Classic Kid Conversation #1

Kid: What's that restaurant over there?
Parent: Burger King
Kid: Booger King?
Parent: No, Burger King.
Kid: That's what I said, Booger King.
Parent: No, a burger is short for hamburger. A booger is hard snot.
Kid: Ewwwwwww.
Parent: Try again. Burger King.
Kid: Booger King.

Happy Halloween

Brain food

It's been ages since I read a book (well, fiction anyway). I guiltily took some time "off" today and read a book I had picked up off the library editor's pick table. Talk about gloomy.
Contemporary fiction, of course. The book is called "Inhabited World" by David Long. It's about a ghost reflecting on his life and what led to his suicide, set here in Seattle. Bleak and dark. Kind of like the season. I wish I were a bear and could hibernate.

Floor Installation and Cabinet Delivery

Phil and the subcontractor we hired to help are finishing installing the cherry hardwood except for the stairs. And, drum roll...the cabinets will be delivered! Hurrah! They get installed tomorrow. Phil's taking off today to work on the floor and will work from home tomorrow so he can be here when the cabs are put in.

I got to pull a thousand more staples from the floor last night. I know I'll appreciate the finished renovation so much more knowing I actually helped with my own hands as well as doing much of the planning.

Entry Tile

I'm pretty sure we'll go with a soft, warm light beige travertine tile for the entry. Something like this picture of ivory classico.

Question for You

What sound does a butterfly make?

Gyp dust

Today I have the sinus headache from Hell. I think it's come from the super saturation of our home with gypsum dust from the dry wall work that took place last week. Ugh. Every object in the house is covered with a thick gray layer of rock dust. If you ever remodel, ask for vacuum sanding and then make sure it happens. Our contractor promised he would use a vacuum sander and didn't.

I tried to pick tile for the entry today while the kids were in preschool. It was kind of fun but there were too many choices (my life's great problem, but a nice problem to have).

Better Picture of Solarius Granite

Here's a better picture of our first choice granite, Solarius

Faucets

These are the faucets we chose. The candy-cane one is for the main sink and the other one is for the prep sink. Both will have a soap/lotion dispenser built in to the counter. The prep sink will have a hot/cold water dispenser too.

Experimenting with templates

Bear with me, I'm trying out templates. I don't think I've found one I really like yet.

Change in Granite Choice

I went down to the granite place yesterday to pick our slabs and discovered that we couldn't get the type we wanted. It is only sold in a narrower thickness than we need.

So, we decided to go again today and found two that will work, Santa Cecilia and Solarius. We will have to see about getting Solarius because it is a little more expensive than the guidelines we were given by the fabricator and contractor.
I prefer Solarius, pictured first.
And pictured second, is our second choice, Santa Cecilia.

Skunk joke

L: What does a skunk say?
Me: I don't know.
L. Maybe it says "Stink! Stink!"

Morphing

I never stopped morphing once I got pregnant. Now with a 3 and 4 year old, I find myself thinking in short, childlike phrases, struggling to remember simple words and evermore frequently realizing how dull my brain and person have become. Ever try to think, read, follow a recipe correctly, do anything but super menial tasks with anyone under 5 around? Is this a complaint? Well, yes. Being a mother is pretty cool but don't let anyone fool you, it does change you and not always in a good way.

Picked Granite

Here's our granite for the counters in the new kitchen (not one of the actual slabs; we still have to pick those).

Interesting question

Today, for the first time, someone asked me if my husband was white.

One of the tradesmen working on the house, Miguel, asked me how I learned Spanish. (I don't know how he knew I knew. I must have said something to him unwittingly in Spanish. Funny.) So I told him the relevant personal history. Hence, the question.

Profile pic

I'm 9 years old in the profile pic. The pic was taken during a family reunion held at our place. Everyone who came camped out in tents down by our creek. I was hanging out with my 5 year old friend Timmy that day. I can't tie many memories to age 9. I was probably reading a lot of fantasy by then as well as the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Maybe I learned to ride a bike that year.

Pumpkin Patch

Today we went on a school field trip to a farm in Snohomish for a 100-yard ride in a wagon to a pumpkin patch. Each kid picked a pumpkin.

N was grossed out by the dirt on her pumpkin--odd reaction given that she doesn't mind picking vegetables from our garden. L just wanted to get back to see the animals in the petting zoo.

Favorite part about the field trip: the tractor ride (N), picking a pumpkin and eating ice cream (L), the drive (me).

ET

We caught the tail end of the movie E.T. last night. I was 14 when it came out. I remember seeing it with Dad and E. I figured out what age Dad was and he was only 43! Eek. That's not far away for me.

The goodbye scene is still a tearjerker.

Taping and Mudding

This morning, a crew taped and mudded the drywall that had been put up on Friday. I managed to get the girls downstairs for lunch straight from the car so they didn't touch any wet drywall mud. That didn't last long. L swept the wall with her hand on the way back from the bathroom. Arghh. Thankfully, I think the crew has several more coats to put on. I decided to try to get the kids to take their naps down here in big chairs rather than risk more damage to the drywall. So far, so good. N is happily listening to the radio on my old Walkman and L is looking at a toy catalog.

Yesterday was our sixth anniversary. I stripped wallpaper and decluttered and P tore up the entry tile. This year our house will start to reflect our combined style and finally will feel like our house.

New Appliances

M Visits

M visited for a few days this week. Hurrah!

Kitchen Demo

We had fun tearing down the walls, doing karate kicks and boxing down the drywall. Next you can see the kitchen with no walls! The floor is parquet glued to vinyl glued to mdf screwed down to subfloor. What a bear. P took a circular saw to it finally and we got most of it out.

Demo sure is a dirty business. The worst night so far has been taking the upper framing down along with some ceiling drywall. There was a lot of horrible insulation to clean up.

Here I am nestling with the girls this morning in our makeshift living quarters downstairs. Colby looks jealous and cranky; there's no room for him on my lap. Notice he's resting his tail on my shoulder, though.

Before Renovation Pictures

The purpose of our renovation is to convert the closed kitchen to an open plan including the kitchen, dining and living rooms.

Here are pictures of the whole area (and three of the people) that will be affected.

New Kitchen Materials

Prep sink

Main sink

Maple with light stain cabinets--upper and lower cabinets on perimeter


Cherry with Salem Maple Stain for island, pantry, ref cabinet and crown molding

Kahrs Cherry Charleston floor throughout kitchen, dining, living room, hallway and stairs

Birch Bay Vacation

We took a few days off last week and drove North to Blaine, WA on Birch Bay. The condo was wonderful, probably the nicest Vacation Internationale place we've ever stayed. It was rainy the whole time so we didn't do much. There wasn't anything to do there really; seems like a much better place for the summer. We went beach combing though which was loads of fun.

Brave N

N and I took a trip to the emergency room this morning. About 3:30, she fell out of bed and then hit her bedside table, scraping her chin and getting a small cut above her eyelid. There was hardly any blood and we didn't know if the cut would require stitches. I decided to go ahead and take her in to the emergency room to get checked out. N was very scared at first about going to the hospital because she thought I'd be leaving her there alone; she was shaking like a leaf. There were no other patients there so we walked right in. Well, I walked right in carrying Mammoth N.

A fun admitting nurse helped N feel at ease right away and we walked right in to a room with all eyes on us. N is so cute, everyone wanted to say hello but she was still scared and shy. One of the nurses had a cool bubble pen and blew bubbles that the doctor then caught on all five digits of one hand. They were kind of weird bubbles, very thick and hard to pop.

The doctor then examined the cut and decided he couldn't glue it because it was too close to the eye. He decided he would put a topical anesthetic on the cut and we read books for twenty minutes or so while we waited for it to work. We read a good book called Zen Shorts that had a panda bear named Stillwater.

The ointment didn't work well on the whole cut but N only felt two stitches out of four and it looked like it didn't sting too much. She was super brave throughout the whole hospital ordeal, didn't cry or even whimper. The nurses and doctor were wonderful except one of them thought she was a boy. N made out with several stickers, crayons and a nifty hospital bracelet.