The family room - Phase:almostdonepraiseallah

Happy houseiversary to us!!!!
I can't believe we have been in this house for a whole year. Looking at the progress one has made via photograph is tres important for the DIYer's morale. So let's take a gander at our back room, shall we?

Complete with delicious wood paneling, almond blinds and ceiling, and a sick carpet (hiding even sicker green tile).

Annnnnnnd some progress (because we aren't to the "after" stage yet):

We painted the wood paneling, put in new, white blinds, ripped up the carpet, ripped out a closet, ripped up the subfloor where the tile now sits, reinforced the floors joists, laid down new subfloor, installed backerboard and tile, and painted the ceiling. The carpet was laid this morning.

Mmmmmm. Delicious textures.

Well crap. You turned too far to the left. Bahahaha. We still have work to do on the old closet (obviously) but we are excited to create our own little mudroom.

Stay tuned for more exciting "before and progress" snapshots because we are so far away from "before and after" right now that it'll make me cry to think about it.

Fathering

Feeling so loved. I have an amazing father who makes me feel all melty and loved and a husband who makes our daughter feel the same way. This life of ours is a good one.

When life gives you lemons, make pie

We were supposed to have our carpet installed two days ago but I am still staring at gross, green tile every time I look in my back room. To keep my rage and sadness at bay, I decided to embrace all things happy today. So I bought Ava a little backyard pool and some gummy worms. Best $10.99 I ever spent. Who needs a nap when you have a pool, or lunch when you have gummy worms, says she as she squeals with excitement. And she has only taken off her "soups" (swimming suit) once today. I think my neighbors are used to her indecent exposures by now though. So? Blow up pools and gummy worms. Keepin' me happy.

Also:

This movie coming out soon (because I am I huuuuuuuuge nerd)

This post about modesty. I agree with 99% of it:
THAT WORD

The fact that my eustachian tubes seem to fiiiiinally be draining - my hearing is at 75% (which is better than the 25% it was at a week ago):

Consequently, the meds that are helping my ears get better also cause drowsiness. If a drug says it may cause drowsiness, it will definitely make me drowsy but I haven't been able to give into the drug monster this week because of the furious back-room-tile-laying-in-time-for-the-carpet-installation extravaganza. But today? Today I will nap.

 Annnnd finally, Father's Day is on Sunday. So I get to hear my little Primary kids sing in Sacrament meeting and celebrate my sweet husband with a delicious dinner of Thai Chicken and yummy yummy yummy lemon pie for dessert.

picture and recipe found at www.meatwave.com

Tile and Carpet - the stuff DREAMS ARE MADE OF

Can we talk about how excited I am getting? Good. In the next week this will all be tiled:

And this home decor abomination will have awesome carpet on top of it. Gray, patterned carpet. (Also, side rant: NOTHING good happened in the 60s and 70s in home decor and design. If HGTV had been around then, it would have been thuper lame. Just. I mean, how was this ever a good idea?)

We are coming up on a year of owning this house. We have made a lot of progress but nothing is quite "finished" yet, which isn't a source of frustration and doesn't cause DIY lethargy AT ALLLL (psh, it is TOTALLY a source of frustration and DEFINITELY causes DIY lethargy. And DIY lethargy is like, totally hard to overcome). BUT. We are doing our best. You can only spend so many weekends of home improving in a row before you start to not care about the outcome - and not caring is dangerous because then you enter Craptasticland. Craptasticland is a sorrowful place filled with wasted money and marital arguments. It is hard to feel real happiness there and I would advise that the best way to stay away from that forsaken place is to do nothing. All weekend. Just read books and watch movies and play at the beach and sleep and eat. Oh, you don't have a beach? (sucker) Theeeeeen go to the park, I guess. Heh heh heh. Another way to stay out of Craptasticland is to take 2 months to finish a project that could be done in a week, which is what we're doing right now. But once that tiling is down two men will come and install our carpet for us. AND IT WILL BE GLORIOUS. I keep thinking about the process and it makes me kind of giddy: two men will enter our ugly back room and a little while later they will leave the backroom and it will look 10,000 times better and I won't have to lift a finger. Sigh. What are you guys DIYing right now? And how gross, on a scale of 1 to 10, is that singular, cheese covered macaroni on my disgustingly dirty and unattractive floor next to my feet?? A 10, non? YOU'RE WELCOME!

Summertime has been kicked off. Officially.

We went to Ohio for Memorial Day weekend. Danny and I got to go to a wedding for a good friend of mine from high school while Ava played with cousins and "gampa". It was good to see old friends and dance saucily with my husband. It was kind of weird though - dancing with good friends from high school with not a care in the world totally took me back and it was suddenly so strange that I was a mom. Total Twilight Zone moment. I mentioned it to one of my friends and she laughed and said, "it's still weird for me that you're a mom too!"

C'est la vie.

Ava played so hard while we were there and it took her a good 2 days to recover when we got home. Is it just me or is that how fun family time should be? She didn't want to miss a second.

The "baby wee" - dude. pushing a kid in a swing is like, SO HARD, when it's 90 degrees outside with 95% humidity.

Listen to me now and hear me later.

Ganging up on Aunt Shannon (she will kill me for posting these pictures on the internets. heh heh.)

Aunt Shannon is so mean. Poor E.

Snuggling by the homemade root beer. Nice work, Fasha.

Watching Little Mermaid

I love this picture. Wish it wasn't so blurry. Uncles are so fun.

I can't decide whether or not Ty is photobombing this one. Methinks kind of.

The mommy chip diaries

Listen. I realize that I am not the neurotic parent (about most things) when at home in my cozy nest. But when in public, my mommy chip is activated and it is code red. In public, I have cat-like reflexes and eyes like an owl. I see everything (pretend I just turned my head all the way around). My eyes bore deep into your soul and I can tell whether you are friend or foe to my tiny human. I can tell if you are admiring or creepy. In short: in public, I am Jason Bourne turned Secret Service and Ava is POTUS.

I was talking to a salesperson in the paint section of Lowe's yesterday about how the paint+primer in one does not really work and she was telling me that when painting on plaster walls bla bla bla bla bla. Now, my subconscious wasn't being rude, it was just that the strange man grabbing my child's arm sounded an alarm in my head and I could hear nothing else.

Ava insisted that I pushed around one of those HUGE carts that looks like a car and has a steering wheel and whatnot so tiny humans can pretend that they are running the show (sidenote: the tiny humans TOTALLY RUN THE SHOW but we can't let them know that). Anyhoodle, as I was talking to the paint lady, Ava decided to readjust herself. I know people get really jumpy when kids pull shenanigans in shopping carts but Ava wasn't even standing up. She was just wiggling around in the cart. I was maybe 3 inches away from her and I had my hands ready to spring into action if need be.

So you can imagine my surprise when Ava started wiggling and a strange man walking by grabbed her arm and just stood there. I looked at him questioningly (let's be honest....it was more of a "why the crap are you touching my kid?" look) and he said, "I didn't want her to fall." Now, I have had people try to save Ava from the cement floor of a warehouse store before (she loves shopping cart gymnastics, always has, especially when I am trying to put something heavy into the cart). I was always very grateful for those people who could see I was overwhelmed with all the construction supplies and the wiggly 18 month old. But. Ava is 2 1/2 now, very strong, and very agile, and she wasn't even close to danger. NO ONE around us felt the need to grab her, including me, HER MOTHER, because she was still sitting in the cart on her bum. And really? The guy totally creeped me out but then he grabbed my kid for no reason and that increased his creepiness by a power of 1000.

So I just grabbed her and said, "oh" and he walked away. The most annoying part of the whole interaction though was the saleslady that just stared at me like none of it had happened. I said, "I'm sorry, can you repeat what you said? It's hard for me to listen when strange men are touching my child." She just stood there. Staring at me. Finally, after I prompted her, she finished her thought about paint rollers and plaster walls.

Lessons to be learned from all of this?
1) Never let your kid talk you into the car shopping cart. That thing has the turning radius of a limobus.
2) Mommy chips are not to be messed with and neither is my kid SO TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF HER AND BACK AWAY BEFORE I CUT YOU WITH THIS PUTTY KNIFE.
3) That paint saleslady was really a robot, incapable of appropriate social reaction and emotion. *beep beep. you will always have to do two coats of paint on plaster walls. beep beep. oil is my blood.*