Cali's Growing Up. NOVA Rockets. SBO Election Posters. A Mess. MC Hammer's Pants.

Yesterday I got home from work and the house was full and busy.

I set myself up on the counter making dinner on the electric griddle (grilled tuna sandwiches with cheese and tomato).

Cali pulls up to the counter and tells me that, at school, she's been assigned to be the buddy of a little boy in our neighborhood.  The little brother of Tayler's best friend to be more exact, and Cali thinks that's pretty cool.  I look up in confusion.  I know the buddy system they have at school.  Big kids are assigned a younger kid to do crafts and projects with.  My confusion is when did my baby girl become big enough to be the buddy instead of the little kid?

She's still so little in my mind and in that moment I realize that I need to be thinking of her as becoming an older kid. It dawned on me that our family is facing a new transition of not just having toddlers, or not just having any preschoolers, but we're on the verge of not having any little kids anymore either.

The Man hauls in with sacks from Hobby Lobby and Tayler and Sean in tow and they start unloading their craft supplies onto the counter.

I pull various items of plates and food items out form under them so I can keep working.

They're making rockets for NOVA.

West is cutting and sanding in the garage, Tayler and Sean are designing and hot gluing on the counter, while I try to finish dinner up.

Cali set herself up with the extra wood pieces and made a rocket too.

As they're using the hot glue guns to put their rockets together we laugh about the time when Casidee was three years old and I made an entire mummy costume with nothing but an old sheet and a hot glue gun.  I had her put on a sweatshirt so I could test how loose/tight the ripped sheet needed to be so she could still move.  I wrapped the sheet around her arm and picked up the glue gun to glue it in place on the sweatshirt before taking it off of her when she panics and starts crying, "don't shoot me!"  I realized that all she knew was that I was holding a glue gun to her arm, and mom was about to pull the trigger on that gun.

It ended up well, I didn't even burn her, and she had a new fascination for crafts.

Brynn set herself up with posterboards and the makings for SBO election posters.

She's running for 6th grade President.

She passed the first round with her application and essay to be allowed to run.  Now it's on to hanging just two posters up in the cafeteria for her peers to see.

I finished grilling sandwiches and stationed myself at the laptop on the counter to print out the pictures she'd need.  Two of herself, and two of her school's logo with the mascot.

She came up with two ideas for what we hope are catchy posters that will help her name stick in people's minds.

Her mascot ends up declaring "Brynn for the Win!" on the second poster.

There's a mess in our TV room as it's under construction again.  This time we're putting in ceiling lights and surround sound in.

It turned out great, The Man does some pretty incredible work.

And a crowded feeling to the office as all the TV room furniture has been pushed into it, along with The Man's desk which is now pushed in a corner.

Last night I snuggled up on the couch with Jayme and Casidee and introduced them to the wonders that are MC Hammer (and his pants) and Milli Vanilli.  We watched a few videos together on my phone, squished in the corner of the couch together, and it occurred to me that as busy as we are, nights like this one show me we're doing just fine in taking care of our family and giving our kids the help and attention they need.  There's always room for improvement, but I think we're doing okay.


After a fumbled attempt at some of the verses and rhymes between The Man and me, the girls were interested in the actual thing.

And the pants, oh the pants.  Cas kept asking, "but why?"

I've been asking that question for over 20 years.(But just barely over 20).

House Renovation. So Far. Before and After Pictures.

Once upon a time we had a waterfall spout from our kitchen ceiling.

Try after try we could not find the leaky culprit so in a five minute decision we took hammers to the bathroom that sits above the kitchen and gutted the whole thing down to studs and subflooring.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Or history in the making since we're not actually done with the whole domino effect yet.

From the bathroom redid the kitchen ceiling which used to have a drop down ceiling and florecent lights.

Then we turned a walk in closet next to the bathroom into a second laundry.

We were already re-doing the plumbing, we might as well, right?

While we're on the subject of tearing up our house, let's work on the main floor.  It needs a facelift.

And though we are far from done with the changes that will be made to our house, I present to you, our house and what we've done so far.

Ignore the fact that we haven't actually decorated yet.

This is just showing fundamental changes.

We'll get to the frilly fun stuff soon.

I hope.

I apologize in advance that a lot of these pictures where taken with my phone and I'm no professional photog so they're not edited or anything for better quality.

Bathroom Before:

We'd already started pulling up carpet, I'm just glad I had the presence of mind to take some before pictures before we really tore into it.

During pictures can be found here here here.

Bathroom after.

Ignore the fact that we don't have mirrors above the sink yet.

 The Man made the room bigger and rearranged the layout.

We now have a private toilet room so the mirrors and sinks can be used while someone needs a little privacy.  Kind of a big deal when you have half a dozen kids.

Quite the difference, huh.

The office before:

We'd already moved the furniture to begin but I'm still glad I got these pictures because the difference blows my mind.

Office during here here

Office so far (since we haven't decorated):

TV Room before:

This room always felt so dark, even with the blinds open and the lights on.

Once again I took pictures after furniture had been moved and we were getting ready to tear into it.

TV Room so far:

(Like the beach towel that we're using as a rug in front of the door to catch wet feet?)

Dining Room before:

Before paint and new floor:

After paint but still before new floor:

Dining Room so far:

It's still a work in progress.

And we still have plans to end our love affair with those pink counter tops.

But for now it's time to pause the tearing into the nitty gritty of the house and start decorating and finishing the rooms we've done.

I'm so in love with this house.

Ode To My Color Blind Man

The Man tells me this morning, "we better get our stuff for Thanksgiving this week."

I started to laugh.  "You think?"

Thanksgiving is on Thursday and we've been invited to spend it with West's family at his aunt and uncle's house.

West realized what he said and laughed.  "I meant today.  We better get our Thanksgiving stuff today."

"We better get if before the weekend, that's for sure.  Friday won't do us any good."

I've been left feeling contemplative at the beginning of this week.  With a holiday that naturally makes you turn to thoughts of what you're grateful for it was already on my mind.  But after the weekend that I had, gratitude seems to be doubly felt by me today.  

Over the weekend I attended a funeral for the spouse of one of my colleagues.  She lost her husband to cancer and it left me feeling tender as I left her home on Saturday.   To compound that I also received knowledge that a life long family friend drowned in the Great Salt Lake in a boating accident late Saturday night, leaving behind his young wife, 4 year old daughter, and 11 month old son.  My co-worker's spouse was expected as it was evident that he was losing his battle with cancer, he was advanced in age and had lived a long life.  I didn't know him personally, but I see the effects that it's having on my friend.  The drowning broke my heart.  It was unexpected and he still had a full life ahead of him.

I felt raw yesterday as I thought of these two ladies whose husbands have passed on.  Expected or not, long life lived together, or a long life planned together, it's a loss that I'm sure I can't comprehend.  

Nor do I want to.

I feel it's almost cliche to say it but today, this week, and for the rest of my life, I am so thankful for my husband, The Man, West.  

He makes my dreams come true.  

We live life to its fullest.

He loves me unconditionally and leaves me no doubt that he does.

I know trust and security.

I have worth because he sees it in me.

Over the weekend, as we repainted and laid down a lot of the new wood flooring, we talked about how to decorate the TV Room.  The Man has an opinion on how he wants the house to look and so I don't have free reign in the decoration process.  Which I'm okay with, I'm glad we can work on it together and have our house turn into a home as a combination of both of our efforts to make it a beautiful, comfortable place.  

I asked The Man what accent color did he want to do in the TV Room?  I was thinking maybe coral or chartreuse?

So babe, just for you.

I found it.

{source}

Just to be more precise, according to this, I was talking about green or orange.

Thank you for loving me.  I would be so lost without you.

It's Where They Hid the Dead Body

Sometimes when you take on a remodel project in your house, it ends up being ten times bigger than you had anticipated.

Actually, this would be always in our case.

Maybe if we weren't such anal perfectionists.

This particular project started out innocent enough. "How about for Christmas we give each other new wood flooring?"

Brilliant.

So we saved up some money and bought a car load of flooring.

I started painting while the old carpet was in place.

Drip on the floor?  Oh well.

It was awesome.

The Man hates painting so that falls on to me.  The only bad thing about that is The Man gets antsy and wants to do something.  So he started pulling up the old carpet.

Here's where the project expands on us.

From here we should have just been able to lay down the squishy stuff (very technical term) that goes under the wood floor and then start laying down the wood.

But the more carpet The Man pulled up, the more he realized how much squeaking and creaking the carpet muffled, and now that the carpet was gone our floor was making all sorts of noises.

Needles to say, The Man decided that he just could not live with that.

I don't know if it's the perfectionist in him or the framer in him.

Maybe it's the perfectionist framer.

So the easy job became bigger as the man began to remove the sub-flooring.

This is how I was helping the whole process.

By removing the sub-flooring, it gets rid of  the squeaking and creaking.

It also needs to be replaced now. With a new firmly attached sub-flooring.  The creaking happens when the sub-flooring shifts.  West found that drilling screws into the sub-flooring wasn't helping to keep it in place so he decided to remove it all and start from scratch so he can make sure it's secure and not moving.

Another thing about remodeling an old house is that you never know what you're going to find when you start ripping things apart.

Like when we found the hole in our bathroom that was simply covered by the siding:

That, apparently wasn't the only surprise waiting for us.

You can see in this picture how our entryway had white tile in it:

When west broke the white tile he found that it was laying directly over other tile.

Which of itself isn't unusual, I guess it's okay to lay one layer of tile on top of another (this explains why we had no room to put a rug by our door).

But when he started to pull up that under layer of tile he found...

West started joking that this is were the dead body was hidden.

What it means in reality is that the floor in front of our front door is not anywhere near being level with the floor of the rest of the house.  They just filled it in with a ton of mortar until it was level with the rest of it.

The framer in West is screaming profanities at whoever built our house.

So now we (and by we I mean West) get to chip out all of that mortar, and then build the floor up the right way, you know, with wood, so it's the same level as the rest of the flooring.

Seriously.

Who knew that a simple tearing out the carpet and laying down wood slats would turn into such an ordeal?

So that's what we're working on this weekend.

And here's a beautiful video to start your weekend off.

Before Pictures: Office and TV Room

The plan for today was to post the vlog I did with my dad.

But I had issues getting it to upload so I'll have to play around with it again tonight and get it up tomorrow.

Sad news, I know.

I guess I'll ramble on about my Veteran's Day then.  It was one of those days when I found myself all alone in my house.  Those occasions are rare with a family as big as ours.  But The Man still had work and The Circus still had school so it was just little ol' government employee me staying home for the day.

It was so nice.

I love my family.  Truly.  But sometimes it's nice to be given a day when I can pretend that my time is actually my own and I can eat a chocolate orange without sharing (or hiding while I eat it), I can listen to whatever music I want, I can watch whatever TV show on Netflix that I want, and I can go anywhere I want to whenever I want to.

I don't have to tell anyone where I'm going or go over a list of things that need to be done or not done by anyone while I'm gone.  I don't have to feel guilty if someone doesn't want to listen to my music or watch my show.

And I don't have to share or hide my chocolate.

Did you know that there is practically no one at the grocery store at 11:00 on a Monday morning?

I had a pretty decent list of things I wanted to accomplish on my day off, and I didn't get it all done.  I never feel like I have enough hours in my days off.

But what I did start doing is painting.  We're doing more remodeling in our house.  Our bathroom is pretty much done.  We just need mirrors and then I'll post the before and after pictures to shock and amaze you.  Our kitchen and dining room have been tweaked with paint and new light fixtures (here), leaving us with a Barbie kitchen.

Now it's time do redo the flooring on the main level of the house.  This is what The Man and I have chosen to give each other for Christmas.  Wood floors.  And since we're getting new floors, we may as well repaint the other rooms on that level while we have the old carpet in so we don't have to care about drips, right?

So I spent some time at Home Depot stocking up on paint, and getting some color swatches.

And then I went home and took some "before" pictures, even though we'd already moved the furniture.
By this time The Man was home to help out.
And home to debate with me on how we should decorate and what colors we should use.  Sometimes it's frustrating when we can't agree, but when we finally hit a plan that we both like, it's exciting and it looks so good.

So we're going to turn our office from this:

To something along these lines:

{Picture source here, idea found on pinterest here}

He's coming around to liking my idea of gray walls :)  Especially now that we're getting rid of the nasty horrible terrible navy blue carpet and getting wood floors.  He's even going to do giant white baseboards and white crown molding for me.

I can't wait!

We won't mention that we agreed on this plan of action after I'd painted two walls taupe. 

I don't mind repainting them, especially if it means repainting them gray.

And we're going to turn our TV room from this:

To giving it the same color scheme we used in the dining room:

This is not our dining room.  After pictures will come after we do our floor.  pic source here

With lighter tan walls and an accent chocolate brown wall.  Hopefully coupling that with new flooring will lighten up the feel of our TV room.  It feels so dark all of the time.

Merry Christmas to us!  Even if it is a month in advance, we want to get it done so we can enjoy it when Christmas really does roll around.