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My handy Man-y Okay for anyone who knows Justin...he is NOT handy...but with a little encouragement and some help from a very capable neighbor you would be surprised what you can accomplish. We had a wine fridge when we moved in...it was holding water bottles. But, when we had our pipes remodeled it stopped working (in 2010), recently we decided to get rid of the broken wine fridge in place of some shelving. The timing had everything to do with the kitchen remodel, but when I talked to Freddy, he said, "You can EASILY do that yourselves. Don't pay someone to do something that simple." So, I went about convincing Justin that we were capable. Turns out the wine fridge worked all along, but the power to the plug was turned off at the outlet!!! You are kidding me. Whatever. It's not worth the electricity to power a fridge (that only goes down to 50 degrees anyway) to cool off water. Lowes was our first stop to figure out what we wanted, then we measured and a week later we were back at Lowes buying the wood and having it cut to the right sizes (thanks to Freddy who told us that Lowes would cut the wood for us!) Back home, we sanded and decided to try our hand at putting in shelving without making our house look really holey. Luckily, Brian wasn't busy (our neighbor across the street), so for the price of a delicious chocolate dessert, he came over and helped Justin install the shelving. Justin did all the work with Brian teaching him how and supporting him with help. I've NEVER seen Justin smile and laugh while doing a home improvement project. It was a joy. The shelves look awesome!
Justin also put a shelf into the game closet and we put some boards into another cupboard in order to allow for 2 rows of DVDs instead of a ton of wasted space. Justin and I are feeling pretty good about our recent venture. Thanks Justy for your hard work and for believing we could do it! And, thanks to Freddy for all his good, money-saving advice.
Posted by Ashley Katz at 8:00 PM No comments: Labels: do it yourself, home improvement, shelves, smiling

Dating my best friend Someone once told me that you have to spend money on your relationship now, or spend it later on a divorce. This may be a little extreme, but I definitely make an effort to balance my life. I have several friends that put everything they have into their kids and let their marriage suffer. Others pour everything into their job and let their kids suffer. I am lucky enough to be a stay-at-home mom at this point in my life and I constantly make an effort to work on my marriage. It is very important to me that my husband is happy as well as my kids. I did "the husband project" recently...the main point is to appreciate your husband actively and through several different strategies without looking for or asking for acknowledgement or praise. It's nice because it forces you to focus on the positive. It went well- for the most part. I tried to get him a piece of chicken from KFC as a special treat and he flipped out that he was too fat to be eating that and I should throw it away...had it been a different day he would have been thrilled...what are you going to do? Back to the point...I love my husband and definitely enjoy his company. I remember before we had kids, we spent so much quality time together. It's much harder with two little kids, but I do my best to find and/or make time. Saturday night we got together with Mick and Marisol to have a throwback date- mini golfing. Mick and Justin have always enjoyed mini golf. We had a good time- Marisol was a crack up. She either got a hole-in-one or took at least 8 swings. Mick wiped the floor with us. Afterwards we headed to an Indian restaurant to hang out and chat. We went to Flames for dessert afterwards. Nothing beats a good banana split with good friends. It's nice to be dating my best friend. :) (In the picture Mick and Justin are making sure that Sol and I didn't hit the ball into the water. It's hard to believe with what Justin is wearing that it was like 60 degrees and windy).
Posted by Ashley Katz at 7:48 PM No comments: Labels: date, food, friends, fun, golf

Zach in the Bay area Zach came to visit. We have been friends since before 9th grade started. He was in my summer school algebra enrichment class. Jennifer Kazules thought he was cute and wanted to write him a note, but she thought it would be awkward if she did, so she asked me to write him a note too. I decided to go along with it and made a life-long friend. Recently, Zach was relocated to the Bay Area for his job. He plans to stay for at least a year. He has decided to live in San Francisco. I'm just excited to get to spend time with him. We met up at a coffee shop in January and yesterday he came over and spent time with the kids and then played Ticket to Ride with Justin and I. It really has been fun catching up with him. He is such a laid back, friendly guy.
Posted by Ashley Katz at 8:39 AM No comments: Labels: friends, fun, Zach


Andrea's baby shower and my boys I flew down to Ontario and stayed with Andrea and Josh from Wed. evening to Saturday evening in order to throw Andrea a baby shower. She is my best friend and I wanted her to know that she is special and appreciated. Dayna Roueiheb hosted and was in charge of most of the decorations and food. I was in charge of games, prizes, and goody bags as well as making the cake. The first night was fun. Dayna, Nick, Josh and I hung out and decorated onsies and scrapbook pages. I made it until 1:30am and then fell right to sleep Josh is working nights so he decided to do his best to stay up all night. The next day I pretty much slept and read, the same with the day after. On Friday morning Andrea's mom, Jane, flew in to town. I spent most of the day prepping for the baby shower. Saturday morning we did our final prep work and the baby shower. The theme was woodland creatures. I made a cupcake cake. It went really well, most people enjoyed the games- baby food tasting, diaper poo guessing, decorating onsies and scrapbook pages, what's on the tray and guess what the baby animals are called. Andrea was simply glowing. Everyone had a good time and we enjoyed celebrating Andrea's new little baby boy. I'm glad I was able to do something special for my best friend. She sent me a text saying that it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her. Meanwhile, while I was in Redlands, the boys were in San Jose with their daddy. Grammy and Pops came up and BBQ'd hamburgers with them. They also ventured to the Children's Discovery Museum via Light Rail for the very first time. They enjoyed their time with their dad. I missed them a lot while I was away.
Posted by Ashley Katz at 9:25 AM No comments: Labels: Andrea, baby, party, shower


Freddy comes up for a day We were really excited to find out that Freddy had to fly up and work in Sunnyvale for the day. Yay, lucky for us. He got into the airport at 4:30pm Tuesday so we had him for the evening...dinner and game time. We got to play 7 Wonders (one of Justin's new games) and that was fun, but we definitely stayed up too late for me. The next morning the boys and I dropped Freddy off at work at 10am and headed to the grocery store and had a lunch picnic at the park. In the afternoon we decided it would be fun to let the boys teach me how to use the light rail to go the Children's Discovery Museum (our membership ends 3/2/13, so we are going as much as we can before then). It was really great and I could tell they really enjoyed being the ones that could teach me. We played at the new nature exhibit for a while and Freddy and Justin met us and we walked over to Peggy Sue's 50s diner for dinner. I really enjoyed the atmosphere there and the boys liked sharing milk shakes. We then headed to the airport to see Freddy off. His flight was delayed, as usual. Either way, we were really lucky to get that fun little spontaneous visit in- we always enjoy time with Freddy!
Posted by Ashley Katz at 9:39 AM No comments: Labels: CDM, Freddy, fun, hamburgers


Happy Ollie Oliven really can be the sweetest little guy around. I took him to the park today (after carting him on a couple of errands to Michaels and Bye Bye Baby-though he did get to play on toys there). At the park I was swinging him on the swing and singing to him. I said, "Ollie are you a happy boy." He replied, "I am happy because I'm with my mommy." I love how loving he is with me. :)
Posted by Ashley Katz at 2:21 PM No comments: Labels: Oliven, park, sweet

Subway, ice cream and lessons learned Justin is in Colorado for three days, so last night I asked the boys if they wanted to go to Mc Donalds (secretly hoping this is what they would pick, cause for some reason I really wanted one of their kid cheeseburgers, throwback to some fun dinners as a kid when they only cost 39 cents on Sundays). or Subway. I thought it would be good to give them a choice. Oliven turns to Vander and says to him, "It's better if we go to Subway because then we can choose some good green vegetables to put on the sandwich that will keep us healthy and make us strong." Oliven agreed, so I took us out for Subway. Vander had lettuce and cucumber on his turkey sandwich and Oliven had lettuce and pickles. After dinner I gave them a choice of a soft serve cone at Baskin Robbins or a cookie at Subway. They chose the cone. Oliven dabbed his tounge on the ice cream gently and said, "Brr, it's too cold. I'm going to wait until it warms up." 20 minutes later and many many dabs we ended up throwing most of Ollie's away, but they both really enjoyed themselves and thanked me profusely for letting them stay up late. It's all a matter of perception though, cause they went to bed right on time. :) (It was dark when we left Subway so Van figured it was pretty late). The other cool lesson of the night was that before we left the house I told the guys to get a sweater because it was going to get cold. They both said they didn't need one. I told them to remember what they had said. While out Vander says to me, "I'm kind of cold mommy, but I chose not to bring a sweater even though you said I should. Ollie too." Maybe next time they will listen. ;)
Posted by Ashley Katz at 2:11 PM No comments: Labels: boys, fun, ice cream

Foods to try Vander wanted to make a list of all the meats he has tried and the meats he still wants to try so we wrote a list up. It's pretty hilarious. He has cat and dog on the list of foods to try. What got him started was the idea that he had never tried goat. Then, the next day he decided that he would write a list of all the vegetables he has eaten. He wrote out: spinach, lettuce, zucchini. He then says to me, "That was a lot of letters, I need a break."
Posted by Ashley Katz at 2:00 PM No comments: Labels: fun, lists, Vander, writing
 Katz family life.