Coolidge Is Walking!

So, I thought I should post again before slipping into a "Breaking Dawn" coma. My sister Joann pre-ordered the final book of the Twilight series for my birthday and after it was sent to my parents' house and then mailed to me, I got it Friday. It's a very quick read, and I'm dying to find out what happens next, but I didn't want to get into it on Sunday with Andersen home. So, I'll blog...

There has been a lot going on in the last week and I was finally able to capture Coolidge in action, walking! He has just taken right off and he thinks he's pretty hot stuff.

Next, our 8th Wedding Anniversary was on Tuesday, August 5th, and every year Andersen is amazing about getting me something special, so I really wanted to get him a great gift this year.

When we were first married Andersen worked in the warehouse at RC Willey in Orem, UT. If you have never heard of an RC Willey it is the furniture SUPER STORE of Utah. The only reason we have furniture was because of his awesome employee discount while he worked there. Anyway, every Saturday at an RC Willey you can go into the store around lunchtime and get a grilled hot dog (really nice for all those starving students at BYU) for free. Every year, after a whole year of Saturdays grilling hot dogs, the grills are retired and new ones are brought in for the next year. One year we were grateful enough to receive one of these "retired" grills and we loved it to death. So many great memories, but it finally died on us in Spokane and did not make the trip with us to Lexington. If you haven't guessed already, I got Andersen a new grill for our Anniversary and I think I actually did surprise him. It looks great on our new deck!

You may be asking what else did we do for our anniversary, well, we worked on the house of course! Here are some more before and after pictures of our progress.

This is the front entryway.

Before/After

After we had ripped up the carpet in the hallway, we realized that instead of plywood under the carpet, the builders had gone cheap and put particle board everywhere it was not mandatory to put plywood, i.e. everywhere but in the bathrooms and under the kitchen sink. We have planned to put down hardwood floors in the kitchen, hallway, and living room/dinning room, BUT it is not recommended to lay it on top of particle board because it does not hold the nails as well so you end up with really squeaky floors. Argh! So up came the particle board. Just so you all know, it is MUCH easier pulling up carpet than prying up particle board and it is EVERYWHERE! Here is Andersen and the boys working on the particle board in the kitchen.

Andersen even offered the boys 10 cents for every nail they pryed up from the floor. Our boys are becoming rich. That has been another bad thing about the particle board, there are nails everywhere! And of course, our boys do not heed our warnings about the nails and so far Porter and Mason have stepped on a nail(I know, I'm completely amazed that it wasn't Campbell, too). Here is a picture of the nail that Mason stepped on. Don't worry, luckily it did not go straight into his foot, it kind of grazed the bottom of his foot right on the surface. Just a little blood and not too deep.

I wish I could say that they were all being more careful now, but they forget the pain quite easily.

Yesterday we spent a good part of the day working on this wall we knocked down, but I am happy to report that it is fixed and looks great, or will look great when we get it painted. I'm just glad that the ceiling didn't fall in.

We decided to leave the studs that were holding up the door ways into the living room and make it into a column like this.

We'll see if we can make it work. Here is the living room/dinning room with carpet and then without carpet.

We still have a TON to do, but Andersen has the whole week off so we're hoping to get a lot done. Now I just need to decide on paint.

Here's another Campbell moment for you all. I was in the shower on Friday when Campbell came in to the bathroom asking for tweezers. When I asked him why he wanted tweezers he said, "to get the 'thing' out of my nose." I love specifics! So this is the "thing" stuck up his nose. And it was REALLY wedged up there!

It was a green bead from one of those plastic necklaces (thank you Nana Grigg) and for some reason he thought it would be great to put it up his nose, except that he couldn't get it back out, he just kept shoving it in further every time he tried to pick it out. Luckily we didn't have to go to the emergency room, the tweezers did work.