Adam and Heather Hayes

My sister Jaleesa is the haircutting and now Mary Kay beauty queen of the world.  She is helping me get over my beauty aversion.  She convinced me to cut and frost my hair before I had Clara, which I have absolutely loved.  Then she practiced her new Mary Kay party pitch on me and my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and actually convinced me to care about how my skin ages and... wear foundation! I am actually wearing foundation on days that I go out in public.  I never thought I'd see the day.

Well she came over again this week and showed Erith, Tric and I how to put on... eyeshaddow, eyeliner, blush, and lipstick! Am I turning into a mom of girls or what?  Next thing you know, she'll be teaching me to frenchbraid and other girly hairdo's. 

If I had a million dollars, I'd pay J twice what the JCPenney salon is paying her and have her come over every morning and beautify all 5 of us girls every morning. But alas, I don't, so I guess I'll have to grit my teeth and do some kind of simple hairdo on all 5 heads all 7 days a week, all my life long... Who knows, maybe one of these days I'll actually like hair!

Erith idolizes  J, Santa got her a Barbie head to practice hair on for Christmas.  (When we weren't watching Vi took some sissors and cut two chunks of hair off that night) She is so proud of the... unique hairdo's she comes up with.  I might just get lucky, and have Erith take over the beautifying when she's old enough!  

I've got to admit, I have got some cute, cute little girls.

Well the other day the bottom step of our front deck broke. It has been threatening to break for the past...umm..... 4 years, so I knew this day was coming. Heather and I have a bad habit of not being able to "just fix things". We normally say something like this:

1. You know, while we are at it, we should replace all of the stairs,
   
2. and if we are going to replace all of the stairs, why don't we extend the stairs to be the full length of the deck,
   
3. and since the new stairs are going to need stained, why don't we sand and stain the whole deck while we are at it.

So our simple fix a bottom step turns into quite a large project. However, we are always happy with the results, it just takes longer than a quick fix (just look at our bathroom project to see a similar pattern of just tearing out the carpet to a complete master bathroom makeover.

I just finished sanding the whole deck today and we'll probably be doing the stain tomorrow. The above picture was taken when we finished installing the new stairs but before any sanding began.

We've also done some modifications to our blog. Hopefully pictures from now on should be expandable (horizontal pictures that is) by hovering over them and clicking if a magnifying glass comes up. Let me know if you have any problems with the new feature. :)