What happens when you let your little brother babysit

My family visited over the weekend because my cousin Ted (who is from Alabama but goes to BYU) got married to a girl from Rocklin at the Sacramento Temple. So not onlydid I get to see my cousins, who I hadn't seen since they were very little, I got to see some aunts, my parents, brother, grandmother, mom, dad, sister, uncle and nephews. All without having to be the one to travel. Yay!

Anyway, KC babysat JD while we went to the Temple and I made the mistake of not locking the door to my bedroom. When I got home my photo printer, camera (not the Nikon, thank goodness) and some of my jewelery were on the floor. I found all the earrings and put everything else away. I went to download the pictures tonight after being informed I needed to post and found this:
That, my friends, is JD's foot, my printer and my camera bag. I'm just grateful that the camera still works. And next time KC babysits I'm locking up anything important.

The Bathroom

I thought I took a picture of the floor at some point in the process of fixing up the bathroom but I can't find it. Here is what the bathroom looked like pre-shower/tub liner, new paint, new mirror. For the floor, picture poorly installed peel and stick vinyl tiles with little gaps between the tiles that we filled with caulking. And they had started to crack. The shower was lined with FRP that wouldn't adhere to the wall in one spot, so water was getting into the walls every time we bathed or showered. And it was impossible to get clean. You can't see it in the picture, but it had little bumps that liked to harbor dirt, mold and mildew. Gross.

Here is the bathroom a lot of money and a lot of work later. Hey, but now Jeremy knows how to tile the kitchen counters when are ready


What's new in this picture you ask? Well, new ceramic tile floor, new toilet, new six panel door (well, that's been there a few months, but we've replaced all the doors since buying the house. They had holes in them.), painted the vanity but new sink. New shower curtain, new paint, newly installed shower and tub liner. In a few words, just about everything.


The new shower and tub is nice to look at and very easy to clean. Suction cups wouldn't stick to the FRP but they do stick the the acrylic which means that I have someplace to hang washcloths, caddys and bathpuffs instead of a rusty metal caddy on the shower head.


You may think that taking a picture of the toilet is silly but the old one had an oak lid that kept rusting off and cracked so that it pinched some uncomfortable places and I could never get it clean. It was permanantly stained because apparently the person that owned the house before us didn't beleive in cleaning toilets. Or anything, really.


I didn't edit any of these pics, so this one's crooked but here's the new shelf to replace the old fake oak vanity, which we bought a few years ago and was falling apart. I decided I wanted everything to be clean and white in the bathroom. It's very relaxing.


The new nickel plated light bar to replace the oak/bronze light bar. I decided I really like nickel. Bronze, not so much. The medicine cabinet is fairly new too. The old one was framed in oak and I decided I'm not such a fan. This seemed a little more up to date.

The sink, faucet, and hinges and handles to the cabinet are new. The vanity is the same because we couldn't fit anything bigger and the one I liked at OSH was $400. So, I painted it white. I think it turned out very nice. All in all I am very pleased with the way the bathroom turned out and I'm happy that we are just about done with home improvements. Then we can move on to the weeds, I mean, yard.

By the way, we discovered some mold in the girls room. We happened to have mold killer on hand so it's all taken care of but as the house is old and the exterior walls are not insulated, I'm sure it will be back. So the next project after the dog kennel will be going room by room, tearing out and insulating the exterior walls and replacing sheetrock/repainting. Fun, huh? We can't go in the attic and blow it in because the genius that built the house decided it would be a good idea to put fire-blocking between each stud. Maybe after that is done I can finish up the kitchen.

Nobody ever told me that owning a house would be so much work. Maybe next time I can buy a house that is younger than I am. That would be nice. One with another bedroom or two and another bathroom. And a two car garage. One day.

The shiner

I wish you could see this in person because the photo doesn't really do it justice. Of course, now that this black eye is almost a week old it's starting to fade and turning yellow. There's also a nice bruise on the side of her face that you can't see. The novelty of it has worn off. My visiting teachers came over today and asked what happened. Becca's response was "Why do people keep asking me? I don't want to talk about it anymore!" I still don't understand how a plate sliding off the sink could have hit her so hard. I was trading war stories with some other moms today and we decided that this is only the first of many odd bruises that Becca will give herself.

Update

Sorry I haven't posted pictures of the bathroom yet. We were going to use the tile as the baseboard for the floor but the edges of the tile aren't finished so we decided it would look funny. We are going to buy some baseboard when I get paid again next week and then I will have pictures.

In other news, Becca was trying to clear the table and managed to smack herself in the face with a plate when she was putting it in the sink, she now has lovely black eye. When asked what happened she launched into the story about the time that I accidentally shut her head in the van door and she had to get stiches. I don't know how the two are related. Apparently the story was so long that her kindergarten teacher gave up listening.

Sariah has been going to lunch early to help in the cafeteria. Usually this is something the third graders do but since the school is being modernized right now the 3 - 6 graders are going to a different school. They gave her a coloring book and crayons for helping out and sometimes she gets to pick a treat from what they had for lunch. She really enjoys helping.

The kids went to the dentist this week and it looks like Becca and JD will probably need braces at some point. Yay. At least their dad can give them sympathy.

Busy weekend

I am SO excited for this weekend for a few reasons:

• New bathroom floor! The tile that we bought months ago is finally going to be installed. Jeremy's dad is going to help. Hopefully Jeremy learns a lot because I have other projects in mind for him (kitchen countertops) Thank you Mike! I'm also going to refinish our vanity, we bought new handles and hinges yesterday. Hopefully soon we can buy a new sink and faucet.
• New toilet. I know, it's weird, but our toilet is really gross and I've been wanting a new one since we moved in 6 1/2 years ago.
• Free museum day. Admission is free on Saturday to the zoo, Fairytale town, the Railroad Museum, the Airplane museum at Mclellan and all the other places that we never go to because it costs too much money to get in. This is my plan to keep the kids entertained and out from underfoot while my bathroom is being beautified. My mother in law Cindy is going with me. Zoo + Nana = fun for the kids. Hopefully it won't be raining when we go.
• Scrapbooking at Round Table. I'm lucky if I get to scrapbook once a month and this weekend amongst all the other fun I get to have a few hours to myself to scrapbook and eat pizza. What could be better?

Jeremy is waiting for things to go wrong Saturday but the people at Lowe's were very helpful and I think we have every thing we need. I'm still really behind in posting, I need to put up some pictures from vacation. Maybe I'll add that to my fun list too.

Christmas (late)

My friend Kara just emailed me and asked if I'd been too busy to blog since it's been a couple of weeks. The answer is yes, and no. Nothing really important has been going on. However, if I try to do anything other than pay attention to the kids before they go to bed, they get crazy and tear the house apart. So, I've had two weeks of fairly well-behaved children, a mostly clean house and no blogging. The only reason I've even been able to check my email is because I do it on my break at work.

The other reason is a friend from work just introduced me to the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I've been enjoying them a lot, I'm now on book 3. Anyone who knows me well, knows that when I have a book to read, I pretty much ignore everything else. I'm actually pretty proud of myself that while I've been reading these I've still taken care of the house, meals and helping kids with homework.

I'm going to upload pictures from Christmas to Costco's website. If any of you want an invitation to see them, let me know and I will send you an invite.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Christmas Eve

When I loaded the memory card onto my computer there were over 400 pictures on it so it's a little hard to know where to start. I forgot to show my mom Christmas pictures while we were in Utah so I guess I'll start with Christmas Eve. Unfortunately a lot Christmas Day didn't turn out because Jeremy wasn't paying attention to what the camera was focusing on. How about a leg instead of a person or maybe a chair? So, while going through the pictures and teasing Jeremy was fun, they aren't really worthy of keeping or posting here.

For Christmas each of the kids got bikes. JDs is too big for him and Sariah's is too big for her but she fits on JD's just fine and we have a small one that's perfect for him that Sariah used to play on. The bikes were too big to go to Nana and Gramp's house where we spend Christmas Eve so Santa gave each kid a post card with a picture of their bike and a note that it was waiting for them at home.



Christmas Eve we went to Grandma and Pop Musser's house to open gifts and spend some one on one time. It's nice to spend some time with them and it's a tradition that we've grown to look forward to over the years. I tried to get a group picture but the kids were not in a picture taking mood. Sariah got some makeup and she and Becca had a lot of fun with it. Grandma and Pop took Jeremy and I out to BJ's for lunch. It was nice and very yummy. Thanks Grandma and Pop!

Aunt Lori got JD a little dump truck that has a bobble-head driver. You push the driver's head and the truck goes forward, stops and dumps out
it's load. It's really funny and JD loves it. He also got some cars, which he enjoys taking out of the little storage container he got, lining them up and then putting them all back (or leaving them for us to find in surprising places, like my bed.) I don't remember what all the girls got and I'll post more later. Becca got a walkie talkie, which we need to buy batteries for. Jeremy got some Kings stuff, football collector pins and a gift card to Lowe's. Hopefully now we can finish the bathroom. I got a cute new purse and Lori got us some cute place mats with snowmen on them. Grandma seems to be feeling much better now and I'm so glad that we were able to get out and enjoy ourselves.