Nat's News: Lately

It's been a busy few weeks.

Painting, school activities, birthdays, carpet drama, snow days, more painting, entertaining kids, and organizing have certainly consumed my time the last few weeks.

I helped plan and prepare a Shanty Boy breakfast for Syndey's class a few weeks back. Tho a snow day was in the forecast, we crossed our fingers and the weather held out :)

All of the 4th graders dressed like lumber jacks, and had a big breakfast together, like they did back in the day.

In the process I learned how to make donuts, and have been perfecting them at home ever since.

We celebrated Opa and Oma's 62nd wedding anniversary with family.

I finally made a decision on carpet and ordered it.

I should rephrase that statement to "after 3 weeks of running around town during snowstorms with a sleepy 3 year old...and sometimes 5 kids in tow on a snow day, gathering and returning carpet samples from various places, sitting on the ground with my cup of coffee (or wine:) during ever possible time and lighting scenario, staring at my samples scattered about, pushing them around the room to every possible location, going back and forth on pricing and obsessing because I just wanted to get it right "....I finally made a decision.

And 2 days after I ordered it, while setting up the install date, it was then I found out that my beloved carpet was discontinued.

And that threw me for a loop.

So after another long weekend of gathering carpet samples, obsessing and second guessing, exchanged words, and a nice little discount, I picked out another carpet.

One last look at our 1982 brown with hint of orange....

The new date for installation turned out to be 1 day later than the original.

Which meant I had 4 days to finish up re-painting the trim, hallway, and the living room. (I kind of put it all on hold once my carpet was pulled).

Tho I did love the chocolate brown color we had, I wanted to lighten it up a bit.
And you can't pass up the opportunity to re-paint when you can spill on the carpet!

My mind was set on gray.

But as it turns out, after pouring over paint samples, and giving it a whirl, gray is a tricky color...and just seemed a bit too cold for our living room by night. Our fireplace really throws things off.

So I moved my interests to the color "greige", to warm it up a bit.
And after many more hours of scouring, and 4 round trips to the paint store for samples, I finally got the color right.
Tho it has more "eige" in it than I would have preferred, it works really well in our room :)

And I really like it. I'm glad I spent so much time stewing on it, because I really don't want to re-paint for a long time.

Ellery enjoying the pony at our local paint store. LOVE that store...

My little painting helpers...

Naturally, Stella painted a picture for me on the wall...

Did I mention painting with the help of a 3 and almost 5 year old takes some serious patience?

Thank goodness for the tv.

Almost done with that ladder!

Well, as it turns out, the Friday morning our carpet was to be installed turned out to be a snow day for the kids, and also the day we would be having 5 extra 2nd graders running through the house in the afternoon for Dylan's birthday party.

At 8:15am there was a knock at my door. It was the carpet man letting me know that he had tried 4 times to get up our driveway, but he was stuck at the bottom. And then he kind of gave this pathetic little shrug.

I can't put my finger on it, something in the way the man shrugged, combined with the look in his eyes...but I sensed my carpet slipping away.... again. And as I glanced around at my 5 kids watching tv in our empty living room, the snow quickly falling outside, the furniture piled up in our kitchen, the culmination of a long week, something inside of me snapped.

And I threw on my boots and coat, told the boys to throw their boots on over their pajamas, put Sydney in charge of the girls, and quickly found shovels for everyone.

Much to the boys dismay, we went to town and shovelled the carpet man up the driveway. And after several attempts he made it. I did a little happy dance in the middle of the driveway.

Goodbye, ugly brown, slightly orange carpet from 1982!