The Excuse We Needed

 I wasn't sure I was going to meet my goal of what I wanted to get painted on Friday. Getting things prepped took longer than I thought. Most of the kids did not have school because of a teacher work day but I still had to stop to take Alice to preschool and pick her up later. I don't think I got around to actual painting until after lunch. The first coat seems to take a longer time to do than the second coat. After I got the first 3 walls done I just felt like I wanted to get the 4th wall done too. The bed was already sitting about a foot away from the wall. I decided to finish prepping it and try to do as much as I could. I was able to use the bed to stand on to get around the window. Then I just reached as far as I could with the brush to get by the trim. Then later used the roller and it was easy! Fortunately I was able to successfully paint all the walls in one day! I finished the first coat around 5pm and then took a break. After eating something and taking a bit of a break to give the paint time to dry I finally got back to it because I really wanted to get it done and not have to stretch it out to Saturday. By the time I started working on the first wall of the 2nd coating Charlotte saw what I was doing and wanted to help. I gave her the little roller while I used the big roller. She was the first kid to offer any help. Alice offered after she saw Charlotte helping but I told her maybe next time because I really just wanted to get it done. Charlotte only helped for the one wall and then she was done. 

After Curtis came home and got something to eat he changed his clothes and came to help. Yay!! It went a lot faster having him help me. We were able to get all walls painted with a 2nd coating and be done by around 8pm, still enough time to relax and watch the BFG with Charlotte. I told Charlotte that she had to wait to watch the movie until after she finished reading the book. Wednesday night we read for over an hour and finished it! We thought it was going to be on Disney Plus because it had been before but nope, they removed it for legal purposes. I texted Laverne and asked if she had it so we could borrow it. They did! So Charlotte and I drove over Friday morning after dropping off Alice to preschool. Charlotte actually watched the movie twice. First she watched it while Curtis and I were painting. We finished and came in right at the very end of the movie. So we started it over and she watched it again with us.

The color on the left is the original color. The color on the right is the new slightly darker color. That's what we put in the kitchen, front room, hallways, and our bedroom.

Another shot of the difference in shades of color.

My little helper. It's funny how the paint goes on lighter and then dries darker.

Earlier on Friday we discovered that Charlotte is more allergic to Fluffy than I thought. She had been scratched by his nails in the past and broke out around the scratches. On Friday Charlotte picked him up to take him outside and not long after that her neck broke out in a rash. I took her to the bathroom to wash her neck off with soap and water. Then took pictures so I could tell if it would get worse or better so I would know whether to try giving her allergy meds. Hours later I could see that it was getting better and clearing up. By the next day it was pretty much all cleared up, just a little red spot left. And a week ago Saturday night her hands were red, dry and puffy. I don't know what caused that for sure but now I'm wondering if it has something to do with the rabbit. Charlotte and I decided we better find Fluffy a new home since she's allergic. 

Honestly, I was wanting to give him away anyway and now we have a good excuse. 😆 He's a cute rabbit but I am getting tired of being the one to take care of him and clean out his cage most of the time. He's also shedding a lot of fur and because we have him in the kitchen by the sliding door a lot of that hair goes under our table. The ironic thing is that we just talked to our friends recently about them giving us a rabbit hutch for outdoors for Fluffy. Their daughter had a rabbit years ago but it had died. The hutch has been sitting unused ever since so they decided to give it to us.  I told them on Sunday that we didn't need it after all since we're going to rehome him but they want to get rid of it so they said we could give it away with the rabbit as a package deal. So, some time this week we're going to bring the hutch over here. 

Under her neck. Covered in rash!

The next day it looked way better so I decided it must have been from the rabbit.

This was the next day. Not the best lighting but you can see it looks much better!

Curtis cleaned out the cage on Saturday and then we took some pictures to prepare for finding him a new home. Although, looking at the pics now I think Curtis might have put the platform a little high up. He looks more squished than before. I'll have to go adjust it. Part of me wants to remove the platform so he has more room but he seems to like it up there. I also was thinking to get rid of the litter box since he doesn't use it for the purpose intended. Some times we'll see him laying in the litter box just vegging out. I later took some pictures of him outside in the grass too. Some freedom pictures. 😀 Yes, we do let him run around our yard sometimes. We just have to make sure all holes by the fence are plugged up first. 

Well, nature did it too us again. On Saturday it felt like spring. We even took the girls to Midway Park or as they call it the Barn Park. There were A LOT of people there with their kids and some playing pickleball. It was so nice that day! It started to cool down over the weekend and then just this morning it snowed a lot in a short amount of time. I'm pretty sure we got about 3 or 4 inches in just a few hours. So after I drove Jack to his bus stop and right before Nikki and Garrett left for school I decided to go ahead and shovel some snow. It was accumulating fast even after I shoveled but at least it was a lightweight snow. It was slick driving Charlotte to school this morning. I almost couldn't make it up the small hill going into the parking lot. I'm so glad that Alice doesn't have preschool or speech today so we can just hang out at home and hope that the roads will melt enough to be clear by the end of school.

Charlotte played in the snow out front. Then after she came in, Alice went out and played in the front and back yard. Those are her tracks in the snow.

I decided to take advantage of the snowy day and do this blog post. I'm not painting today because I decided to take a break from painting. I did a little bit of touch up painting on Saturday and yesterday but will wait before doing other parts of the house. We do have a lot of leftover paint from when we painted our family room and office so we'll have to see if that paint is still good. It's been 5 years so who knows. It would be nice to not have to paint the entire walls in those rooms. Just do touch up painting. We'll see.

Valentines and Other Fun Stuff

Some other fun things that happened during the last week other than painting. Alice continues to have me do her hair. She is such a cutie! The little girls both made me a special valentine last week. Alice made hers at school and Charlotte made hers at activity days at the church.

On Saturday after we were done painting for the day we cleaned up and the girls and Curtis and I got dressed up to go to dinner. I bought Curtis and the girls tickets to the daddy daughter date night activity at the Rec Center but Curtis said he wanted me to come with them to dinner first. We went to Shari's because it is less crowded than most places. After dinner they dropped me off at home and headed over to the Rec Center. They had dancing a donuts as refreshments.

Charlotte sat by me but since it was a daddy daughter date night I had all 3 of them sit together for the picture.

Charlotte had wanted to go to McDonald's but we told her this place had everything they did only better. She decided to get the Pioneer Pancake that came with whipped cream, bacon and hash browns. The pancakes were good but we didn't care for the hash browns. (Yes, I tested them.)

Alice and Curtis worked on her activity sheet while waiting. Alice ordered mac and cheese with fries. It was good also.

Alice is wearing her new unicorn dress and unicorn pants. Even though we showed the girls pictures of the daddy daughter event and that most people would be dressed up nice they insisted on wearing these clothes. I thought the girls might want to get a fancy dress just for this but nope. Charlotte is now saying she doesn't like to wear dresses. That makes me a little sad but I get it. I'm just glad Alice likes dresses still.

While they were at the Rec Center Whitney stopped by to get the nausea pills and so I could pay her. I had to get a picture with her and told her to fake her smile (because she was in pain and nauseated). With her moving to Nevada and us possibly moving out of state as well, who knows when we'll see each other again.

Sunday morning the boys surprised us with wanting to make breakfast for everyone. They made pancakes, bacon, eggs and juice. Then after church they said they wanted to cook dinner. Yes please!! So they cooked garlic olive oil angel hair pasta and broccoli. What a great surprise to have them not only cook breakfast but dinner as well in the same day!

The kids all wanted to go to visit Grandma Norton (GG) after dinner on Sunday. We hadn't been over there since at least October so we were definitely over due for a visit. Nikki ended up staying at home with Curtis, who was putting together our taxes and taking it over to our accountant. I have to admit I was a little upset at him for choosing to do that on a Sunday instead of coming to visit with us. I was in a bit of a depressed mood at first when we got there but after we started playing Uno it cheered me up. It was so nice to have all the kids playing Uno with us, even Alice.

Enjoying soda and treats while playing.

Got a picture with all 4 kids taking a drink of their pops.

I kept seeing Cocoa climb on ladders this week but it took him awhile before he decided to sit on the very top. He's so cute!

We decided that now that we have repainted the kitchen wall we did not want to have the girls sitting in chairs and marking up the wall again. We went a couple of days with just no chairs back there and they would eat at the bar. Then finally I decided to look on Facebook marketplace to see if I could find a bench and I did! A guy in North Nampa makes and sells all sizes and colors of benches. We bought this one for $60.

A few weeks ago Charlotte brought home a book order and really really wanted this spy kit that she saw in there. It was $21 and we told her that she would have to do some special chores to earn it. We made a chore list for her and we took turns helping her. The first one was dusting around the house. Then Curtis helped her mop the kitchen floor. The last one was cleaning out the microwave. Curtis helped with that one also. We had two more chores for her to do but decided that she had done enough to earn it. Today she brought it home from school!

It was a read in day in her class so they had the option to ear pajamas to school. This is the first time she has done that because she wanted better pajamas, and she got them for Christmas.

The kit came with a vest, foldable paper binoculars, a decoder, pen with disappearing ink, compass whistle, a voice recorder and a secret agent guide book. She loves it!

On a side note, Charlotte has made a friend at school who's name happens to be Alice. We finally made arrangements to get them together to play after school last weekend. They live in the neighborhood right next to ours. She's hoping to get together again this weekend, especially with no school tomorrow or Monday. No school tomorrow because of a teacher work day and then Monday is President's Day.

House Painting Begins

Our house has been needing repainting and with the prospect of moving and selling our house we decided it would be nice to get it done early so we're not rushed if we do decide to move. Either way it needs to be done. We also knew that my friend Whitney could use some money and she has done painting jobs before so we asked her if she would like to help and we would pay her. I was kind of dragging on getting the painting figured out but thanks to Whitney she gave me the push I needed. First, she brought paint samples from Home Depot for me to look at. I had also needed to get over my sickness before we could start. The next thing you know Whitney says she's moving back to Nevada for a job and at first it was going to be the first week of March but then it changed to Feb 14th. That basically gave us one week to have her help. 

She was busy on Monday the 7th so we didn't get started until Tuesday. We spent the first day cleaning, taking down decorations, moving furniture and filling holes. Then we went to Home Depot to get the paint. Whitney helped me decide to go on a darker warm brown in the kitchen and then later she also suggested extending the brown into the front room to make one large accent wall. It turned out great and I'm so glad she suggested it! We were able to get a lot painted on Wednesday and Thursday but by the end of the day on Thursday Whitney's tooth was really hurting her. She made an appointment to go in the next morning. Unfortunately things got worse for her in the middle of the night. She called the ambulance and went to the ER. She had at least one big kidney stone plus a bad UTI infection. She sent me a text about it around 5am Friday morning. They were going to do surgery but decided to see if she could pass it. They prescribed several medications. Some of the meds made her really nauseated. Needless to say, she was not able to help me any more even though she really wanted to. Saturday night I was able to give her some of Nikki's pills she had for nausea and Whitney said they helped a lot, thank goodness! She was moving slower but Monday she headed down to Nevada with the help of her boss. He drove up the day before to help her pull her camper down. They made it and she's already loving it down there. And this week I have been moving slower on the painting. It sure makes a difference having her to help motivate me.

Filling holes.

This is what the kitchen and front room wall looked like before painting.

This is the other front room wall. We had vinyl stickers and our tree decoration on the wall but had to take them off. The vinyl could not be saved. Whitney bought me a new vinyl family phrase to replace the old one but if we're moving I'm going to wait to put it in our new home.

Curtis bought a board so we could stand on it with the ladders. We used it at first but only on this wall. Later we opted for single ladders.

Whitney also helped me decide to leave the side walls up on the plant shelf white instead of brown to break it up. I love it!

Cocoa was having fun climbing the ladders. As were the girls!

This wall in the kitchen bothered me the most. The corner was banged up and the old paint was just so thin it looked dirty even after wiping the walls. As you can see we had lots of dents or holes to fill in as well.

Up on the other plant shelf. The one that goes into the front room and the kitchen.

We needed a tall ladder and so Curtis finally bought us one. The girls were thrilled they could touch the ceiling!

I was on my own at this point and had Jack take a picture. I was putting on the 2nd coat. Whitney had done the first coat the day before.

Got the kitchen all taped up and painted.

This is after so as you can see the color is not much different from the original but is a shade darker. 

On Saturday we moved on to the front wall and hallway. Curtis taped and I painted.

This week I did the 2nd coat on the front wall and hallway. Then did this small area by our laundry room.

I did start prepping our bedroom today. We had decided that since we are most likely moving and need the colors in the house to be sellable that we would make most of the colors the same light color so that's what our bedroom will be also. 

Got most of the taping done today. I will have to do 3 walls first and then the last wall separately like we did the front room. We just don't have the space with the bed in there. Can you see Curtis hiding behind the dresser? 😆

The goal for tomorrow is to get at least one coat of paint on the 3 walls but hopefully two. Then Curtis can help me on Saturday.