Wednesday, October 29, 2008

House Remodel Day 5

We have accomplished a lot in the past 5 days. I say "we" meaning mostly Drew & Karol with my help most mornings & Craig's when he can get away from work. I am on official Kid Duty so I can't be there that often, but it is coming along really well. Not as fast as Drew or I would like, but I don't think we can get warp speed going. This is my superfabulous yellow kitchen. I think it looks awesome with the cabinets & the tile we will be putting in. Drew & I are in discussion for how far into the house the yellow is going to go. This actually doesn't show the yellow right in the picture, but so far, it is the only color that actually looks like I expected it to!
Mackenzie's future room with all of the stuff from the moldy bathroom in it.
Mackenzie was dying to paint, so I let her paint the lower half of her closet. She thought it was awesome fun.
She is like the energizer worker, she keeps going and going. She has pulled tons of staples out of the floors, painted, wiped off tile & put it in the sun to dry & is always asking how she can help. I hope this helpful attitude continues!
This is the bathroom I refer to as the Formerly Moldy Bathroom. Super-Floor Man came and fixed it yesterday. He has super powers to take it from the freaky scary black mold it had to looking like this. I have great respect for Super-Floor Man. Plus Super-Floor Man charged us $750 to replace the floor which was way better than the $2000 we thought it might cost.
We had the carpets cleaned on the stairs and downstairs to make sure we weren't going to have to replace it. It looks like it cleaned up just fine & we got rid of the pet odor.

Drew taking a break from cutting the backer board for the tile & chatting with Karol while they discuss just how much yellow should be allowed in the house.
A quick peek at some of the lovely furniture arrangements we have going on. Everyone keeps their stove in the middle of the floor next to the kitchen island in the living room, right?














Fancy Pumpkins

We branched out this year from our usual homemade face pumpkins to the fancy pumpkins. The girls thought it was sooooooo cool. I can see that our days of plain old eyes/nose/mouth pumpkins are over. Katie's pumpkin. She carved a moon in front and stars in back.
Mackenzie's pumpkin. She got to carve the long straight lines (which there aren't very many of on an owl!)
Kennedy chose the skull and crossbones. Her and Grandma S worked on it together. Grandma S is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy better at this than I am. I broke the carving knife/chisel thingy. Oh well.
Katie tried hard to contain her joy. Mackenzie & Kennedy were tickled pink. Or actually orange, I guess.




Drew's birthday

For Drew's birthday this year we put an extra 10 candles on his cake! The girls helped him count them as he took them off the cake so we could be sure he realized that. For his super special present this year, he got the moldy bathroom to stress about. It was great. (NOT) But we thought maybe we could signal Mars with the flame shining brightly on his birthday bonfire cake.


Saturday, October 25, 2008

Demolition Day One

Today was day one of demolition. Nikki- I totally get KMN today!!!!! We painted all the basement ceilings white. Painted 2 closets white. Primed & painted the ceiling & walls of the playroom, painted the exercise room, ripped up all the carpet in the upstairs bedrooms & living room, pulled up the linoleum in the kitchen & one of the bathrooms (where we got a very NASTY surprise as you can see in one of the pics below) got the wood in the house so it can start to acclimate, took out the island in the kitchen. The sad part is, this is just the beginning!!!! But it will all be worth it, right??????


Um, yeah. EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! Black mold under the linoleum in the bathroom. We have to take out the whole subfloor & possibly the tub. Not a total surprise, but much worse than we were hoping for.











Mackenzie our hard worker pulling up staples in the floor. She is always willing to pitch in & lend a hand!





















Yes Nikki. I did paint. I painted ALOT! But only one ceiling, because they totally sucked. This red wall behind me & ceiling above me are what we had to prime & paint white in the playroom. The 2 side walls we painted a purple color (Karol says it looks like chocolate, but it is a mauvish color) We painted it purple because Mackenzie wanted a purple room but it clashes with all her stuff so we put purple in the playroom for her.







Children's Museum

The kids had a fall break for UEA so we met Mindy at the Children's Museum in Salt Lake. Kennedy, Mackenzie & Hannah had so much fun together. Katie tolerated as only a 12 year old can & Hyrum slept thru most of it!


























































































Katie's 1st Willowcreek Concert

Katie had her first concert at her new school this week. Drew & I were starting to get worried she wasn't going to be in it! She was in 2 numbers near the very end. Plus, she wasn't very happy with her teacher because he kind of sprung it on them. By the way, we have a concert tonight, I'll give you the music for one of them while we set up..... Yeah, she was happy!
Look close in this picture. She is next to the tall guy in the back row. You can see her from the nose up!




Monday, October 20, 2008

Soon to be Home-ogenized!

Okay, so my title probably doesn't make sense to anyone but me, but who cares! We are closing on our house tomorrow morning!!!!! We hope, hope, hope, hope, hope. With our luck we will probably be hit by an out of control van full of out of work circus people, but the plan is that we close at 9 am. And it's the house we have been trying to get for 2 months now. With all of this junk with the stock market, the housing market, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac it has been pretty much impossible to get approved for a loan, but it FINALLY went through. So we should be tearing carpet out tomorrow morning. WOO HOOOOOOO! Yeay us! I will keep everyone posted!

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Bean Museum

I went on Kennedy's field trip to the Bean Museum this week. I am a field trip queen now. We had a group of 6 and we had a great time wandering around the museum. We even got to see some live animals. We know Grandma K is going to totally love this picture of Ringo the Python!



This is Otis the Turtle.

This is Colonel Mustard the lizard (I think it was a lizard)



This is a really weird antelope that we thought was cool.
This is a butterfly made up of butterflies.