Baby Sophia

Sophia spent the night with us last night. She did really well. I didn't have to get up at all during the night. She cried a few times, but it wasn't anything I felt compelled to respond to and she went back to sleep. (Wish I could have done that with some of my kids.)

She is now napping on my chest as I type this. :) I took her to the law firm earlier and showed her off there. She was, of course, a big hit. Everyone was thrilled to see her and thought she was adorable. I told Danny (her dad) that I might just run away with her for real this time. She's so precious and sweet. Go to my second blog entry to revisit the sweet pictures of her. :)

Walton Feed Order

So Saturday was the delivery for the big Walton Feed order I was in charge of. This order included several stakes and was $28,000. I was a bit concerned about how it would go because it's the biggest order I've been in charge of. I did a multi-stake order two years ago, but it wasn't quite this big. I had many, many papers printed out and got the church parking lot set up just the way I wanted it a couple of hours before people were expected to arrive. I am happy to report that except for one Stake who made a bit of a mess of their order after I had verified what they did or didn't have, it all went smoothly.

Mike decided to get to the church a little after me with the kids. He wanted to go ahead and start unloading the truck (so we could get the trucker out that much earlier) and so we started unloading the 6 gallon buckets. There were about 245 buckets. Mike took each one off the truck and the kids and I sorted them into their stacks. When we got home, I added up the weight of all of those buckets and it was around 9,700 pounds. Wow. That's a lot of lifting for an hour. He has a couple of blisters on his foot and sore legs to go along with that heroic effort.

Magazine

I hadn't looked through yesterday's mail, so I picked it up to sort it. And what do I find? A magazine offering everything I could ever need to take care of a horse. Bridles, blankets, supplements, toys, food, riding clothes, dewormers, feeding buckets... you name it and I could buy it from this magazine. Maybe they heard we were talking about moving to Texas. :)

The Unexpected Bonus

So, I was on the phone with Joe the other day and he was telling me that the bathroom looked terrible. :) And he asked me if I was happy with it. And I told him how it makes me happy because every time I come up the stairs, I see the beautiful bathroom at the end of the hall. I wasn't expecting that. It's really nice. Here's a picture of what I see every time I come upstairs.


It's really nice to be able to admire the bathroom several times a day. :)

Also, this morning, I got up and looked in on the kids and this is what I saw:


Funny Cat. He's on the bed with Jacob. Notice Jacob's foot. He has his legs crossed while he's asleep. Mike says the kids get that from me. Two cuties.

Old Man - No Show

All the possibility for snow moved east and south. Oh well. It's just dreary and cold here today.

I had fully planned to spend the day doing nothing. I did that for the most part last night. I made the kid's Saturday chore lists this morning and then got hit by the "let's get this house clean" bug. :) Mike is about to take our two old toilets to the Habitat ReUse Center. I'm cleaning clutter everywhere I find it (which is everywhere) and the kids completed their chores which means that most floors are vacuumed and cleaned, and that dirty laundry is all gathered waiting to be done.

So, a good day around here. I do have plans to stop around 3pm so I can watch a movie that Mike rented for me: 3:10 to Yuma. It has two of my favorite actors: Christian Bale and Russell Crowe. That will be some eye candy. :)

Old Man Winter

We had some predictions for snow this past Thursday. Alas, no snow. Now they are predicting between 2 and 4 inches for us tomorrow. The kids are thrilled! It's also supposed to be COLD here for the next little bit. They say the wind chill on Sunday morning will be Zero! I think we may just stay home from church... of course, if there's snow, they may just cancel it anyway. I wouldn't complain. Zero! Yikes! Too bad all of our firewood is rotten junk that won't burn. :(

So, it appears that our weeks of 75 degrees may be over. Maybe now we'll get some real winter and the kids will get some much wished for snow. They'll have a blast if it does indeed snow.

I've sent Mike out for some necessities. Namely: Hot Chocolate. :) Can't have a good snowy day without some good hot chocolate. He's also picking up a movie from Blockbuster. You know, you've got to be ready when bad weather comes. Preparedness is important. :) Actually, he got some food and milk while he was out, too. We actually enjoy a good snow storm. Being forced to stay home for days on end. Nothing sounds better to us than that!

Hopefully we'll have some pictures up tomorrow night of the kids having much fun in the snow!

Hip-Hip-Hooray!

Okay. Here are the final pictures (click on them to see a larger version). I've gone through a bit of frustration with this project, so I'm really happy that it's done and that it looks great. If you were to come to my house and inspect it very closely, you'd see some issues, but hey, whatever. :) I ended up having to put four coats of paint on the wainscoting. That was a tad frustrating. And I ended up having to install the toilet twice because I forgot to screw down the flange that we unscrewed to get the old floor up. But, overall, the project went smoothly and took just under two weeks. Not too bad for my first tiling and major remodeling project. The only thing that remains is for the silicone to dry on the sink drain overnight tonight. Then we can screw the drain pipes to it and we'll have a fully functioning bathroom!!!!!!!!!!!

And here are the pictures:

Notice the nice mirror. Kristin suggested I go to Kirklands to find a mirror since I wasn't having any luck at Target, Pier 1, Lowe's, Home Depot... Thanks Kristin! I like this mirror alot!


The funny thing is that the inspiration for the whole bathroom came from this shower curtain. I bought this and immediately wanted to make the bathroom match it. Now that the bathroom is done, I'm not so sure I want to keep this shower curtain. But I doubt I'll be looking for a new one anytime soon.


Our lovely Toto Drake toilet. These are the best things! I am exhausted from this project, but I want to get my bathroom floor tiled just so I can put in a new toilet in my bathroom, too.


The new cabinet: It may have a short life. Mike noticed that it doesn't have an overflow drain. We'll see how it goes. And the little drawers beside the cabinet are for the kid's things. Each has their own drawer with their own toothpaste and toothbrush and any other bathroom supplies they need. The idea is to keep them off the counter and for everyone to be responsible for their own things. Hopefully it will keep the bathroom clutter to a minimum.


One last look at the nice tiling job. I'm really, really happy with it.

Almost Done

Little details remain... hooking up the water to the sink faucet and the toilet... putting up the mirror (which I haven't purchased yet), and putting up a few pictures above the towel hooks. And I think I'll get a cabinet to put over the toilet... that spot looks big and lonely. But I should make that decision after the mirror gets put up.

Remodeling Woes

It's hard to remodel at your own pace when you have to borrow all the tools from your neighbors. :) I was super ready to do some of the finishing touches on my bathroom on Thursday. And what do you know? My neighbor with the saw (Derrick) didn't come home that evening. Now I can only hope that he's home today. Also, Mike started the porch railing project last Saturday and has a few more cuts to make before he's finished up there. Hopefully Derrick will be around today.

And I've decided this is my last major project for at least a couple of weeks. I'm so behind on dishes and laundry, it's scary. The kids will get to do dishes this morning and hopefully I'll get a few loads of laundry done between coats of paint today.

I do have a few smaller projects that I need to take care of, so I'll focus on those for now. Painting trim and such. Not ripping a room apart. :) I think in a few weeks, I'll probably tile my bathroom. I won't rip everything out like I did in the kid's bathroom. Just the floors. The cabinets can stay. Although, I will probably put in new countertops and a new light fixture. But, that will be in a few weeks after I've caught up on housework and some rest. And again, I have to hope that my neighbor's tools are available. What a bum. (Me, not my neighbor.)

Bathroom Progress

The bathroom is coming along. Slower than I would have liked, but it's hard to get too much done during the weekdays. The grout got put in and is now nicely set. I'm in the middle of painting the walls and have the cabinet purchased. I'm hoping to use a neighbor's saw to cut the baseboards on Saturday. My hope is that I'll have it all done and pictures posted tomorrow night.

Bathroom!!!

Okay, so here are some pictures of the bathroom. I'll explain them as I go:

This is what it looked like after we got everything out... Toilet, floor, cabinet, baseboards...

This is the cement backer board. Notice the cut for the toilet flange... I felt cool. There are about 100 nails in those boards. I was pounding them in after midnight last night!


I missed with the hammer once. :( It still hurts.


This is the dry run with the tiles. Looks pretty good.


Here's me putting in the tile! Again, notice the flange cut. I have to give credit to my neighbor. He set me up with all his cool tools. Wet saw cutter, tile splitter, little grinding wheel, trowels, door jam cutter... everyone needs a neighbor like Dennis!


The corners could be tricky.



Here it is! I'm so proud. This has been on my to-do list for over two years. Like the little threshold? I thought it looked cute. Hopefully it isn't too weird looking. Now all that's left is the grout, walls, cabinet, mirror, lights, and toilet. You know... no big deal. :)

Bathroom Demolition

For a few years now, Mike and I have talked about ripping up the bathroom floor so that we could put tile down. But we've put it off like most of our home improvement projects. So, today, I decided was the day. I also decided that I was going to pull out the bathroom cabinet and replace that. With Mike and Reid's help, all of the linoleum is up and after a good bit of hard work, a little praying that screws wouldn't strip, and a fight with the jigsaw, the cabinet, counter top and sink are now gone, too. All that remains is the shower. Think that should come out, too? Don't think I haven't thought about it!

But, I'll be at least a little sensible. So the shower stays. Mike is out repairing the front porch railing that is rotten. Gotta love outdoor wood attached to your house!

So, it's off to Home Depot to ask about raising the toilet bowl attachment on the floor to accommodate the higher flooring.

I'll report back with some photos.

Old TV room - New Den!

So, when we got the Wii, we knew it would mean moving the TV out of our TV room (technically the dining room) because the room is fairly small (about 11x11). I have been needing to paint this room for a few years now, so moving the TV out gave me enough motivation to go ahead and get this room done. Here are some before pictures:





We've lived in this house for almost 8 years and I've never really done anything to this room. And it's the most used room in the house since it's been our TV room... that combination made for a lot of damage. I used an entire little tub of spackle fixing the dings and the not so small dings. I had to actually put a coat of primer on the wall in order to even see the dings because the white walls were so dirty, I couldn't tell what was going on. So, after much hard, hard work, here are the after photos (you can click on them to enlarge them... so as to more easily admire my handy work):






Complete with a peaceful sleeping kitty. :) And don't forget to notice the blinds. I got a major upper body workout putting those puppies in today. It was worth it! And the best thing is that there's nothing in this room to entice children into it. :) I was sitting in here today for a little while and no one ever came in to do anything. Very peaceful. I should always have a room like this in my house! I put in a new light fixture (see first photo) and even re-mounted our family photo (also first picture). My dad prints these out and the first one had faded quite a bit, so he sent me a new one and it now adorns our wall once again.

Now it's on to my other to-do lists. :)