Okay, it's the Man's turn.

For the past two days the Mrs. and I have been taking on a kitchen renovation. We decided to redo our counter tops and cabinets. There will be pictures to follow this post but for now let me just say that because of my wife's eye for design my mediocre handy man skills have been compensated for. Everything, while not quite what we though it was going to be, looks great. The renovation continues and out plan keeps adapting to the uncertainty of my skills.

To be continued...

Freaky, Chic and Fly, Monster High

This weekend we celebrated Miss G's birthday with her first ever slumber party, which I think was a roaring success. (Heavy emphasis on roaring!)

 Since we didn't intend on decorating for the party, since slumber parties don't really need themes, we didn't buy much in the way of doo-dads, but we had so much fun putting up what we did have that we began using toys to help "festive"the place up!

 Sweet 1600 Draculaura hanging out in her coffin bed.

 Clawd, Frankie and Clawdeen in their Sweet 1600 geddups.

 Top hats, glow sticks and stacks of presents!

 Balloons, which no party is complete without.

 Birthday banners declaring the good word, yet refusing to stay adhered to the wall.

Sir Pantry!

Finishing out Spring Break!

We ended our week of vacation by finishing our bedroom remodel. (The crown molding! It's beautiful!)

 And celebrated Zombie Jesus day with colorful baskets o' fun!

And now we're back to Ye Olde Grind, which still means a whole lot of fun around here.

Awesome Friday

We got a head start on celebrating Easter by turning Good Friday into AWESOME Friday with our best friend Bryan. The shenanigans started with nabbing a few long-eared pictures and relatively quickly moved on to arts and crafts. We sat around the table with various mediums of art, including water colors, acrylics and better-than-Playdoh. We all decorated plastic eggs and foam cut outs in our diverse interpretations of what Easter represents for us all. In a unanimous vote, Bryan's "Zombie Jesus" painting was Best In Show. The girls scampered off to bed at that point, leaving the adults to eat Spring Funfetti cookies and Reese's Eggs while sipping fizzy beverages from bunny shaped silly straws. We rounded off the evening by watching Hop and talking about everything from Alfred Kinsey to ring tones before finally collapsing in a heap around 2 am. We love hanging out with Bryan and this will probably go down in history as the most fun we've had as adults celebrating Zombie Jesus day.

Because the whole family has been working so hard this vacation we decided to treat ourselves to a little fun. Nicole and I decided to take the girls to Beachwood Place Mall for a bit of a shopping spree. We then ended up here...

... at the Melting Pot at Legacy Village. This was the first time Robin and Ginger had been to a Melting Pot. I believe they enjoyed the whole experience because Robin cemented out thoughts that we are the best parents ever!

That was yesterday, Wednesday, and today the family was treated to a trip to the Fannie May Chocolate Factory and a visit with the Lorax!

Okay... maybe not a visit, but we did see the movie. 

This was a phenomenal movie that had an extremely powerful messagee. I can only hope that this movie speaks to the young generation so they will say:  "I am the Lorax I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.And I'm asking you sir, at the top of my lungs - that thing! That horrible thing that I see! What's that thing you've made out of my truffula tree?".

There may not be a "Truffula Tree" but there are plenty of other names that can be placed there. This is a movie that should be seen by everyone.

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing's going to get better. It's not."

Spring Break!

The Difficult family has been on Spring Break all this week. With an early spring (also called "Where was winter?!") we have had a lot of yard work to do to prepare for planting, as well as other various outside work that didn't get done last year, due to a very laid back summer mentality. (Also called "We're a whole family of sloths!") With Kyle and the girls on vacation, we used this opportunity to catch up.

 On Monday, we weeded and trimmed all of the flower beds and, man, are there a lot. We also burned the branches and other brush that fell over the time-that-was-supposed-to-be-winter, which included our beloved Christmas tree.  Once we were tired of being outside Kyle finished installing and painting the chair rail in our bedroom renovation.

 Tuesday's list of chores was a big one. Not only did Kyle dismantle the girls' club house to turn it into a gardening shed (No tears. The loft Kyle built for them has been outgrown and they were freaked out by the spiders anyway.) but he also took on the major task of cleaning the 4 car garage. A lot of what you see in the pictures was pitched to the curb and was all hauled away by treasure hunters before the trash actually ran the following morning.

Wednesday Kyle put in a flower bed around our mailbox, which is just sitting empty for now, as the weather seems to have finally right-sided itself and we're still under nightly frost warnings. All that garden prep and we can't plant yet. The crown moulding for the bedroom reno was purchased as well before a general "fuggetaboutit" malaise came over the family and we remembered:

Hey! This is our vacation!! Where's the fun?

And then the fun began...

Second night of the stage reading of "The Incident", an original play written by Blu Wilson. Close up our faces look dirty but when the lights come up on a stage all that dirt melts into wrinkles and mothballs. The characters we were playing were in their late 70's and we did our best to fit that look. Nicole as "Clarissa", me as "Sam", and Roz (Ray-Ray) Sears as "Janet" took old and crotchety to a new level.

Going live in 3...2...1...

Tomorrow we will be sending out the mass message to let our friends/family/etc. know that we're here and blogging our lives. There have been a lot of changes happening in our little family in a small amount of time and it's going to be fun to share the new direction that we're headed with everyone.

The biggest change has been pulling our daughters from public school and enrolling them in K12, which has been affectionately nicknamed "School-At-Home" which works quite well for us. The enrollment went surprisingly smooth (so far...) and we even have their class lists for next year. Something not offered in our local public school is a language elective, which has always been a complaint of mine. K12 offers a language course and the girls were able to choose from Spanish, French, German or Latin. Robin was also able to choose Mandarin, but chose German. Ginger chose Latin. As we already have the full set of Latin-American Spanish Rosetta Stone, I think they picked well. Choosing different languages from each other means they can still learn from the other's lessons. In essence, we're all learning German and Latin.

We're excited, as a family, to get started with this new chapter. New doors are opening for us all and the future looks bright.

The Difficult Quadripeds

                                                                           Mr. Mugsy

                                                                Biscotti (A.K.A. Sketti)

                                                         Sister Mary Colombia Dark Roast

Meet the Difficults

This is the humble blog of the Difficult Family: Kyle, Nicole, Robin and Ginger Difficult. We're not likely to follow the herd and aren't opposed to blazing our own trail... and probably having a s'more or two in the flaming carnage.