Sunday

 Joshua made a Christmas tree with presents during church.

We also went to Red Rock for Ben's birthday dinner.  I had a pesto-sausage-mushroom-feta pizza and it was delicious!

Saturday: Happy Birthday!

It was Ben's birthday today!  It really was a pretty normal, but very nice, day.  We did some work, put together some Lego sets, played a game, and had some screen time.

Joshua made a cute dragon.  It rolls up into a ball, although that's not pictured.

Yesterday I hurt my hand a bit while moving a TV.  I took on something that was just a little too much for me: getting the TV off the mount.  I was a little too short and a little too weak.  (Yes, Ben said we could wait for someone to come help but I wanted to get it done and thought I could.)  Anyway, yesterday my hand was rather sore.  Today it is bruised, although it doesn't hurt nearly as much.

Also, Joshua liked that Tornado was giving Horizon a hug and wanted a picture.

Friday: busy day

Today was surprisingly busy.  Not with bad stuff, but weird stuff.  Joshua played at a friend's house and so I transported him for that.  Ben sold our TV to Jamie so a lot of the day was dealing with getting packaging ready and taking it off the wall and then he went to Jamie's to help put it back up.

Isaac made a stop motion:

Thursday: Happy Thanksgiving

We had a relaxing morning: we looked through a box of used Lego pieces, played a game, and hung out together.  I guess I should say it was mostly relaxing: it felt like the kids were bouncing off the walls and wrestling and talking in outside voices a lot.

We went to Larry and Cheryl's for Thanksgiving and it was delicious.  I ended up carving the turkey.  It was my first time ever carving.  I'm not sure I did a great job, but I did get enough meat off for everyone to eat and some leftovers.  A few other people picked away at it after dinner to get some of the last pieces of meat.  So now there's one less thing in my life to 'fear' as I have conquered carving the turkey.  (Still up, actually making the turkey.  I'm happy to wait a long time for that one.)

After dinner we talked and played a game and it was nice just being with everyone.

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.