day the doors are all opened. However, Ben and Rooise stick to the second floor and our bedroom and under our bed.

However, when I got back from a short grocery store run this past weekend, my niece Makayla comes rushing out of the house to tell me that Al and Ben were on Joe's bed and they weren't hissing or howling at each other. I saw it with my own eyes. Ben looked slightly panicked but he wasn't about to move. Al had his front legs stretched out in front of him napping. Perhaps we have turned a corner and a truce, or at least an understanding, is emerging.

An itch to see some changes

Now that James and I are coming up on our first year in our first home, we have started to finally make changes. I sort of focused on furniture first (bookshelves, pie safes, dressers, etc.) and now I'm ready for paint and updates. Last weekend was the first major change we've made. And it was just because a got a bug up my butt to see something different for a change.

We painted and updated the fixtures in the master bathroom. I'm only talking about two and a half walls so it was really easy to tackle being so small and having paint left over from the old house. I wish I had thought to do a before and after photo. But alas, I'll only be able to provide an after photo....later. We need to touch up the ceiling and clean it first!

I really like it and it makes me feel like we've accomplished something. Especially since we also updated the light fixture over our vanity (which is outside the bathroom itself) from a horrible 1980s "modern" monstrosity to a simple bronze finished beauty. That was an adventure. And one that I hope doesn't repeat itself as we slowly replace the light fixtures throughout the house.I even went a little wild by replacing the switches and plugs with brown units instead of the traditional white or almond color and used bronzed plate covers! My sister graciously helped us out by replacing those outlets and switches, including those in the guest bedroom, guest bath, and in Jaime's room. We haven't figured out which breaker controls the outlets in Joe's room yet so they remain on the list to do. That breaker box is a blog post on its own.

The last new change we made was by rearranging our bedroom furniture so that we have easy access to our sole window. The cats and James absolutely love this new layout. You can now find Benning pretty much on the ottoman under the window catching the morning sun. Alexander loves to look out over the neighborhood.

The updated electrical flare will look really great once we get all the rooms painted. We've picked out all of the colors for the rooms except for a couple that we're still debating about. But that will take some time as the painting supplies are currently being used by Molly and Chris as they update their own house. A couple of years ago Molly and I combined our painting supplies to save on costs, so I'll have to time our projects in between their own painting projects.