Wednesday: finished!

I'm declaring the master bathroom finished!  I had been hoping to finish about a week ago, but sickness and snow days got in the way.  Luckily there's no real timeline, so it didn't matter at all.  Today all I had to do was add some paint to the trim by the window.  None of my sticky things to protect the wall paint would stick though; it was pretty weird.  The painter's tape, a sticky note, wall tape all just lost stick as soon as I tried to apply them.  I decided that since it was a really short area I was trying to apply it to I'd just be really careful.  (This isn't a foreshadow.  It really was fine.)  However, since I had the blinds open Tornado decided he needed to look out the window and managed to get three feet in the wet paint.  He was not happy with me as I cleaned him up.  Besides that, everything went smoothly though.

From the outside, not a lot looks all that different.  I changed the color of the hand towels for more contrast.  The lights are dusted and the hanging origami removed.  The biggest changes are in the drawers and cabinets and you don't really need to see all that.

Before:

After:

Next is the kitchen.  A year ago when I started this project I didn't think the kitchen needed much work but I was wrong.  It needs a lot of work.  However, it is also full of cabinets and drawers so it's easy to do one or two of them at a time.

In other news, the kids had a half day so we started putting up Christmas decorations.  I helped a little bit, but was curious to see how much they could do by themselves.  (I have a picture of Isaac, but Joshua was the one that actually did more work.)

Tuesday: double take

I recently got a Shutterfly order and put this picture from our Alaska trip on the counter until it gets in a frame.  I've done so many double takes wondering why there's a flier for ...something...life insurance perhaps...on the counter.

The day was rather boring.  Classes were a bit sparse since it is two days before Thanksgiving.  (I have plenty of thoughts on that, but I won't talk about them here.)  It turned out to be a rather short lecture with a lot of practice time, so I suppose it was possibly a good day to skip.

Monday: the day

I got all the things done that I wanted to get done today!  It was a bit surprising!  Meijer was rather busy, but I didn't have too many things that I needed to get.  Paint took a while...I was hoping that since it was just white paint for trim the worker would show me were it is.  The can I had was really old, so he ended up making a match instead.  

I also got some cat food and picked up a cat toy while at the store.  The cats like this toy; all the shiny things are off the old ones.  Well, I had it in the bag with the paint.  They always search through the bags a little bit and they found the toy.  And then they had the audacity to take it out of the bag and start playing with it before I gave it to them!

I'm also trying to not kill my strawberry plant this winter.  It's a low bar, I'm just trying to not kill it.  It's in the laundry room up high.  We don't have any good places that get natural light that the cats don't get to, but the kids forget to turn this light off enough that I thought it might work.  It also gets a cup or two of water a week, when I remember.  Anyway, imagine my surprise today when I saw some flowers!  I don't know if strawberries will actually grow because there are no pollinators, but we'll see what happens.

Weekend: unexpected but good

This past weekend ended up being a bit different than expected, but it was still an excellent weekend.

First of all, we had snow.  We didn't get dumped on like a lot of West Michigan, but we had enough to cancel the Saturday night plans.  Joshua's Saturday morning plans almost got canceled too.

Saturday morning Joshua and a friend from school went rock climbing.  They climbed for about an hour and Joshua was an excellent host.

Saturday night Joshua went for a sleepover at Larry and Cheryl's.  (It was a sleepover at Grandma's house, but Grandpa spoiled him more.  I think all it took was Larry telling him he could have as much candy as he wanted.)  The rest of us were supposed to have people over for a game night but, as mentioned, it was canceled.  We still played some games and introduced Isaac to MiB.  (He likes watching movies that aren't appropriate for Joshua yet.)  This one had some gross parts in it and was probably right on the edge of appropriate even for Isaac.

Friday: snow day

The first snow that didn't disappear turned into a snow storm, which in turn provided a snow day today.  It was only going to be a half day, but it did mess up my day a little bit.  In some ways things worked better and in some ways worse.

In the late morning another kid (named Isaac too) came over to play Dominion with Isaac.  I wasn't sure how it'd go after the first five minutes, but by the middle of the first game there was quite a bit of giggling.  They played two games and seemed to have fun.

However, I didn't get my errands done.  I got groceries quickly yesterday after work, but there were several other errands I wanted to do Wednesday that didn't happen.  They still didn't get done and now I've run out of a specific color of thread.  (I know, a serious problem.)

Wednesday: snow and sleepy

We've managed to keep the snow since our first snow fall on Sunday, which is rather odd.  Usually it all melts the same day, but it's stuck around.  It almost disappeared today as we had a sunny afternoon, but enough stayed around that there was still snow.  It was snowing again this evening and I expect there's a decent chance of school being canceled.

I also had to wake Joshua up this morning.  It's odd but happens about once a year.  It usually takes him a bit to get going, but he manages.  Today he did not manage.  For quite a while he was crawling around on the floor because his legs weren't working.  (This is a "chronic condition" that he has, although it hasn't flared up in quite a while.)  Anyway, he seemed to be doing fine by the time he left for school and so I put it out of my mind.

I got a call from the school an hour later.  He didn't have a temperature, but was feeling tired enough that the teacher sent him to the office.  I was in Meijer and had made it through two aisles.  I grabbed some cheese and headed out to pick him up.  Although it disrupted my plans for the day it was still a relatively good day for this to happen.  He rested for a while and then seemed back to his normal self.  I made him rest again after lunch.  He claims he didn't fall asleep, but I'm not sure he would have just laid on the couch for 1.5hours without getting so bored that he'd do something about it.  The goal was to make it rather boring since he wasn't that sick.  (I do think something was a bit off so picking him up from school was the right choice, but staying at home isn't a reward.)

Sunday: first snow

 We had our first snow last night!  It snowed through mid-morning and I was rather surprised at how much stayed.