Kitchen Remodel

After more than 20 years of living with a kitchen that was perfectly fine but one that we didn't love, we decided to bite the bullet and do a full renovation. Although we generally kept the same layout, we worked with a designer regarding colors, some design work and selection of materials. Our old kitchen was demolished on June 5th and our new kitchen was finally completed on August 2nd - more than eight weeks later. We went 5 1/2 long weeks without a stove, but cooked at home (grill and crock pot) all but three nights, which we all considered a huge success. We definitely got sick of eating the same foods over and over, that's for sure. But the kitchen was definitely worth the wait! We spend a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking, baking and hanging out, so it is nice to have something that is so sleek and easy to work in. 

Out with the old....

One of our friends is the CFO at the company we worked with - he snapped this photo of our Taj Mahal counters being cut the day before they were installed.

We love our faucet and the fact that our sink is molded into the countertop - no seam!

The day we got our stove back was a big one - it made the rest of the process a bit easier to deal with.

They finished while we were at the beach on vacation.

Beginning the massive process of unpacking our new dishes and putting everything away.

We still need window treatment, but here is the finished product.

Instagram Takeover

One of the big things in college sports right now is social media takeover - a player on the team "takes over" the Instagram account of a particular sport for a day, taking people through a day in their life.  Here is Emily's takeover of the Clarkson Women's Soccer Instagram account earlier this week: 

New Mexico - Odds and Ends

Some odds and ends from our family time in New Mexico:

It was 43 degrees when we left Hartford and 96 degrees when we landed in Albuquerque. 

I love O'Hare.

Really wish they had these on the east coast.

Lee and I stayed a really cool, historic hotel in downtown Albuquerque.

White Sands National Park

New Mexico has two national parks and with both of them about the same distance from Albuquerque, we had to choose only one to visit while we were there. White Sands won, of course! We got up super early on Sunday morning and made the three hour drive there, making it early enough to beat most of the crowds and so that it was not too hot to enjoy. We hiked a few different trails and took in all the beauty, checking another national park off of our list.

6am start, armed with Starbucks.