Painting and Carpet

When we moved into our house nearly 6 years ago, the carpet upstairs was already worn out, and we didn't care for the yellowy beige color that was on all the walls and most of the ceilings. After we finished our basement, our desire to repaint and get new carpet grew and grew until finally, in March, we were able to do something about it. Originally, we were going to hire someone to paint the entire upstairs, but when we had to replace our furnace, we could only have them do the main room and entry with the vaulted ceilings and the kitchen (because going around the cabinets sounded awful). We started with the four rooms that had little to no furniture: the mudroom, the hall, the laundry room, and my bathroom. It was glorious to see white up on the ceilings. 

 After I did those four ceilings, I started on the walls. My kids love to help paint, and I'm crazy so I let them.

 As I watched Rachel make a huge mess of the mudroom and put way too much paint on her wall, I started questioning my judgement. I don't know any other moms who let their 4-year-olds help paint. But, then I looked at Michael's wall, and it looked amazing. He did so much of the wall painting in the mudroom while I just worked on edges. I guess when you start your kids young, by the time they're seven, they're pretty good helpers in the painting department.

 I seriously couldn't have finished the mudroom as quickly without him.

 After the first 4 rooms were finished, we started on the bedrooms. Since we were also going to be getting carpet, we moved everything out of the bedrooms and put it in the main room, which started to look like a bad episode of Hoarders.

 We ripped up the old carpet so we could access the baseboards better and got to work. Special thanks to Lea who came and helped us with wall paint. on our last painting day. We were pretty tired by then and loved the added strength.

 We gave Michael a side project of painting his Lego desk. He did a good job, but he's seven, ran out of steam, so I finished it for him.

We finished painting on a Saturday, March 11, and on Monday, March 13, they brought our carpet. It took two days to get it all down, so on Monday night, we were able to add a scripture to the bottom of the piece going down the hall.

 Whenever we walk down the hall, we remember what's below our feet.

 Since we basically had to move back into these rooms, we decided to do a little rearranging. We took down the queen bed that was in Gabe's room and moved it downstairs to the guestroom. We put Rachel in a twin bed in with Gabe, which was a little scary, but they've done pretty well together.

 We moved the full size bed that was downstairs in the guestroom up to Michael's room. He's pretty excited that he gets his own room.

 A welcome week and a half later, it was time for painting again. We moved our furniture into the center of the living room,

 And the painter came and finished the job.

It was so awesome! I went to Orem to take care of some car stuff, walked over to the mall, did a little shopping, bought a new washer (since our other one died on us), and had lunch with my kids all while my house got painted. I felt like such an amazing multi-tasker!

We LOVE our "new" upstairs. It's the same color as downstairs and the carpet is really similar as well. You'll have to come check it out!

February

For much of February, we all kind of felt like this:

 We were finally able to get this painting and put it up above our mantle:

 It's my favorite painting, and I just love seeing it there.

Gabe started his laundry training in February:

 Here he is "helping" put clothes into the dryer.

 We enjoyed some nice snuggle time, watching a movie together. Probably Harry Potter, since Michael was reading them.

 On Sunday, February 12, Rachel came home from church, threw a fit about something--I can't remember what--and went off to her room wailing and crying. I didn't hear anything from her for a while. Brian asked where Rachel was, and I realized that I'd probably find her like this:

Which I obviously did. Poor tired girl.  

 Gabe discovered that he liked cars in February:

 Rachel watched me write in a card for Brian for Valentine's Day, so she decided that she wanted to make a Valentine for Brian as well. I wrote out the words she wanted to write in it, and she worked carefully to make it for him.

 Meanwhile, Gabe enjoyed his Valentine's candy and card from Grandma and Grandpa:

 As did Michael.

 My Valentine's Day haul:

 And what would Valentine's Day at our house without pink, heart-shaped pancakes?

 Michael being a waiter. Or was it a butler?

 Here's Rachel's card to Brian. Melts our hearts.

 Poor Poor Gabe woke up on the 15th with pink eye. It was quite awful and sad looking. I canceled three of my piano lessons to take him into the doctor. This was the beginning of the plague at our house.

 Gabe, in his typical happy way, continued to enjoy life and chocolate despite his eye.

 Until I cut him off from his chocolate:

 And life goes on. We ate dinner all of the nights in February, because we like dinner:

 We bathed regularly:

 Came up with new ways to hold down a balloon. Michael discovered that another balloon will do the trick. I feel like there can be an analogy here.

 Michael made this awesome scene with the lite brite.

 And we decided to work on organizing our garage. It looked like this to start with:

 We first made this lumber rack. And by we I mean mostly Brian.

 Brian made good progress over President's Day weekend, before catching the plague. Meanwhile, we continued to bath regularly.

I decided that I had enough of my long hair and hacked off a good 15 or so inches. Michael and Rachel took a good long look and said that they liked it better longer. Brian came up with a princess that I looked like--Rapunzel post haircut. Here Rachel and I are modeling our Rapunzel looks (you can kind of see the flowers tucked into her braid).

 Rachel's class had a field trip to the post office, which I think is more fascinating for the adults than the kids. It really is quite amazing how it all works.

 Michael had an art gawk at his school, so I took the kids to go check it out. Here's some of his art:

 Clearly he's a brooding artist type:

 Brian stayed home because he had the plague.  Everyone but Michael caught the cold from h#%% this year. It was terrible. It hit Brian and I really hard. I got it and had it for a few days, and then it started to feel better. I worked on things around the house, I took Michael to church. And then, after I got home from church, it hit me hard again, which wasn't a very nice thing to do. I had to cancel two weeks of lessons because I just couldn't get better. Finally, our friend Brian came over to help Brian give me a blessing. Then, Brian scheduled doctor appointments for Rachel, me, and himself. Because this is what kept happening at our house:

The whole time at the doctor, I thought, he's not going to be able to do anything. It's just a cold. We're wasting valuable sleeping time. But then the doctor said that I probably had a sinus infection since symptoms got better before taking a turn for the worse. He sent me home with a long prescription list:

 I started feeling better, but I had a lingering cough for weeks and other unpleasantness, but at least I finally got back to functioning again. Because life keeps happening, even when you're sick:

 Michael kept our house going while Brian and I were recovering. He even built a snowman:

 Meanwhile, inside the house, Rachel worked on recovering from her ear infection:

 And Michael continued to be well:

 Towards the end of February or beginning of March, I got pink eye too. Brian also caught it at some point. We survived and we hope to never catch that awful cold again!