Matt Story

Last night Matt read The Little Engine That Could to Steve. This morning he came wandering out of his room, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, with the book under his arm.

"You've got your book." I pointed out, because I'm so good at stating the obvious.

"yeah." says Matt. "I can read it now." And he proved it to me after breakfast. He read with inflection and gave different voices to the different engines. Then this afternoon he read it to a friend who came over to play.

He can read and he's good at it.

It's nice when kids get older

I've been sick for about a week now. Not horribly sick, but sick. Saturday was the hardest. I have had to stay busy because of the holiday and because of the things I wanted to get done for Christmas. I've also had stuff to do on the house. I haven't had a lot of time to rest and get better. Saturday evening it hit me and I had no energy left to cook dinner.

At 6:45, Steve stopped as he was walking through the family room with plumbing product in hand on his way too the bathroom. "are you going to make dinner?" I could see that there was no way he could do it. He had his dad over helping him install the toilet and sink, so no time for a break.

My brain is good at getting me out of stuff when I don't want to do it, so it came up with a good idea.

"Sarah," I declared, "we're going to play Delicatessen. You're the cook."

I made a "menu" for Rilla with all the sandwich fixings in the house, the two kinds of chips, and the fruit and veggies we had around as well. Rilla happily took the menu and a pencil and began taking orders like a good little waitress. Sarah and Rilla put together the orders and I only had to get up when my roast beef and cheese on wheat (dill pickle chips and carrot sticks) was ready for me.

Yup, it's good when they are old enough to help.

PS: the old bathroom color was a very, very bright sky blue. So not a pale sky blue, but sky blue in the summer, blue with a touch of green to it. It was way too bright for a small room. The longer it was on the walls the more I hated it. The new color is so much calmer and more elegant.

Progress!

On the bathroom of course. I laid the tile last Saturday, we hung the door Friday, and we got it repainted yesterday morning. That afternoon, Steve and his dad installed the vanity, sink, and toilet. I love it! Everything looks so perfect.
The original paint I chose was just awful. I babysat for a friend on Wednesday and when her husband came over to pick up the kids, he offered to repaint the room for us with a better color. Seeing as how he's a professional house painter, we took him up on the offer. The new color is gorgeous. A medium slate blue and it fits the room perfectly. The blue gives it a calm elegant feel without being overwhelming (you know, like the original color. I hate paint chips.)
Here's a couple of photos:

yeah, small room and I don't have a lens wider than 28mm. anyway, you get the picture. The vanity is an ultra slim model with a sink that hangs over the edge. it gave us the passing room we needed to get back to the toilet. The mirror and vanity light are waiting to be hung on Monday along with the glass door for the shower, the towel and tp bars, and the moulding. Ok, so some of that will be done on Tuesday, if only to save my husband's sanity. But we should be completely done with the room by the middle of next week.

Here's a lovely close up of my pretty tile:

didn't I do a good job?

Caving To External Pressure

I bought a velour jog suit. Yeah, one of those knock off Juicy things, only mine doesn't have inappropriate comments across the behind. It's grey and I bought the jacket as well.

I used to roll my eyes at those silly velour sweats. I thought all those women were just following the latest trend in suburbia. Velour just went with soccer balls and minivans.

Ha! Those women just knew something I didn't know. Velour is comfy. Really, really comfy. It's like wearing pj's all day long only you don't get dirty looks from grandma's at the grocery store in velour.

You do however get rolled eyes from self righteous holdouts.

I can live with that.

Compromise

So we went to talk to a cabinet guy today. He came out and did a measure for us yesterday with all the plans ready for us to look at this morning. It looks like a nice kitchen. The problem is that we don't have a nice budget. What I would love is about $1500 more than the cheapest option, the option that's still $800 over budget. (Ok, the kitchen I would love would cost about $10,000 more, but I'd be happy with the much cheaper one.) We may go with that anyway, but it puts our timeline back quite a bit. We would have to wait until our tax return came in to do the kitchen.

So, it's all compromises. What do we give up for this? What is going to have to wait? How can we pinch pennies in other areas to make this happen? Are we even going to have the money to do the other bathroom?

The thing is, there is never enough money. That's life.

It's frustrating some days, though.

Look! It's finished!

I did it! I finished all the kids' stockings by Christmas. I'm pretty proud of myself. Now I just have to sew the stinkers together. Which will involve somehow managing the seam line so I don't over sew the embroidery or under sew too much and show too much fabric. With cording in the seam. Doesn't that just sound like fun?

anyway, here's the stocking my mom did for me:

cool huh? I still need to fill in the name on the top. I kept forgetting to give my mom the chart for the letters so she finally just told me I'd have to do it myself. oops.

And here is Libby's stocking:

Hers was actually the easiest of all. It went quickly, thank goodness.

Now I just need to make Steve's by next Christmas and I'll never have to cross stitch anything ever, ever, ever again. If my children want their kids and spouses stockings to match, I'll loan them the pattern book. ;)

Halloween Pictures

Aren't they cute? Libby's face totally cracks me up.

Update

We had a busy Halloween week. We ate plenty of doughnuts at Grandma Kaye's. We wore costumes. I took pictures. I jammed a piece of pumpkin skin under my big toe.

what? oh yeah. That story. So Monday night we decided to carve our pumpkins. We had a spare that I put on the floor. Libby took it upon herself to move it right behind me. I turned around and promptly stubbed my bare toe on it. I shook it off and moved on until it started to go numb. I looked down and it was bloody with this strange pulpy thing sticking out under the nail. The pumpkin skin had been shoved under the nail when I stubbed it. Steve was nice enough to pull it out for me with tweezers, although it felt the opposite of nice when he did it. the skin piece was an inch long. The only good thing about it was I didn't have to help paint the bathroom that night.

The bathroom is moving along slowly. I was supposed to spend this week tiling and we might get to that tomorrow. I've got a line on a wet saw though, that should help. I'm going to have Sarah help me snap chalk lines this afternoon so we are completely ready to start laying tile tomorrow morning. I'll post pictures when it's done.

I'll also post pics of the kids in costume as soon as I get them off the camera.