After talking with a friend, Kaza has decided to leave the financial profession and become a FIREFIGHTER!

You can all thank Aubrey for my career change from Finance into the exciting fast paced world of firefighting! I was at a firehouse in southern Minnesota and Aubrey needed another person to operate the water hose. I was thinking that I was not properly trained for such a job but I thought, "Hey, I'll give it a shot. What's that worst that could happen?" We did however document the first time I suited up in the fireman ...excuse me...fire women's gear!

Here I am suiting up to go out on my first job as a firefighter!

Now that I finally have the pants on I can work at getting the jacket on...but don't worry according to the other firefighters I still have time. No Hurry!

Now I'm finally ready to go help the other firefighters. All I have to do is stand back from the other firefighters who are aiming the hose and pull the hose back and out of their way in case they need to back up in a hurry. The hose was a lot heavier than I expected and all the water that splashed back in your face is incredible. In the end, the team of firefighters that I was working with was able to get the job done!

I even have pictures of the actual stuff that the other firefighters were aiming for.......

Seriously. Did you actually think I was helping put out a real fire?? What firefighter in their right mind would let me help put out a fire?! :)

This is what actually happened.

A friend of mine was having a festival in honor of veterans and part of the entertainment was watching the water barrel fights with local groups of firefighters participating. I had a great time watching firefighters from the surrounding area battle it out for the coveted "gold" water barrel trophy. At the end, they asked if any females wanted to try. They were going to end up being short 2 people, so Aubrey ended up recruiting me to participate. As you can see from the photo I really had no idea what I was doing but it was still so much fun! And it would have been something that I would have never tried, so I thank Aubrey for coming to find me!

Try something you have never done before! You may be surprised at what you accomplish!

Ever since I moved into my grandmother's house there has been this lone chair and for some reason I never got rid of it. I rarely used the chair until I started to learn how to play piano. The chair also never really fit with the decor of the rest of the house. Frenchie wanted to get rid of it but for some reason we never did.


Well today we finally did something about that chair. We redid the chair! I searched the house for what ever paint we had left from other miscellaneous projects and found what looked like white paint from redoing the laundry room. After I opened the paint I noticed it was the light blue that we used instead of white. This turned out to be an excellent error! I also had some fabric laying around from the last time I had a grand craft idea, never started, and then forgot about. Since this was my first time remodeling a chair, I checked the Internet to make sure I was not getting myself into something so complicated that I was not going to be able to finish, but the instructions sounded reasonable.


After painting the chair , which took two coats it was time to tackle the cushion. This is when I ran into the only problem with the chair. Frenchie had a staple gun...but...it was from Canada and the size staples that the gun requires are not available in the U.S. So thankfully Frenchie's parents bought another staple gun complete with staples for the gun. Thank you again guys! Frenchie helped me staple the new fabric on to the cushion which took a matter of 5 minutes at the most! This was awesome since I expected this project to be long with many complications but it went together perfectly!

Here is the newly refurbished chair!

VOILA!

Today was quite the day. Not only did we redo this chair but Frenchie and his Dad put in the new entry door, Frenchie cleaned the carpets witha rented Rugdoctor and I made 5 loaves of zucchini bread and zucchini mini muffins for our church fundraiser tomorrow!

We also have pictures of the old entry door and the new one but I will let Frenchie tell you about that one and show you the pictures!

What do we need kids for? We have Petit and Blanche!

Everyone has different apects in their lives that transforms their house into a home.

For us it is our two Malteses - Petit and Blanche! Both add so much energy to our home and we love spending every minute with them. Although they may not feel the same way when the dog clothes comes out of the closet. While shopping one day, Kaza fell in love with a Prince jacket for Petit and a black "formal" dress for Blanche.



Here is Blanche letting us take a picture of her. Usually she turns her head as if to say " sorry no pictures today!"




From the looks of Petit's face, I don't think he appreciated getting all dressed up for us and then on top of that having to pose for the camera. Lucky for him and Blanche we only kept their "formal " outfits on long enough to take the pictures and then it was back to the way they felt most comfortable...with nothing on but the collars.



We love Petit and Blanche just as if they are our own kids. And no we are not crazy, we understand that they have hair from head to toe, four legs and can't talk back to us (which isn't a bad thing sometimes)...But we love them just the same. For us Petit and Blanche have helped make our house a home and for that we thank them and give them the most comfortable, fun, and loving home any animal could ever ask for.

Having a sister is like having a best friend you can't get rid of. You know whatever you do, they'll still be there.

Since Frenchie had the night off and Kaza'a sister was in town for the night we decided to head out for a night on the town! After stopping at Wings for a drink, Frenchie decided that he was hungry and that it was time to go get some food. With the County Fair being right next door, the idea of food became more and more tempting...but after thinking about how much a piece of pizza and a drink would cost for one person at the fair we all decided to run across to Godfathers for a medium pizza for all three of us to share for the same price as one person eating at the fair. With the pizza joint being a block away we decided to try and save even more money and walk.. Great idea... had it not been pouring rain outside! We had quite the laugh trying to dry off using the only hand dryer in the girls bathroom at the restaurant.

After the pizza, and contemplating how to get back to the car in the pouring rain we decided to give dad a call and let him know that we needed a ride. "Daddy? Can you come give us a ride?" (our parents live 20 minutes away) "We need a ride from Godfather's back to Wings." Dad must have thought we were completely drunk! When truth being we seriously each only had one drink but we were so full from eating that we were to lazy to walk back. We knew we didn't need a ride but it was fun to make Dad believe that we did. So far every time we bring the incident up Dad gets that sceptical look on his face. We believe he still thinks we were drunk that night!

But no matter what Dad believes, us three know what really happened and thank goodness we were not drunk so we can enjoy those great memories made that night! Thank you to Kaza's sister for a great night! We have so much fun when you come to visit!