Monday, January 19, 2009

A Tale of Two Fireplaces, or The Loft Gets a Facelift

The plans for the three-day weekend were to finally build the bookshelves in the loft. During the first steps of purging and rearranging on Saturday, Adam casually brings up the suggestion that we put an electric fireplace along the sloped wall - which of course we will need first, to build the shelves around. Recognizing this for the clear stall tactic that it was, I still fell for it, so we went fireplace shopping. Unfortunately, while we were shopping for the electric fireplace, Quin put a log into the wood-burning fireplace downstairs when Mom was chasing the other kids in a different room. Evidently she placed it nicely, but must have touched the top of the fireplace with her hand in the process. The poor thing has blisters on three of her fingers, but she must have the pain tolerance of a Navy Seal, because according to Mom she never even made a sound. She just walked up to her, showed Mom her hand, and said "hurts."
She had broken one blister rubbing it before Adam and I got home, but we treated it with burn cream and dressed it for the night. She had some pain on Sunday, and is fine today. But we didn't get much more done on Saturday night.
Sunday we planned to start building the shelves. But it turns out the router won't lock on the table, which means we can't piece the boards together the way we want to. So after storing all of this lovely red oak in our garage for three months, we end up taking it back to Lowe's and shopping for pre-fabbed shelves. Rough work we can do; finish carpenters we are not!
So the pre-fabbed road we go, and the remainder of Sunday and all day Monday I live with a screwdriver in my hands. We're pretty happy with the results; I can't wait to work from home on Wednesday!


Next weekend, we start hauling up boxes of books from the basement to fill the shelves. . .

Monday, January 12, 2009

Birthday Girls

Ari asked us to delay her family birthday so she could hang out with her friends on the real day. She specifically requested no cake and no singing. She did open up her gifts before midnight, though.

Heath and Carrie helped make Mom's cake, and all the Littles helped eat the leftover icing.



Mom unsuccessfully tries to avoid the camera.

Friday, January 9, 2009

CAT BATH!!!!

OK, this is what I'm hearing in my head (to the tune of "Batman"):

nuh-nuh nuh-nuh nuh-nuh nuh-nuh

nuh-nuh nuh-nuh nuh-nuh nuh-nuh

CAT BATH!

Let's just say that when you keep two kittens in a crate overnight, at some point something bad is going to happen. Not "run from the room screaming" bad, but "Honey, I think the kittens need a bath" bad. Unfortunately, I didn't think to grab the camera until the end of Boo's bath, so there are many more pictures of Otis. We'll pay for that in therapy later, I'm sure.
Adam was very careful to keep their heads out of the water, so they looked like somebody took cat heads and stuck them on the bodies of drowned rats.

There are no pictures of us blow-drying them after. That was really an "all hands on deck" situation.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Christmas Day



Heath and Carrie waiting patiently for everyone else to gather together.





Stockings always have oranges and toothbrushes.





Quin tries to reach something deep inside her stocking.





Heath opens his packages near Grandma. There weren't many this year because of the trip, but none of the kids seemed to mind that at all.





Ari opens her package that Carrie got for her at Secret Santa - best friend bracelets.





Ari puts one of the bracelets on Carrie.





Carrie was so proud of all of the gifts she picked out. By a strange coincidence, most of our gifts included candy. . .which she was kind enough to help us eat. Adam's were all chocolate, so the girls got all of his!





Quin helps to pass out Carrie's gifts.





Carrie's family gift to us all





All of the kids love the Cool School computer from Grandma Yvonne and Grandpa.





Hey, it's Christmas. Heath and Carrie eat the last piece of chocolate cake for breakfast.





Carrie plays the Cool School dressed as Hannah Montana.

Heath's fruit clock really works.