Bike Season!

The kids rode their bikes to school this morning. You know what that means right? There is hardly any snow left and very few waterlogged sidewalks! They were so excited that I said yes when they asked, they didn't know what to do with themselves, lol. It was a mad rush to find their helmets and get them adjusted but they managed to get off to school in lots of time, only to arrive back home 5 minutes later because Beth's head was cold and she wanted a toque. A toque and a bike helmet...had to re-adjust the straps of course.

Chris happened to be at the school this morning and saw the girls arrive. He has been wanting to get the girls new bikes, and me being as cheap as I am, have been making him hold off. So what if Beth's bike used to be pink but is now so old it's pale white? Who cares that she has a banana seat older than me? She loves her bike. And Katie's bike, well who wouldn't love a bike that was made out of old parts from the dump? Seriously, we call it the dump bike. When our last renters left, one of the random pieces of junk they left behind was a bmx bike frame. I wanted dh to take it to the dump with the other junk, but he thought he could salvage it. While he was at the dump with the other junk, he found a rim that would fit the bike so he brought it home. It fit perfectly and the tire was even good, so he went back to the dump to search for more treasure. He found another rim and tire which also fit and the tire was also still good. A little WD40 on the old chain and the dump bike was good to go.

Apparently when they arrived in style on their old banana seat and dump bikes this morning (sporting the only helmets this town has ever seen, and jeans tucked into their rubber boots, never mind the toque under the helmet) dh was quite embarrassed, lol. He phoned me from the school to tell me the girls arrived on time and that they needed new bikes. We're moving this summer, to a town that is notorious for bikes being stolen. Can't we hang onto the banana and dump bikes for a while longer since they will most likely just have new bike stolen if we buy them?

Just wait til everyone sees Anna on her Super Bike (she named it herself). It's an old plastic one, with the handle you can push to help them along. And it only has one pedal, and that's a piece of wood that the last owners had put on. The one pedal thing doesn't seem to slow her down.

Old Videos

While going through my picture files I found some short video clips I had taken a while back when I had my nephews over for a couple nights. Enjoy!

Generation gap

Anna has just proven to me that she is growing up in a completely different world than I did. I'm sure we've all noticed that kids today have things very differently than we did as kids, for instance the first thing my kids do when they see a stuffed animal in the store is press its stomach or hand or foot to see if it talks. Or when you take a picture of a child they immediately run to see what the picture looks like on the other side of the camera, even if you are using a 35mm, and they don't understand why you would have such a weird camera without a screen to get your instant photo gratification.

So today's proof of a generation gap was the following:

Anna and Beth have been playing together very nicely this morning (both were home sick from school and preschool). They were imagining they were friends and were having a sleep over at each other's houses. They even asked the imaginary moms for permission. They were playing in their room with the door closed, but we can still hear the game. Well, Chris called Beth to tell her he is ready to glue gun this craft she brought home from school, and we hear Anna say to Beth "I'll pause the game". The door opens, out they come and Anna stops, looks into the room, and says "Pause!" Because the game might have gone on without them had it not been 'paused', lol.

Test the Nation

Apparently there was a show on CBC last night called Test the Nation. I didn't watch (I was busy painting once the kids were in bed) but I did the online test today. It's just an IQ test, not country specific or anything so try it out and post your results in my comments section...if you dare, lol.

Take the Test!

It asks you to guess your IQ before taking the test, and I know I am a well-rounded, above average intelligent person (and so humble too I might add), so I guessed 130. I've taken online IQ tests before and generally scored around there. I think I should have gotten a couple extra points for guessing so close to what my actual score was, lol. Anyways here are my results:

And some interesting facts from the Test the Nation site:

• The average IQ is between 90 and 109. If you score 132 or more, you can call yourself a genius. (Ohhhh, I was so close. Can you imagine how difficult I would be to live with if I had actually scored 132? I'd be making my kids call me Mommy Genius, or Mommy G for short!)
• Researchers have shown that each year of schooling is good for about 3.5 IQ points.
• Conversely, dropouts lose IQ points. Swedish researchers found a 1.8-point IQ loss for each year of high school missed after dropping out.
• People with high IQ tend to live longer and suffer less from certain diseases like depression, dementia and schizophrenia, but they also tend to suffer more from obsessive-compulsive disorder.
• Women with a higher IQ are 40% less likely to marry.
• Caffeine can improve your IQ score (doesn't make you smarter but makes you more alert and increases short-term memory).
• Wine drinkers on average have a higher IQ than beer drinkers. Studies show a slight advantage to wine drinkers — but do wine drinkers have higher IQs because they drink wine or vice-versa ? It may be that some people with high IQ reach a high social status and then choose to drink wine to fit in. (see table below for alcohol consumption data of high IQ countries).
• IQ is not influenced by family size or birth order.
• Workers distracted by phone calls, e-mails and text messages suffer a greater loss of IQ than a person smoking marijuana, a British study shows.
• A chemical found in strawberries and other coloured fruit and vegetables has been found to boost the memory. Fisetin, a naturally occurring flavonoid, stimulates the signalling pathways that enhance long-term memory, according to the Californian and Japanese researchers. The catch - lead researcher Pamela Maher said it would take 4.5kg a day to achieve a beneficial effect.
• A recent study has shown that it is possible to increase one’s IQ by regularly playing puzzle games.
• A drop in IQ has been found to be an early predictor of Alzheimer’s disease—up to a decade before the onset of the health problem.

The kitchen cupboards are coming along.

I've painted all the trim and most of the doors. I had a problem with the doors turning out slightly yellow, which didn't really matter UNTIL I put them up next to the trim and then it just looked wrong. We think it was because we stripped the doors down to the wood, but did not strip the trim, and somehow after 1 coat of primer and 5 coats of paint, the wood color was still seeping through. I ran out of paint anyways so we got a new brand, and repainted one coat on the yellowed doors and then they looked fine. Since we had a bunch more doors stripped already, I just used about 3 coats of primer on them and then painted them. They are still drying so I don't know if they will be white white or yellow white yet, lol. The bottom sets of doors and drawers we decided not to strip, just to sand the edges to give them a cleaner look. The doors have all been painted now, and just the drawers are left to sand and paint. Hopefully tomorrow will be the end of kitchen painting.

We'd like to get the house listed soon, so once the kitchen is done we can paint the ceilings in the front and back porches. Before we moved in they must have had some water leakage problems. I remember when we bought the house the shingles were only a year or so old, so that was probably when they fixed the leaks. We never had any leakage at all, thank goodness, but we do have the water stains from the leaks. The real estate agent we had over a couple weeks ago thought we should paint the ceilings so it doesn't look like there is a leakage problem. I wonder if we can just paint the water stains or if that will look funny, or if people looking would even notice even if it did look funny? Hmmmm.

My new kitchen table!

It looks big. I hope it's not too big and makes my kitchen too much smaller than it is already. I really like it though. You can see the doorless cupboards in the background.

Six years ago today!

At about this time I was already in the hospital being induced. I wouldn't go into labor for another 6 hrs or so from now, and Beth was not born until just before 1am on the morning of the 15th, but she was on her way!

It's hard to believe my little girl is turning 6 tomorrow!

Mother Nature is a big ol' B%&#!

It was beautiful a few days ago, everything was melting. Of course I complained a little bit about all the water and mud, and the extra 3 laundry loads of jackets, splash pants and the like, but come on already. It was melting a few days ago and today it's -15 C with a windchill making it feel like -26 C, and it's getting colder as the day goes on. What the?

On the plus side, since it got colder yesterday, our wayward cat came back home. He went out a few nights ago, and wouldn't come in when I went to bed so I left him out. We didn't see him again until last night. We even checked his hiding spot (an abandoned old building near our old house) a couple of times with no luck. I guess the cold got the better of him. The girls were sure happy he came back home!

And in more exciting (to me only I'm sure) news, Chris should be home with out new table in a few hours. We had bought the floor model (big price drop for the floor model), and today the store called to say they had a new one boxed in the back and would prefer we took that one if it was okay with us, since then they wouldn't have to unpack it and put it out as a floor model. Fine with me, I'll take a brand new table over a floor model for the same price as a floor model any day, lol. It had better be easy to put together though, my kitchen is already a mess with no cupboard doors and I don't need to add a half assembled table to the mix.

Your eyes are NOT deceiving you!

This really is a new blog entry. I know it's been almost a month, but I blame it all on my camera. I hate not being able to take pictures of what's going on in our lives and without the pictures I don't feel like blogging about it I guess. And I am really just being a big baby about my camera because it does work, it's just the lcd screen that is broken, it's like using my old 35mm again, lol.

So what's been going on at our lives?

We're pretty positive about where our transfer will be taking us the summer. It should be official by April 1st. Since we haven't heard we're NOT going we're pretty sure we are. So since we got the unofficial word a few weeks ago we contacted a realtor about selling our house. There had been a few houses for sale in town, but they have all sold which is great for us. Nothing to compare our house too for one thing, and obviously people are looking to move to this town. We have not signed any papers with the agent yet so we're not on the market and we already have one person who is wanting to see it before it's listed to buy for his company, and our agent has called back to let us know she's had a few calls asking her if anything was coming up in town so the sooner we get it listed the better. That's all great for us. We've been very worried about selling since this house was already on the market for almost 2 yrs about a year ago. No one was moving to town, but I guess now with things booming in the city people are looking for affordable small town living. Our fingers are crossed that this will be a much quicker sale, lol.

So with the house being almost listed we've been doing more home reno's. Last I blogged we had put the laminate floor in the porch and the bathroom was done except for one piece of baseboard (which is still not in, lol). Since then we have put some wallboard up in the basement to make it look more 'finished'. We've also started taking down all the kitchen cupboard doors to strip the layers of paint off and then give them a fresh coat. I've primed a few white and it's hard to believe how non-white they were before. They were a very yellowed white, so this should really brighten up the kitchen. Once they are done, we'll call the real estate agent to come back and take a look and sign some documents. Then I'll be asking you all to cross your fingers for me.

So on the selling end we're pretty much good to go, but the buying end is scary. There is not a lot available in the town we will be moving to so we've been keeping an eye on the mls listings every day and we have local spies keeping their eyes open for the Sale by Owner signs. We also have our eye on 10acres south of town that has been for sale privately. It used to have a trailer on it, so all the hookups are there which reduces the cost of putting a home there by a bit. Right now the owner has someone from Alberta interested in it, and he has first dibs, but he will know in the next couple of weeks if it's still available or not. We had been looking at an old (but nice) double wide trailer to put on the land, but the trailer has since sold and we've since talked to every mobile home moving company and none will move a double wide, so it's not like we would have had any way to get it to the land anyways. At the moment we are looking at the cost of RTM's (Ready to Move) and the cost of digging a basement. It's all so up in the air right now, and it makes me nervous. There are so many unknowns with moving a house to an acreage and digging a basement and connecting the house to power, water, gas etc. What are utility rates like on an acreage, what are taxes? We've asked around and we get different answers from everyone we speak to it seems. Sure it would be exciting to get a new house and live on an acreage but a small part of me just hopes the guy from Alberta buys the land so we don't have to ask the questions anymore. One thing all the people we ask have in common is the belief that now is the time to build an acreage because realty in the area we are moving to is taking off right now and we would stand to make a few dollars when we sold. Arghhhh!!!!

So other than eating, sleeping and breathing moving options not much is going on. We bought a new kitchen table today and Chris is going to pick it up tomorrow which is exciting. We've needed a new one for a while, a long while. I'll take a picture with my crappy camera tomorrow once it's in my kitchen, and maybe in the background you'll be able to see into my kitchen cupboards because half of them have no doors at all, lol.

It's also Beth's 6th birthday on Thursday which is also exciting. We're trying to plan a birthday party for Saturday. Of the 6 classmates she invited 2 have already told us they cannot make it, and the other 4 parents have not bothered to let us know one way or the other. Katie tells me one of the 4 told her at dance today that she is going to a different birthday party instead, but it would be nice if the parent had phoned to let me know. Oh well, we'll make sure it's still a fun day! And I'll force myself to take pictures even though I hate my camera.

We got so much done today!

Bathroom is done (almost, lol). We even got the old silicone stripped off the tub and tub surround and put down new stuff. Boy does that make a difference. The bathroom would be completely done but we were mysteriously short 2 ft of baseboard. We have since found the baseboard when we cleaned out the disaster of a front porch. We have been storing all our work crap in there while we were doing the bathroom. Most of that crap has been moved to garage now, lol. So there is a 2 ft piece of baseboard left to be put on in the bathroom and then the paint touched up on it, and it will really be all done in there.

I decided that for now I am going to keep our white shelving unit in there. It looks fine when it's not all cluttered and since we will be selling the house soon, why buy a new linen shelf (the one I want is about $100) when I don't know if it will even go anywhere in our next house. We do want to buy a small shelf to put some decorative candles on for above the toilet though.

We also (and by we I mostly mean Chris, although I did help by standing on a piece of board every now and again) finished the porch floor. The tiles in there were the same as what used to be in my bathroom so it was in desperate need of a flooring makeover. These tiles were so easy to peel off though, each one came of whole, and it only took a few minutes. Chris is at this very moment putting the baseboards back on, that's how done the floor is! We still have to rehang the closet doors and although I would like to do that tonight yet, Chris is looking pretty tired and he has a First Aid course to study for tonight yet. We'll see.

Chris must not have hated working with me to do all these renos too much since one of the first things he asked me when the flooring was getting layed in the porch was which room was next, lol. He wants to do something in the kitchen, I'm not so sure. I'd just like to get my house back to being clean and uncluttered for at least a week first, lol.

Monster Trucks!

We thought about maybe travelling home to see Chris's parents today, but those plans changed once we got a call from a friend of Chris's. Every year this friend offers us free tickets to see the Monster Truck show, and believe it or not, our girls LOVE it! Today was the last day to go.

We find that the length of the show is too much and the seats are in the so called 'nosebleed' section, but we have fun anyways. Personally I like where our seats are each year. We're quite high up, but we can see over the whole track.

We arrived at 1pm to pick up our free tickets at the back entrance, and the show did not start until 2pm. We left at 5pm since Beth and Anna just could not stand any more. Having to sit for that long, combined with the noise and fumes was just too much. We watched the last of the monster truck free style and then left. There was still a demolition derby left to see (cars, not monster trucks), but we had to get out of there. We see one or two demo derby's every summer anyways, and Chris's brothers and brother in laws are often driving or in the pit crews at those ones, so it's more fun for the girls to watch those ones.

Don't be deceived by the name of the show leading you to believe it's all Monster Trucks though. Actually there is less time devoted to monster trucks than anything else, but they are what draws the crowds in. Along with the trucks there is motocross racing, super cycles, tough truck racing and souped up ride on lawn mower racing!

Here are a couple more pictures. Unfortunately I don't know how many more pics I'll be taking in the future since during the Monster Truck show the cars were not the only things that got crushed. Our camera experience and crunching of it's own when it got folded in an arena seat and now the LCD screen is cracked inside. The display just shows a mess of black and white now with cracks. It still takes pictures okay, you just have to use the old fashioned view finder and you can't changed any of the options on the menu. I guess we'll be camera shopping one of these days.

More from my Bathroom

We got back to work on the bathroom yesterday. We did start to have some mitre saw malfunctions though so we were unable to finish. We got the molding around the wainscoting up and one of the baseboards and 2 of the crown molding pieces. It looks so sharp! You'll see I got a new shower curtain as well. I saw a few with great designs which I would have loved, but thought since we'll be putting the house on the market soon that I should keep it simple and I went with plain white.

Before molding



After molding



Baseboard



Crown Molding

Day in the City

The kids are off school this week, Chris is off work today and this weekend. It was the perfect time to have a family day! We spent the morning just lazing around. In fact when a friend knocked on our front door this morning at about 10:30am, had he just walked in he would have found all five of us in my room laying in bed, talking and laughing. We quickly threw on some housecoats and answered the the door for our wake up call, lol.

So, after our company left and we were all cleaned up and dressed we headed off for our day in the city. First stop was to pick up some laminate for the porch floor. We haven't gotten around to finishing the bathroom and we already have plans to start a new room, lol. Next was off for a fancy lunch at Burger King. It was the kids' treat, they love the play area, and with the cold weather we've been having a chance to run and climb was great for them.

Since Old Navy was nearby we popped over to look for some jeans for Katie. She's so skinny it's one of the only places I can get pants that fit her. While we were in Old Navy, Chris took the other girls to Future Shop. The jeans were on a great sale (normally $29 a pair and on for 2 for $25, who could pass that up?), so I planned to get some for Beth as well. Katie found a couple pairs she liked and finished trying them on just in time to find Chris and the girls looking for us in the girls section of the store. Chris had found a great deal on a 1GB mp3 player (not free, like all you lucky USA buy.com shoppers, not even close to free actually, but whatever) so he picked that up for me since I had mentioned earlier in the day that we should give Beth my mp3 player (which is only 256mb) for her birthday and upgrading to a 1GB for myself. He also found the Lego Star Wars game for the girls for their gamecube. They had played the demo on the playstation and loved it. Chris loves shopping at Future Shop unattended by me, lol. But back to Old Navy jeans... I found a couple pairs for Beth to try on. The ones I had bought her in September were starting to get tight, so for a sale, I figured a couple more couldn't hurt. The size 5's were much too big in the waist, but oddly enough the size 6 slims fit her perfectly everywhere. How do they figure out their sizes? Anna's not a big fan of jeans so I didn't bother getting her to try any on, and we started to leave. Of course we walked by all the Valentine's themed clothes on sale and I picked up a pair of pyjama pants for $3.97 for myself and a pair of $1.97 boxers for Chris. I love sales!!

Next stop was the movies. We went to see Night at the Museum which is a GREAT family movie. It had a couple scary parts, but nothing gory scary or anything. The girls loved it (well Anna got a little bored) and so did Chris and I. I would definitely recommend this movie to everyone! I can't believe how much it costs to take a family of 5 to a new movie though. Usually we just take the kids to matinees at the cheap theatre, and although this was a matinee, the prices were no cheaper than the evening prices. It cost us $42 to all see the movie. That did not include snacks! At least it was a good movie, lol.

Finally, who can spend a family day in the city, and not hit Walmart. I have discovered that Chris loves a sale as much as I do. We were in the shoe isle looking for new ballet slippers for Beth when we found cute little boots in the the girls' sizes on for $5. I would have let them try them on and not have bought them, but Chris could not resist those puppy dog eyes. Cute boots, but maybe a little teenager-ish? They love them though.

They didn't have any in Anna's size though and she was almost in tears wishing she could get boots, so she found her own pair she wanted.

Not on sale, but you can never have enough pairs of rubber boots right? Funny thing is she loves her boots as much, if not more, than Katie and Beth love theirs.

No one was hungry after the movie treats so instead of hitting a restaurant before going home we picked up something easy we could make and headed back home. The girls picked at the food when we got home and then went to try out their new game while I charged my new mp3 player and loaded it with music. It was a great day.

Bathroom's at a standstill. I'm waiting on Chris to do some caulking so that I can finish painting. Once the wall is painted we can do the baseboards etc.

In other new, Beth and Anna are sick. They are coughing like crazy and it sounds awful. I just want to do all the coughing for them. It's worse at night when they are laying down so I give them cough suppressant before bed. I think it made Beth high though. About an hour after she fell asleep she woke up coughing and called "Daddy". Chris asked what she wanted and we both heard "Can I have some mushrooms?", he replied with a confused "What?" and she said "I'm Hungry." Chris went in and layed her back down, and she fell back asleep.

She doesn't even like mushrooms. I'll have to ask her if she remembers in the morning, lol.

So the kids are off school this week for February break. So far the kids have not made me too crazy, but I did need a bit of a nap this afternoon. We're all enjoying sleeping in and staying in our jammies til noon though. There's still 5 more days til school is back in. The kids also have next Monday off which drags the break out a bit longer. Chris has the weekend off so we might go somewhere for Sunday and Monday. We'd go earlier but both Katie and Beth have birthday parties to attend at the pool in town. That reminds me I have to check and see if I can find their bathing suits. They'll look awful silly arriving in their jammies.

Solution...A bucket.

I know I said a bucket wouldn't do it, but that's what we used. We didn't have to use it 'that' way though, lol. Chris wedged a bucket in the toilet tank and the put the part that fills the tank with water into the bucket. The float was also in the bucket, but the goal was to have the float so high, that no water would actually be taken into the tank. Chris hooked the toilet back up to the water and I turned the water on and not only were there no leaks in the sink pipes which had been taken off and put back on, but the tank did not fill with water. That's a good thing, because the tank was not actually connected to the toilet. To 'flush' we had to dump a bucket of water into the toilet and the water would slowly drain. Not a great long term solution by any means, but it worked for the evening.

While I was at preschool this morning, my wonderful husband zipped into the city, tried a couple stores and found a tank that would fit. Of course the salespeople at both stores tried to tell him you can't mix and match toilets and tanks, and one lady even told him no one in the city would sell him a tank without an attached toilet (yet they have separate prices...hmmm), but he did come home with just a tank, and it fits wonderfully. When I walked in the door after preschool he was almost done, he was just on his way downstairs to turn the water back on. And again, no leaks!

So I have a toilet which is great, and I have a pretty, almost finished bathroom, which is even better. But I know as soon as we get the very last thing done in the bathroom Chris will get his transfer notice and it will be official that I won't get to enjoy my bathroom for very long, lol.

Wall - done...Floor - almost done...Toilet- don't ask

We had a very productive day in our bathroom today and I bet that's something you don't hear people say out loud everyday!


We had the water off in the whole house for most of the day (it's still off) because our stupid house does not have separate shut offs for the toilet or bathroom sink (or kitchen sink for that matter). So while we were working we had not water, and no toilet. Luckily the kids were able to hold it from when they went after lunch when the water was shut off until our friends' kids got home from school so we could use their toilet. We also picked up Chinese and went there for supper and had one more potty break over there before bedtime. They are only a couple houses away so it's not too bad, but remember, it's -30C here, a quick trip to the potty means we have to get all dressed up in winter gear.

Anyways what we accomplished today was:

1. Wainscoting wall is up. We used some click together pine boards that are about 3" wide. It took quite a while to get them up. We debated working around the toilet tank but decided to take it off completely and do the boards completely behind the toilet. Aesthetically it was a good choice. However in reality, it was a bad choice. Now our toilet tank will NOT fit back on. It needs the extra 3/8" to move back to fit onto the toilet so it will seal and we can turn the water on. Honestly I have no idea what we are going to do. Chris wants to go into the city tomorrow and find a tank that will fit, but what about in the meantime? We're going to need water by tomorrow morning. I didn't shower today and I am supposed to be the helper at preschool tomorrow....I need to shower. The kids and I are going to need to pee in the morning or maybe even in the middle of the night. A bucket is just not going to do it. Ughhhh.


2. Flooring is down. We need to cut one strip for in front of the door but other than that it is complete. Unless we have to buy a completely new toilet, or have to move our toilet forward (which I do not think is easy and may require a real plumber). If we have to do either of those we are going to have to un-install the flooring and then do it all again later.


Otherwise my bathroom looks amazing! I love the floor, I love the wall, and I love the color. We still have lots of work left, like baseboards, crown molding, molding for on top of the wainscoting and touch ups and everything still needs silicone, but it looks so pretty. I'm going to get new towel bars and a new shower curtain to match as well, but that can wait for a while.

And just a reminder of what it looked like before:

The worst haircut ever...UPDATE.

A few people have asked about Anna's hair, how well it's been growing back since she cut it all be herself in August. If there was a contest for the worst self inflicted child's haircut, Anna would win, hands (or should I saw scissors) down. Most kids cut a chunk off the front, not great, but it usually grows out withing a couple of months, and with girls you can usually hide it with barrettes. Anna however cut a very large portion of hers off in the back. It was terrible. Here's a reminder:

She had it cut so close to her scalp, like a shave almost. It's grown a lot since then, but it still looks awful unfortunately. We're able to hide it with well placed pony tails and barrettes thank goodness, but I just want her hair back.

Here's a picture from the other morning. She had slept with the pony tails in which is why they are so loose and wild, but you can see how her hair has grown, probably about an inch or so longer than it was when she cut it

I am trying to convince her to get it cut at the salon but she tells me she likes it this way. I'm not going to make her get it done kicking and screaming, because although it probably impossible, it could look even worse. Nah, who I am kidding, it couldn't look worse.

More bathroom work

We finally got a chance to get back to working in our bathroom. Today we got the molding around the tub surround on and the window trim. It still needs to be siliconed but the look won't change too much after that is done.



Here is the tub before and after. Notice how dark it is in the after picture. It doesn't look like a lot of work but it took us all day. Well all afternoon I slept all morning because I felt like I was going to die of food poisoning or something. I'm much better now.

Tomorrow we are going to tackle the floor. Right now it's peel and stick tile, and we are replacing that with laminate. We don't know how much give for room we're going to have to replace the toilet over the laminate so we are tearing the tile out rather than putting the laminate right over top of the tile. It's stuck down pretty good. Took me a long time to get off the amount I did tonight, so it will be an all day job tomorrow. The tiles are 1'x1' but as you can see from the second picture you have to pry them up piece by piece.

And just for fun I'll throw in the pictures from the kitchen cabinets. We changed all the door and drawer handles last week. They were green plastic and are now a brushed metal. It's hard to tell from the pictures but they sure look a lot nicer.

Poor Daddy

I'm babysitting my nephews this weekend while my sister and brother in law move into their new house. They are so excited about this move and I cannot wait to see their new place. I thought it would be easier on them not to worry about the boys being in the way so I offered to keep them for a couple nights. It would give them a break and my girls LOVE to play with their cousins. Since we've been home they have played preschool (Beth was the teacher) and taken every toy the girls own out to play with. They are all having a ball.

Now, my girls have seen a baby boy's bum being changed a few times in their lives, but it never fails to amaze them. Beth and Anna watched intently as I changed one of the boys and Beth commented that boys had a noodley thing on their bums. Anna said it was a wiggly thing. I reminded them that it was called a penis and that a girl had a vagina. Beth then told Anna that ALL the boys have penises, even daddy, but his is bigger because mommy's is bigger too. Anna gave her the most disgusted look and then told her that daddy did not have a penis, he had a 'gina and some boys have 'ginas. Poor Daddy.

On hold

Since Chris got called into work this weekend our bathroom renos are on hold. Hopefully we'll be able to get back to it next week when he is on nights. He usually is awake at noon so we'll have a few afternoons to work. So since I have no renos to write about or pictures to show I thought I'd share the short after dinner conversation Beth and I had tonight. We ate spaghetti for supper which Beth used to like, but now she complains every time I make it that she hates it.
Anna got up from the table and I told her she had to wash since she had sauce all over her face. She's the only one of the kids who eats spaghetti sauce. Beth remarked that Anna had to wash because she was saucy and I giggled. She then told me Katie would have to wash because she was cheesy (Katie only eats Parmesan on her pasta). Beth then says she doesn't know what she is and I told her she was picky. So we have saucy, cheesy and picky. She thought for a while and then started laughing and said "And mom, you're BOSSY!"

It's so true.