Katie and Mama's Special Days

Katie has been pretty good about Maddie being in school all morning five days a week. She just accepted it - and knows that now she and I can have "special days" - which she tells everyone about:

"Ka-teee an' Mama got a BA-gul on our specia' day." We did this the first day Maddie was gone, so now she expects one every day. They are so good - but too many carbs for Rosie!

"Ka-teee an' Mama made tamBOReeeenes on our specia' day."

"Ka-teee an' Mama go to tha pahk on our specia' day!" That was this morning. I forgot my camera so I don't have any pics - sorry!

Of course we stopped to get a BA-gul first.

Have a great weekend everyone!!!

Floors - from start to finish!

Hey! I finally sorted through all the floor pictures and pulled out the best ones for the slideshow below.

It all began Monday night, the day after Easter, when Mr. Andy Man started ripping up the rug. I have never smiled so much in my life. :) He went through it all pretty quickly - he cut the rug and padding up into smaller pieces - put it out in big bags for the garbage men - and it was gone by morning.

The workers (henceforth to be known as The Men - dubbed by Katie and Maddie) arrivecd Tuesday morning bright and early. The old plywood in the dining room was the first to go - and since there is only an empty crawl space underneath it, The Men just jumped down and stood on it so they didn't have to break their backs!

They were able to lay all the plywood down in the dining room and then they started ripping out the old hardwood floor in the living room. It was not in good shape, so I am glad we decided to go with new wood rather than try to salvage the old. All I heard for the rest of the afternoon was creaking wood being RIPPED out and there were nails everywhere. (Somehow, someway, the girls were able to nap everyday through the racket. The Men were impressed.) By the time they left on Tuesday only the subflooring was left in the living room. And of course they sweeped up. :)

Wednesday was the day everything happened! The Men tore through that subflooring and that's how I got the pictures looking down into my basement! The dust, of course, migrated right down there and I couldn't even walk. I figured Andy had a night of cleaning ahead of him. But why did I doubt The Men? They went down there with their Shopvac and cleaned it all up.

The plumber came on Wednesday, too, to fix a valve that was leaking, so that was a fun way for us to spend $180 and blow my budget for the month. Grrr....

Thursday went fast - all the new hardwood was down by the end of the day. It was great! The Men's backs were killing them though - I could tell. That nailer that they use to nail the wood to the floor is hefty - and they had to swing a mallet onto it twice for each nail. Two of them switched on and off - and got it all done. (I offered Advil - but they didn't want it.)

They came back Friday morning to put in new baseboards and fix some odds and ends here and there. I was out all morning so I never even saw them that day - so no pics of that, sorry!

Now the girls look for The Men every day and say, "The Men have to fix the floor" with big wide eyes, like "Mommy, where are they???" I tell them The Men are all done - and that we will see them again at the end of the summer when we get a new front door. (Hopefully!!!)

Here is a slideshow of the job from start to finish. (In case you catch the slideshow halfway through, the first pic is a shot of the living room fireplace with the rug rolled up in the middle and boxes of wood everywhere.) We still need to get throwrugs and put all the furniture back - I'll take those pics when that is all done. Say ... sometime next year ...

Enjoy! (After I downloaded the pics and made the slideshow I realized I downloaded them too small! Aargh! I'm not downloading them again, so you'll have to squint.)

Dear Life, Can I have mine back now? Please?

Oh my goodness! I feel like I have been kept away from my computer for so long. It's usually past 11pm at night when I get the chance to REALLY get on (Facebook doesn't count - that's mindless).

Not only have I been cleaning up after getting our floors done (so nice and shiny!) I also was cajoled into reading Twilight by my friend, Carol. So I read the first one with a bit of trepidation. I am a huge sci-fi fan, as many of you already know, and I heard that Twilight was a teen novel - so I thought - how good could it be? Well, lemme tell ya ....

Sooooo goooood.

It took me 8 days to read all four books. I fell in love with them. I usually take advantage of the girls' naptime to do computer stuff. But not this past week! I sat in my glider and just read. And then I sat in bed at night and read. Until 1:30am. I am sad that I read them all and it's over - but glad that I will have some semblance of a life again!

Thanks for all the comments while I was away - I miss you guys!

Houston, We Have a Floor

Yippee! The floors are all down. This picture (from yesterday) shows the guys laying it down in the living room - but both rooms are completed at this point. They are beautiful!

The guys are coming back on Monday to finish up the base moulding (molding?) and finish up odds and ends. We will have to do come paint retouchups here and there but no big deal.

They are vacuuming as I type (always love seeing men vacuum) and I will take some pics when they leave and post up!

(I have not been much of a blog-reader this past week - but I'll catch up soon!)

Updated: My Life Today

Update (6:16pm) - It's all covered up with plywood now. The living room and dining room both look like this:

It's actually not that bad. My kitchen has stayed intact, and it's always worse if you don't have a kitchen. Tomorrow they laydown another layer of plywood and then the hardwood. So exciting!

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Standing in my living room looking down into my basement.




Standing in my basement looking out my front door.

The plumber. Who had to be called when the builders found that a valve was leaking on my furnace.


What will my day be like tomorrow? :)

I am living in chaos!

Aaargh! My house is a big 'ole mess!

As I type we are having our brandy-new hardwood floor installed. The house is a mess. Even though it is only two rooms the dust is just everywhere. The noise is everywhere, too. BUT ... I ain't complaining - when all is said and done I will have beautiful flooring!

Why does it seem I don't blog the first week of every month? I am the Newsletter Editor for my local twin club and the newsletter gets emailed to our members by the 7th of every month. So, the days before that are usually filled with me waiting to get articles from people, formatting pages, and then pulling it all together at the last minute. I do it all digitally and it gets emailed to everyone as a pdf file. Unfortunately this blog suffers in the process. And I've said it before and I'll say it again - when I get out of the habit of blogging every day/every other day - it takes me a bit to get back in the groove.

We had a wonderful birthday party for the girls - and a wonderful Easter, too. I hope you all had a wonderful Passover or Easter, whatever you celebrate!

I'm getting my slideshows together and I'll post them up when I'm done.

A-Z on Mondays: M is for Maddie! AND .... Happy Birthday to My Girls!!!

Lots of business today!


FIRST ... Happy Birthday to my little girls!!! Katie and Maddie are three years old today! It is a crappy rainy day here - but we are celebrating inside. We had a kiddie party Saturday night with their cousins and I'll post all about it tomorrow!


SECOND ... We are at M in our A-Z journey - and of course today is all about Maddie.

Today was Maddie's first day of school. I always knew that I would separate the girls once they started school - and I even went so far as to find different schools for them. Their needs are so different and I wanted to make sure that they would each be in the best environment for them.

Maddie likes small groups. She really gets absorbed in her tasks and doesn't flit from one activity to the next. Her memory is amazing - she can recite whole books from beginning to end after only reading them once or twice!

So I found a school for her that has a very small student/teacher ratio - in fact there are only 5 other kids in her class. Perfect for Maddie! They take the kids for preschool when they turn three (not just in September - Katie won't start until then) and she didn't have to be potty trained - BONUS! I'll do a more detailed post later this week - but she LOVED it today. Her smiles do not lie! :)

My heart was breaking when I left her at school today - but I am so excited to see her blossom. I have always said that Katie is my "big girl" and Maddie is my "baby" - and my baby is growing up. I am totally crying again.

From birth to today ... Maddie ...

This last picture was taken this just this afternoon as she was getting off the bus!

I love you forever, baby.


(For more A-Z on Mondays, visit Jen over at Unglazed!)

Do you see this?

My mom tells me that she can't see my whole screen on her computer at work. She says the header is too large and she doesn't see past the ric rac ribbon - so she doesn't get to see the pretty flowers down the sides. Hmmm ...?

What do you see? It should look like the pic above. Let me know - thanks!

Everytime I look at them I wish I had a sister

Yesterday, just as the girls were ready to wash their hands after lunch - I had to go. And I mean GO. It just hit me out of nowhere.

I managed to get Katie unstrapped from her booster seat and washed - but the running water just killed me. I was determined to push through! I got Maddie unbuckled - and I hit the wall.

"Mommyhastogopottyrightnowdon'tmove!" and I ran.

I could hear them jabbering away the whole time, and since I knew Maddie couldn't get down from her chair by herself I wasn't too worried. "Givemetwoseconds!"

Then I hear the water running at the sink. Uh oh. "I'mcoming!"

I get back to the kitchen and see the two of them standing on a chair in front of the sink. Katie has a paper towel and is drying off Maddie's hands. They both look over to me and smile big grins.

Miss Katie proceeds to tell me the tale ... "I got Maddie from da seat. I wash-ad herr haaands. All done!" And she throws the paper towel in the garbage can.

She was so proud - and so was I.