Don's Birthday

Well, here's what it looked like on Don's birthday. Though only in the 50's you can see that the sky was cloudless and the sun was shining. It couldn't have been more perfect for me!

Dad has been sick for this whole new year and I have felt so badly for him.

He has been taking antibiotics now for 4 days and we are noticing that he is getting more energy but the cough is just awful and keeps him up all night.

He has been going downstairs to "sleep". I put that in quotes because he is only getting an hour or two each night. One night he doubled the dosage of cough medicine and actually did sleep for about 3 hours straight.

Even though he is sick he is determined to get this house on the market and though he can only work for a short time he almost has the bathroom floor tiled.


The first night after he worked all day he put down about 10 tiles. Except for feeling ill I think that he was enjoying himself.

We worried about using the larger tiles in such a small space but it really looks pretty.

Because he wasn't able to get all of the tiles done under the toilet before he ran out of energy it was necessary to buy another wax ring. I hated for him to have to reinstall the toilet just for one day but he said that it was unsafe to have the sewer gases able to come into the house.

So we carried the toilet out a second time the next evening after work. Dad was cutting tile in the little backyard under the patio light.




I think that the most difficult part of laying the tile was getting the container of Thinset opened. My fingers are just worthless and I was of little help with this whole project. But I was able to help move the toilet!

You can see in this photograph that we decided to use only a 1/8 inch grout line. I thought that it would be so much easier to keep clean.

There weren't too many difficult cuts to make except around the door frame. Dad has a tool that made that pretty easy too.

I love having tile and wish that we had made this change a long time ago.




There are just a few things that need to be done before this bathroom is finally completed.

The crown molding is primed and ready to paint. I have been waiting for warmer, dryer weather for that project. Then Neal can get the corners cut and we can install that. It shouldn't take too long. Don says that it is a "piece of cake". I hope so.

We picked up the grout and will get that done some evening this week.

Because the grout line is so small I don't see how we can possibly make any mistakes.

I will finish painting the wainscot and he will cut the quarter round moulding for the perimeter of the room. I'll paint that and finally it will be done. On to the next project.


Monday was Don's birthday. He and Gaylynne asked if we'd watch the kids while they went to a movie and dinner.

We were delighted!

We had fried chicken and salad for dinner followed by a chaser of "What else does Grandma have in her pantry?"

Let's see... a bowl of Cheerios, Popcorn, Tuxedo Cookies, Milk, Soda, Tomato Soup, bread, crackers and oh yeah, the crab that Don and Gaylynne brought home to share with them.


For entertainment there was the computer, The Good Night Show (24 hours a day cartoons), catch, toy car races, the musical jump rope, Courtney did her homework, Madagascar, and a tea party.