Pensacola 2021

In June we went to Pensacola and took the girls there with us for the first time! It was also their first time flying:

 

And their first time hanging out in Atlanta waiting for a connecting flight:

When we arrived, we picked up our 2021 Mustang convertible and headed to the airbnb on the island. The weather was awesome:

Our airbnb was a high-rise condo on Santa Rosa Island. This is the first time we stayed anywhere other than a hotel down there. The view was pretty great. On one side we had a balcony facing in on the island and on the other side we had a balcony facing Sabine Bay.

Island side:

Sabine Bay:

I think this was the only picture I took from the inside of the condo, unfortunately:

The neighboring buildings to the north of us:

We didn't waste time going down to the beach and getting in the water. Rose collected shells:

Look at those white, white midwesterners:

In the evening we watched the sun going down and the boats coming back into the bay. It was so peaceful:

The view from our balcony the next morning was breathtaking:

Meanwhile, this person needed help:

And every evening the view was just like this:

Cynthia likes having her picture taken first thing in the morning:

Back out on the beach again!

Panoramic view (in case you didn't know what was going on here):

The Blue Angels flew over and put on their full airshow routine over the island around 9am. Since there aren't any airshows due to Covid they've been doing all their performances for free once a week over the island and the mainland.

Lunch at Red Fish Blue Fish:

And back to the beach...

Dinner at Flounder's. Took some pictures with the funky microbus while waiting for our table:

Rose ordered a ONE POUND slice of cheesecake with marmalade and survived:

The next day we went out on a dolphin boat to see if we could find any... dolphins. And we did. They came right up to the boat:

During a lull in the dolphin watching Rose got a selfie with the captain. They swapped shades for the pic:

And more dolphins! We saw several pods over the course of the trip:

Dinner at Shaggy's Bar & Grill, which was a couple doors down from our Airbnb:

The next morning we went to Fort Pickens:

There was a network of tunnels connecting the fortifications and despite the picture below, these things were dark. Emily and Rose decided to explore and I followed them. 

Everything was good until Rose turned her phone flashlight on and they could see cockroaches everywhere. All over the walls, the ground, scurrying everywhere. So they left: 

The artillery on top of the fort. From up here we could see the base across the water and the old lighthouse:

Paddle boarding later that day... it's tough to balance on these things. Seems like they would be OK in a lake, but with the ocean current and waves it's difficult to stay on them:

Peg Leg Pete's! Just like the sign says.

So much fun! Wish we could just stay there and never go back. That would be alright with me.

May 2021

May is the month of Cynthia's birthday, so here we go...  her birthday cake masterfully decorated by me. I went beastmode with the sprinkles to distract from the really bad lettering:

Does it look like there are two different cakes pictured here? That's because there were, so stop asking questions. It turned out fine.

Blowing out the candles:

Presents!

Then we had a separate birthday celebration in our garage (as is our tradition) with family and friends:

The ragged post-derecho skyline. At least the yard is turning green again and the grass is starting to fill back in:

Havin' a fire with these weirdos:

My cousin Stephen passed away on May 3rd. It was a shock and happened so suddenly. He didn't make it through his 20s and I feel bad that I didn't know him better. There was a brief and bittersweet family reunion when my siblings and parents came out for the funeral.

March 2021

First, March is the month of Emily's birthday! She turned 13 this year, which is wild. She's not so little anymore. In fact, she's almost as tall as me, which is annoying for Rose who is now the shortest person in the house. Emily's friends came over to help her celebrate:

Make a wish!

Happy Birthday, Emily!

OK, we got some stuff DONE in March. With the help of my friend Curtis (who really did almost all the work), we replaced all the plumbing in the house. No more rusty galvanized steel plumbing with low water pressure. Good riddance. But to access the old pipes, I had to open up one wall in the pantry, a section of wall in the upstairs linen closet, then gut the entire upstairs bathroom, exposing studs and floor joists. Then we replaced the whole works with AquaPEX and PVC. It was a ton of work, but a suitable pandemic-era home improvement project.

Starting off, a few before pictures:

After tearing off the plastic tile veneer stuff from the walls and pulling up the lumpy linoleum:

This weird "razor deposit" slot in the back of the medicine cabinet was always intriguing and we joked that the wall was probably full of discarded razors. Well guess what, it really was full of old razors. A LOT of old razors which came pouring out all over the place as soon as I broke out the plaster wall.

We kept the bathroom functioning until the last minute when we were ready to replace all the pipes.

The walls around the tub and shower opened up, before and after:

A work in progress. The city brought out a new water meter and then Curtis installed 3/4" copper tap for both cold and hot and then stepped it down to 1/2" before connecting to each fixture. AquaPEX is colorful stuff:

The first cement board wall section (on the right) installed after putting in the new shower valve:

You can see the new pipes behind the sink and toilet near the floor. The old iron pipes are wastewater vents and are still functional and up to code, so we left them in:

Installing the cement board:

New medicine cabinet installed! It's a little bigger than the old one so we can fit more crap in it:

All of the cement board installed on the walls and on top of the subfloor planks, with thinset mortar sealing up all the gaps. Cynthia is putting down the slate hex floor tiles:

The slate tiles are cool, but a pain to work with:

You can only work on one small section at a time because you have to clean up the excess epoxy grout before it dries and it dries fast. That makes for slow progress:

Two coats of Red Guard on the cement board and then we began installing the 16" subway tile in the shower. The Red Guard is a thick epoxy that waterproofs the walls and prevents mold if water ever does get through the tiles:

Installing the subway tile was tedious, but we borrowed a laser level from the Von Thuns and that was a life saver because it made keeping the tiles straight an easy task. I mounted the laser level on a camera tripod and that way I could easily adjust the height to precisely where I needed it to be. It was a lot faster than measuring each row as we put them up. I still measured stuff, tho:

Cynthia is applying grout using a float. It looks like a mess, but fortunately this type of grout is easy to clean up:

To avoid having to cut tiles lengthwise to fit when we reached the ceiling we put in a row of mosaic tile and made it the exact height that it needed to be to fit the tiles above it. The grout hasn't been applied to the subway tile yet here:

Once the shower tile was done, we moved out into the rest of the bathroom:

After the tiles were up I had to scrape the crappy ceiling paint that was flaking off. That sucked enormously, but it had to be done:

Then we did a bunch of finishing stuff that took forever and then it was DONE. Painted walls, new hardware, new bathroom. We got new towels and put up a picture from our Pensacola trip:

We had a guy come out and refinish the iron tub, too. I like the look of the art deco design on the side and also it's IRON. No way we're gonna try to get that beast out of there to replace it:

When we weren't working on the bathroom, we were keeping warm around a fire as we burned an endless supply of derecho tree debris:

February 2021

We made it to February! Everyone is still alive, so that's good news. Cynthia put together a shelter-in-place Valentine's Day dinner. We had steak and streamed a video of Pensacola Beach on the TV. It was pretty rad:

 

Cynthia made a LOT of masks for people at PCI. A LOT of masks:

And here's a random sunset shot. The sky had such weird colors this evening:

Watch Lily battle her worst winter enemy: static