Stop the insanity!!!

Is it just me, or is this a lot of catalogues to get in the mail within a three day period? This is what was waiting for me in my mailbox when we returned from our 3-day Disneyland trip. I'm beginning to agree with Eric that Satan invented catalogues and that my life would be much more rewarding if I would just chuck them, but I'm not quite there yet.

Tooth Fairy misunderstanding

Wow - we don't know what is up with the Tooth Fairy these days, but she is really off her game! Annie lost a tooth three days ago and Annie still hadn't received anything for her tooth. We discussed it and decided that the Tooth Fairy is probably confused about which house Annie is sleeping in, and that maybe if we left a note on the door of the new house, it would clarify things for her.

Fortunately, it worked and Annie got 50 cents under her pillow this morning. Silly Tooth Fairy!!!

I totally know what I'm doing!

Since we had to paint all of the bedroom closets and baseboards, we figured it would be easier to just rent a paint sprayer from Home Depot. Eric had everything under control.


Umm, yeah. Everything's under control. The best part about using those paint sprayers is that you have to return them totally clean

But you probably shouldn't have stacked all of the carpet right in front of the only hose faucet in the back yard.

One staple (I mean step) at a time

So we FINALLY finished "refinishing" the hardwood floors, and they look much, much better than they did before (if I do say so myself!) They are by no means perfect, we learned the hard way that even though it's tempting, you should always, always go with the grain when using a belt sander!
I have to say though, I think the hardest part (physically) was staining the floor - all that crawling around on your hands and knees and trying not to stain yourself into a corner - so fun!

Once we were done with the hardwoods, we moved onto ripping out all of the carpet and pad on the main and upper floors. It's not really the carpet removal that's bad, it's all those pesky staples and all of the dust that gets really annoying.

On Friday night, we were working at the house and both feeling a little overwhelmed, when our awesome friends the Hagens showed up with their kids around 10pm or so at our doorstep to say hi. They were on their way home from something and wanted to see how it was going.

Their visit totally cheered us up, and after they left to go home and put the kids to bed, Eric and I were talking about how grateful we are for the awesome friends and family we have (my Dad was home babysitting our kids so we could work late) and how we wanted to be better friends and family members.

About 15 minutes later, Sean was back on at our house with his work clothes on asking where he should start working! Mind you, Sean just had DOUBLE knee surgery 3 weeks ago and had no business doing this type of work, but it was pointless trying to stop him. And of course, Sean wouldn't leave until Eric did - that's just the kind of guy he is. We want to be like him when we grow up!

Unfortuneatly, the guys didn't find out until after midnight (Sean texted his friend in construction) that there's actually a special tool that carpenters use to just scrap all of this stuff out of the floor. But I'm sure they still had fun crawling around and ripping them out with pliers one-by-one. Good times!

Oh, the drama . . .

I'm sorry, but this was just too funny to pass up. Annie's probably going to kill me for putting these on here, but it was too cute. The other day she came upstairs and was sad because she was feeling left out of a playdate. We talked for a minute and I told her to just think of something happy - like Disneyland - and go play something else.

She said "okay Mom" but then she started getting "a throat." Those of you who know Annie know that "a throat" means that some sobs are coming along with some crocodile tears and that you should prepare yourself for the hormones that are about to be unleashed. But this time Annie was determined to fight it, and was trying to keep the sobs down when she told me that now, in addition to her "throat" she had a "jiggling tummy" and she wasn't sure if she could make it stop. I told her I'd take a picture to send to the doctor to see if he knew what we should do.

Making lemonade

Here are a few pictures of us getting started on our "little project" over the weekend. Once again, I think we may have bitten off more than we can chew - trying to refinish the hardwood floors, tear out all the old carpet, repaint the entire house including the garage floor all before we leave for Disneyland next Thursday (yeah, that's right, I said Thursday - SEPTEMBER 11th!!! Flying into LAX - pretty brave, huh? Or stupid????)