So our project as of late has been bringing the basement back to livable from its condition of “completly trashed” and I am happy to report that we have gotten about 90% of the finished side of the basement done and squared away!

Guy Town is once again functional and now has a new entertainment center (the old living room one)

My office, which is next to Guy Town, has been cleared and you can now actually see the wood of the desk! AMAZING!

Rose’s desk has also been cleaned and you can see the top of it… we also managed to clean up the file folders and organize all out greeting/birthday/thank you cards that we had in multiple sections of files..

I’ll have to take a picture and show you all once it’s 100% finished.

In other news, Jenna had her first low grade fever on Thursday night… luckily the 24 Hour Call-A-Nurse line from the Cleveland Clinic rules and it helped to calm down two slightly freaked out new parents… Jenna is back to normal now and she continues to amaze us every day with the things she can do and all that she has learned.

Just a quick couple of updates to let you know what is going on…

My folks came for a visit last week and much fun was had by all… Jenna really enjoyed playing with Nana and Grandad! Hopefully I’ll put some pictures up this week from their visit.

While they were here I spent six hours and Strange Love studios laying drum tracks for Emmet’s upcoming CD. Then they got a chance to see Emmet perform live at the Painesville Party in the Park. It was a really good show, and I for one enjoy playing outdoors every now and then, even thought it was 100% humidity.

Work is going well, I’m still at Key Bank for the moment, my contract ends with them on August 8th so I’l have to wait and see if they make me a permanent offer… I’ll keep you posted.

Other then that not much else is going on, Jenna turned 5 months old yesterday… she is doing great! She’s really taken to eating solid foods and has gotten the hang of being spoonfed. I think we are going to try bananas this week.

Jenna Rose is just growing/learning/changing daily and impressing (and often shocking) us with her new skills:
*Found her feet–Over 4th of July weekend, she found her feet and decided they make an excellent addition to the “items I chew” collection.
*A hair trim–Grandma wanted a lock of hair for the family Bible so until the official first hair cut, we trimmed off the “tail” at the nape of her neck(which had been driving me nuts) and gave it to Grandma for safe keeping.
*Rolled over!–Jenna was laying on her playmat and finally decided to see what would happen when she pushed herself over her shoulder. She was kinda stunned as she adjusted to the new prospective and then gave a big “I’m proud of me!” smile and was rewarded with applause from Mom (and phone applause from Dad at work).
*Waking up on stomach–Yes, the sleep wedges are history because now we sleep however and where ever we want in the crib!
*Rice cereal–Jenna has been intently watching us eat for weeks to the point that I can’t eat or drink when nursing because it’s such a distraction to her. So we decided to breakout the high chair and give cereal a try. She liked the experience and even swallowed some (getting your tongue to work is tricky!!) but the bib definately “ate” its fair share. The subsequent feedings have improved. Thanks to Tara and Brad for the tips!

In other news, we’ve settled on KinderCare as Jenna’s day care. I can’t believe the time is here and I know this will be more emotional for me than her. She’ll start the beginning of August so that’ll give us several weeks to adjust to a new schedule before I return to school…..I’m going to be a mess, I can already tell!

Congratuations to Jerry and Debbie on the birth of Baby Jake!! Can’t wait to meet him!

And yeahh!!!! to Brad and Tara on buying a VUE….you’ll love it!!!

Hope everyone is having a great summer!!!

We had a fabulously fun weekend in Columbus for a gathering of the entire Murray clan!

Don and Elizabeth traveled from Missouri to introduce us to Don’s fiance Cecila and for all of them to meet Miss Jenna. Cecilia jumped right in and confirmed with Mom that she’s fine becoming an official Murray Outlaw with Celeste and Mark. Elizabeth has grown so much and I could see her babysitting skills coming into play when she was with Jenna. I remember holding Elizabeth as a baby and now she’s holding my baby…life is a lovely circle.

Since Don and the girls were staying at Mom and Dad’s, we stayed with Peter, Celeste, Erin, and Baby Murray at their house. They’re almost done with painting and fixing up things to their liking. Jenna gave Baby Murray’s room a spin and gave it a “stamp of approval” by sleeping through the night each night.

Although Jenna missed the fireworks last night (past her bedtime and too loud), Mark took some excellent shots for the scrapbook so go to the Photo Gallery to check them out and all the pictures from the weekend.

On the final note, we think Jenna is getting more accustomed to her car seat. The ride down was 3.5 hours (previous record was 4.5 hours) with the last 30 minutes being the worse as she refused to sit and screamed to let us know about it. However, the ride home was only 3 hours in which she slept for the last 1.5 hour. Yeah!!! So National Convention in Louisville, KY at the end of the month…..we might be going….time will tell.

Happy Independence Day to all!