.winding down.

I'm so far behind on whats been happening that I feel almost like I don't want to even bother trying to catch up, but since I have a minute or two and I have a computer that is actually hooked up to a power source, I thought I better try and at least do a quick recap of the past month and a half.  So in no particular order here we go:
Painting.  We totally realize we went the hardest possible route on this by doing it after we moved in.  There were quite a few projects that we were slowly going to get to that were pushed up in their time table.  This of course being one of them.  My sister Holly came over for about 5 days and helped me slowly make our way through the house.  She commented that the house looked like it had been dipped in chocolate.  I would say that was a fair assessment.  Now we have a nice clean neutral that I'm so much more happy with.

Miss "busy hands" Meg got in on some of the painting action too.
Hot tubbing-  The kids are discovering the joys of the spa.  Meg in particular gets a nice lazy river ride with the jets and her float.

 Reunion Time-  We spent 2 days catching up with family at the end of July.  It was nice to get together and reconnect with family that we don't get to see as often.  I took Finn with me on the hike, but if it wasn't for my brother Sean, it would have been miserably long.  Thanks Sean and Kim for hauling Finn up and back down the mountain.

Anniversary-  Roy and I celebrated 7 years of marriage.  We mustered up enough energy for a movie and dinner because in my words...I just didn't want to have to think for awhile.  This boy makes me happier the longer I'm with him...I guess that's a good sign right?

 Milestones:
Eisley hit 4 months and is as wonderful and as sweet as they come

 Summer storms:  The park right down the street is a drainage park so when we get the summer monsoon storms it fills up and all the neighborhood kids come out to splash and play.  The kids have loved all the rain we've had to play in these past weeks.

Basement re-do:

Like I said, we had a few projects that we knew we wanted to get done, but weren't planning on doing them for awhile.  However,  our time table was moved up.  My grandma Tiedi is coming to stay with us for a few months so we knew we had to get the carpet in the basement replaced.  The previous owner had a dog who ruined all the really nice quality carpet that was in the house.  The basement was particularly bad.  We ripped everything out and scoured the concrete with lots of chemicals and then sealed it for good measure.  After all that work, I will never have an animal live in the house.

 Strong chemicals call for respirators.
Triathlon-

Roy and I had signed up to do our stake triathlon long before we knew we were going to be busy with gutting the basement and painting.  We signed up as a team and so we couldn't just back out on our third leg.  Roy took the swim (he hasn't swam any distance in about 5 years), but of course he's such a fish that he passed about 15 people...not an exaggeration.  I busted out the bike portion on a borrowed bike from my sister, which should tell you how much I love biking.  But it was still a nice break from all the projects at the house.

New sand:

Grandma and Grandpa Sullivan brought us a couple yards of the nicest beach sand to top off the sandbox.  The kids love it!  We also did a nice deep clean of the playhouse after Finn found a black widow out there.  I made my mom kill it because I'm an absolute wuss when it comes to spiders.  My mom is awesome in more ways then one!

 More floor work:  because we were already replacing carpet in the house we decided to just do all the new flooring all at once.  Good bye to our yucky linoleum in the kitchen.  In order to save ourselves some money we did the demo and install all on our own.  Oi, that was quite the undertaking.

 All gone and ready for the laminate.

It took us about 4 days, but we got it all installed, and it looks amazing.  So grateful I married a handy man to work on all my crazy ideas.  This week we will be getting the upstairs carpet installed and then get the base boards up...and then hopefully be done with the big projects for awhile...fingers crossed.