Staying on top of things...

Not in real life; only on my blog. :-) I thought I should write a little something tonight so I don't fall behind and write a WHOPPER of a post to catch up again.

You're welcome. ;-)

Yesterday morning we STILL hadn't heard back from Home Depot. They don't want our business and I'm tired of trying to force it upon them. ;-) So I made a phone call to the carpet outlet in northern Birmingham that Sister Washburn had told us about. The very nice, very informative and knowledgeable lady who answered the phone had some very promising sounding possibilities. After several questions she described a carpet that sounded very much like what we're looking for and it was within our price range. So all of our plans for the day got tossed aside and we all piled into the fan--Charlie too--for a drive up north. (We've seen more and more nasty little creepy crawlies the past week or two so we took Charlie with us so he wouldn't die when James set off TONS of bug bombs all over the house.) Indeed, we liked the carpet, we liked the price, we liked the people, we liked the terms--and they actually LET US BUY IT; something Home Depot had serious qualms with, apparently. ;-) Soooooo, the new carpet plan (as if...) is that our carpet dude will go pick up the carpet on Tuesday morning, bring it down to our house, and get to work then. WOW!!! It's sooooo exciting to be to this point! Even though we are still not ready for it. Ha!

The rest of my afternoon was spent in preparation for Band Meeting that night. I decided to give the kids the temperament test. :-) I always loved studying stuff like that and it's helped me sooooo much to understand other people and appreciate their quirks instead of being annoyed at them. Well... sometimes. HA! I'm only kidding, of course. :-) Anyway, we had a very small group last night--only four of the kids could make it--but we had a really good time. I gave them all the 80 question test and graded them and told them what they were and what it meant, then shared several verses about not rejecting the way God made us (like the vessel complaining to the potter, "Why did you make me like this?!"), but rather realizing that our differences and personalities are a specially picked GIFT from God to each of us (fearfully and wonderfully made--curiously wrought in the mind of God before time began). We had cookies and milk and a good time in discussion. Afterward we played Quelf, the game that I had bought earlier in the day in case we had time and wanted to play a game. Jacob and Philip had told me how much fun it was so I thought we'd give it a try. It is CRAZY and the kids seemed to have a blast. It would take too long to describe and I would have to say it's not for every crowd, but for young people (or wacked out ladies at a Ladies' Retreat?!) it's perfect. And our little group will be hollering "PIZZA PARTY!!!" every time a doorbell or phone rings for a very long time. :-)

When I got home just after 10:00 last night James was playing I Buy with the kids. Some day we'll get back to normal bedtimes for them (when they get bedrooms again?), but I'm so glad they had a chance to sit and play a game with their Dad. :-) I cleaned up the kitchen and put coat #2 of poly on the countertops. I seem to be on an every-other-night routine with that.

Today James and I spent the morning framing in the box around the ceiling in the kitchen (I won't try to describe it--I'll just post pictures some day) and he also finished out some trim work and installed quarter-round around the edges of the wood floor. It looks sooooo good! We went to Lowes in search of a few things and came home with nothing (when does that ever happen?!) and then I finally got busy doing some painting in the foyer. One thing can be said for these dark, beautiful colors I like to paint with... they are not very forgiving! I LOVE the blue, but we've got some issues with getting a good, clean coat in there. Not sure whether to try once more or just call it quits and hang lots of decor in there and hope nobody notices. Ha! I'm running out of time to make that decision because the carpet comes Tuesday--if I'm painting blue any more I've got to do it before then!

This evening--completely on a whim--I went to our bedroom and started wallpapering. Whoa! "I'm just as surprised as you are!" There are still so many odds and ends to be done around here and I don't know how that one suddenly ended up in the mix, but I was able to get about half of it done tonight. And I so thoroughly enjoyed it. I really like wallpapering. It's just a nice, clean job that is instantly rewarding. I love how it's looking in there. It's going to be so nice. :-)

The highlight of the day today is when the kids sold us tickets to "The Katie & Joe Skating Show" in the basement. :-) The basement is the perfect place to roller skate and the kids have been making good use of it this week. Katie picked up some o-o-o-o-o-old skates at the thrift store a few days ago and she's loving them. The boys use her old pink skates. :-) Anyway, Katie and Joe did lots of amazing tricks and we laughed a lot. Sam sat at the other end of the room behind the makeshift concession stand he had put together--he sold refreshments to us during the show. It was so great. The kids said they'll put on a show of some kind for us every Saturday. I hope they do--it was by far the best part of the day. :-)