weekend...what weekend?

My 4 day Memorial Day weekend has flown by. Andy and I spent 80% of our waking hours working on our floors, 15% eating, and 5% resting our sore backs and hands. Here is a brief recap of the weekend with pictures.

Friday night: finished cleaning adhesive left by evil linoleum off kitchen floor.

Saturday morning: We pulled carpet up in family room. Then Andy used a mallet and chisel to get the old wood parquet floors out. It came out pretty easily (the whole room took about 6 hours) and as he was whacking away all the little 1 inch by 5 inch wood strips were flying up in a cloud around him...occasionally hitting him square in the forehead and leaving a scratch and on one occasion hitting the ceiling fan then launching across the room at warp speed. Andy worked much harder than I did on this project...I just followed along behind and picked up all the wood pieces. We filled up both of our Big Blues (trash cans).

Sunday: church, then out to lunch with some friends. when we walk into the restaurant our friend's grandparents are there. then they find out that his aunt and uncle and parents from chickisha are going to be there also. so weird. when we finish lunch we head to home depot, our favorite store. We bought some concrete mix and headed home to level our entry hall. After we pulled the tile up, the slab was about 1/2 inch lower in the entry than in the rest of the house. Andy mixed concrete as I spread it out. It took awhile, but we finished and it looked pretty good for amateurs. We sat down on the couch to rest for the evening and I had the bright idea to paint the sunroom while there was no furniture or flooring I would have to protect....so I went to Walmart thinking I could get paint mixed pretty quickly. WRONG. I waited at the paint counter for a few minutes and didnt see a single walmart employee so I went to hunt one down. I found a girl in cosmetics that said she didnt know how to mix paint but she would page someone. so i went back to the paint counter. no one came...I had the girl page someone again. No one came. I am mad. I am boycotting Walmart....well not technically boycotting Walmart...just walmart paint i guess. so i went to home depot, bought some light tan paint, came home, painted one wall....and it looked gross, sick almost...and when we put a strip of the wood up to it it was even worse. so i quit. we went to bed.

Monday: went to home depot AGAIN, and had the paint retinted to creme brulee...a little darker brown. stopped at walmart, despite my boycott, for a few groceries and then headed home. i painted the sunroom and andy chipped up the already cracked concrete in the doorway to the sunroom. then he went BACK to home depot for more concrete to fill it in. i think the people at home depot might know us by name after this weekend. i finished painting about the time andy finished the concrete...3:00 or so. We went to the Paseo Arts Festival that is way cooler than the one downtown. It seemed like everyone there brought their dog with them....we didn't take Yoda. He would have loved it though. We walked around for awhile there and then went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 then home to sleep.

Tuesday: Andy back to work. I slept in until Yoda wanted to play at 8, then went to get my haircut. Ate lunch with Andy at his work and then came home to paint the ceiling. Then primed the sunroom and entry hall floors for the self leveling concrete Andy is mixing as I type. This should be the last step in our floor prep. It will just level out the low spots so our floors will stay level and smooth.

Tomorrow night is volleyball. Thursday and Friday Liz is in town and then we will go to Owasso Fri night or Saturday to spend the weekend with Josh and Sara while they are in town for high school reunion.

I know this was a ridiculous amount of detail about our boring project, but it is consuming all of our time and energy so it is really all I have to talk about :)

Our sweet 1 year old!

Today is Yoda Man Froese's 1 year birthday. We did not buy him a present or bake him a cake. I might share a popsicle with him later though :)

Demolition

The destruction of our house continues…Saturday morning Andy and I began to tear up the flooring in the rest of our house. We moved all the furniture out of our sunroom and into our living room. Andy rolled the carpet up and it was disgusting underneath. It looked like a sandbox. If you haven’t replaced your carpet recently…you should. EWW. Then we started on the linoleum in the kitchen. We got the corner of it pulled up and then voila! Nearly the whole room worth of linoleum pulled up in one piece. We were thinking FINALLY…something went smoothly and was easier than we expected, but then we looked more closely. Underneath the adhesive that was left behind we found another layer of linoleum. Seriously…this is ridiculous. When we moved into the house and tore down wallpaper, we had to scrape through 3-4 layers. We were having flashbacks back to that experience. So we started scraping away….slowly. We tried several different tactics…a big floor scraper, a putty knife, and then Andy found this other scraper at ACE that is more like a 4” razor blade. It works great. It scrapes away the old layer of linoleum pretty easily, so once we get that finished we will just have to work on getting the adhesive up. Our goal is to have all the floors ready to be patched and leveled by the end of this weekend. Please pray that everything else goes smoothly and that we will find someone knowledgeable that can help up as we prep and level the floors. Once that is finished, laying the wood floors should be a piece of cake! Notice I said “should.”

Squish

Tuesday night Andy and I went to run errands. We got home about 8:30 so it was dark. As I pulled in the driveway and opened the garage door I could see that there was something sitting in front of the garage door. I thought it was a frog or something like that...so I asked Andy to get out and move it out of the way so I wouldn't run over it. He kicked it, gently, a few times until it was at the edge of the driveway--safe and out of the way of the car. As I pulled forward I looked at Andy's face and I could tell that things had not worked out as I planned. Apparently, at the last second, poor little toad decided that he did not want to live any more and jumped directly in front of my rolling tires. Andy said he heard a pop...and as a pulled forward I left bloody tire prints on the driveway and garage floor. I got out and saw the mess---this wasn't a tiny little toad--and wanted to gag. Plus, he was still moving, after being hit with both tires. Andy took the shovel and scooped his twitching body into the bushes nearby, then cleaned up the squishy mess on the driveway and garage floor. It was very gross and slightly disturbing. The only other animal I have ever hit was a skunk...and I felt bad about that too....but a poor little toad. Too bad he was suicidal.

On a lighter and less blood and gutsy note, our garage sale went well. Our friends Daniel and Canaan brought their stuff over too. Daniel had more clothes than any human being should ever have. He said he hadn't gotten rid of any clothes for about 10 years. They made nearly twice as much as we did at our garage sale, but we all got rid of tons of stuff, including the tile Andy and Daniel had pulled out of our entry hall that morning. Then we took the rest to goodwill so we are junk free....for at least a week until we go buy more junk.

We have been playing volleyball at church on Wednesday nights. My shoulder has been very sore from serving so much. I wish I knew a good physical therapist.

I guess that is all for now.

Sold

We sold the Grand Prix! We had it sitting at the end of the driveway this weekend with FOR SALE signs in it. Then the rest of the week we had it out in front of the house. We had one lady that lives down the street call. She came to look at it but said that the car would be for her grown son so they would have to come back when he could come and look at it. She called again a few days later to see if she could come look at it again, but she never came back. Then last night Andy said he got a call from a guy that lived in our neighborhood. He said he had looked at the car and wanted to come drive it a little. He also said "I have cash and a friend that is a notary." So he came and drove it last night and bought it! woooohoooo! He had driven by on Sunday and seen it in our driveway. We didnt have to put an ad in the paper or anything. Thank you Lord.

Also, garage sale at our house tomorrow. Come buy our junk!

Nephews

Noah

Kannon at Christmas...I don't have any more recent pictures of him or Noah.

Jake

Parker

Fun Exciting News!!

Warning....I have a lot to say...

We bought a truck! Ever since we bought our house, Andy and I have been talking about our need for a truck. Since our life lately seems to be filled with weekend home improvement projects, we have felt that need a little stronger. Andy was given a company car about a month ago and while we were very very thankful for it...it also complicated our plans to buy a truck. If we purchased one then it would have to be my vehicle because Andy has the Murano. I didnt really want to drive a truck...and andy really did want to.

So last weekend we were at Andy's boss's house for a bbq and he was asking me how I liked the Murano. I told him I really liked it and was a little jealous because it is similar to the Ford Edge that I had been dreaming about getting. Brad also knew that Andy had been wanting a truck...he mentioned something fairly casually about maybe we could work something out so I could drive it and Andy could get a truck. so after praying about it and lots of discussion about what we needed in a vehicle, Andy sat down with Brad to see if that would really be a possibility. We didn't dream he would really agree--we thought he was joking more than anything when he suggested it, but we figured it wouldnt hurt to ask. Brad quickly agreed to it though!! He said no problem--we just need to work out the insurance. CRAZY!!! I was so excited because that meant I got to drive a car that was nearly exactly what I had been wanting and we would be able to get a truck! Thank you Brad Jones!!!

So we have been doing lots of research on Toyotas, for several months now actually. Andy had a list of features he wanted and NADA and blue book pricing and more. We looked at a few used Tacomas that all had pretty high miles for a 1-2 year old model. Then last night we went to look at new Tacomas. We test drove a couple and then decided that we would just go in and talk to the salesman...see what kind of deal we could get. We started with a really low offer and after about 2 hours waiting for the stupid back and forth "let me talk to my manager" stuff....we ended up hardly having to come up from our original offer plus they are going to out leather seats in it!!! Seriously it was such a God thing...the negotiations were pretty easy, the financing worked out, and we got a truck with 24 miles on it instead of 45000 for nearly the same price.

Here is Andy with his new Toyota Tacoma. When we finally got home I asked him how happy he was with it 0-10....he said 10 :)

I was kinda dreading the whole negotiation part of buying a car before we started...but now I must say I thought it was really fun. It is just manipulation and mind games...and once you realize that and understand that you can go anywhere and buy a car...it makes it really fun! What deal can you get out of it and how many times do you have to get up and walk out before they give you the price you want. On occasion I had to keep myself from laughing--it was just all so silly.