The Lost and Found Library Book

A few weeks ago the youngest two children checked out backpacks (books and coordinating toys and/or activities in a backpack). When they came due a week later, I gather them up and checked them for books and activities. I discovered that one of the backpacks was missing a book, and so I renewed the one missing a book and returned the other one. Then I spent the next week looking for the missing item.

After still not finidng it, I asked to renew the backpack again and see if I could convince the children to help me find it since they were the one(s) who lost it in the first place. We still had no luck and so I looked up the book on Amazon so we all had a visiual of what we were looking for. Bekah took one look at the book and said, "That book was in my backpack." I told her I didn't think it was in her backpack because I had checked it for all the items before I returned it two weeks ago. Then I thought about it for awhile and realized that while I had checked the backpack for missing items I had not checked it for extra items.

I called the library, explained what happened and asked if they would check to see if they had the missing book on their end. The kind librarian spent some time looking for the book and found that it had, indeed, been returned in the other backpack. When she called me back to tell me this, I admitted that I now owed my six year old an apology because she knew exactly where the book was and I didn't believe her, which received a laugh from the librarian. So when Bekah arrived home from school yesterday, I apologized to her and watched her glow with pride because she had done something right and been a big help solving the mystery of the missing book.

Baptism Day

Benjamin was baptized the Saturday after he turned 8. It was an exciting and pleasant day. We are proud of the decision Benjamin made to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

 

It's Friday...so Glad the Week is Almost Over!

Due to the kitchen remodeling project my yard has been poorly neglected to the point it had become a dandelion forest. I spent Monday (and Tuesday, and Wednesday) pulling dandelions up by the roots, and annihilated the dandelions......in the front yard. Oh, and we had an actual "awful Monday," something that has not happened in a very long time because Mondays tend to be my best work days of the week. On Wednesday, my body gave out and decided to come down with a bad case of heat exhaustion which serves me right for spending so many hours in the yard, in the direct sunlight, knowing how well my body does not handle direct sunlight and heat. So I decided to take most of yesterday off and read a book, only to realize how much I still needed to do inside and out, and it wasn't such a great day for that. Today, was the first non-sucky (excuse my language) day of the week. I got to spend all day in my finished kitchen, and am finally feeling better. I made 8 loaves of bread, 8 dozen cookies, 2 dozen carrot muffins, and 1 cheesecake. And, I didn't have to use the table or the stove to fit all of that one my counters! Now, if I can just make it through the remainder of the days activities I will be doing fantastic!

Kitchen After

Before Decor

After Decor

Dining Room

A close up of the hardware and antiquing.

Kitchen: Countertops Installed

I only got one picture before the upper cabinets went up and after the counter tops were installed. It ended up being such a stressful process, and I was so ready to move to the next step, that I only took one picture and it was with my phone.

When we finished the floor and had the lower cabinets installed we went in and ordered our counter tops. We were told it would be two to three weeks to get them installed, which was good because I hadn't painted or antiqued the cabinets, or had Michael install the beadboard on the ends. It took about a week to have the template guy come out and determine how our counter tops needed to be laid out. After he was done templating, he handed me some paperwork that stated our install date was in 10 days and I would receive a phone call the day before telling me when the installers would arrive. At 4:30 on the day I was suppose to receive a phone call, and many hours of scrambling to finish the base cabinets during my kiddos spring break, I called the office to find out when to expect my counter tops and found out they had been delayed for two weeks. No one had contacted me, and I was more than a little upset, to say the least. I started making phone calls both to the store we ordered the counter tops through and the fabrication and installation company. After lots of phone calls, and a lot of unreturned phone calls on the company's end, we finally came to a resolution and my counter tops were only installed one week late but still outside of the original two to three week estimate.

I love my counter tops and I am glad we were able to resolve the situation as quickly and completely as we did. And, I made it through the resolution process without swearing, screaming, crying, or attacking any of the people involved in the mistake and resolution process. Michael got to experience my break downs and emotions, but not the people I needed help from to get things taken care of. Not an easy thing for me to do, but it is done and we even ended up with a decent amount on a gift card from the store to try to compensate for the challenges we encountered. Glad that is done with!

Kitchen: Refinishing the Cabinets

The budget didn't allow for replacing the old cabinets with new ones so I decided to refinish the ones we had. It only took about 500 total hours of stripping the old paint and finish off, sanding flat surfaces and all of the grooves, priming, painting two coats (which had to dry for 24 hours between coats), antiquing, and sealing with polyurethane to get the finished product.

The second half of the doors after sanding and stripping.

The second half of the doors after priming.

The first half of the doors ready for the final coat of paint on the front.

All of the drawer and base cabinet doors after install with hardware.

Kitchen: Base Cabinets Installed and Finished

Apparently, I stopped taking as many pictures the farther we got into this projected. So here's a before and after of the base cabinets after Michael and his dad installed them.