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.