All About the Ns: January 2012

January 9, 2012

E's Cat Song

I like to take a catnap in bed.
I like to have my door open,
But I don't have a door
So that's lucky for me.

I only have cat choices
My only choice is to pick.

I don't like rabbits.
I don't like dogs;
We fight all the time.
I don't like bees
They sting me.

All I do is be a cat.

Dining Room - Glorious After

This is the garbage produced.

Inspired to clean by the beautiful floor!

Dining Room - During

Day One

Our friends EdgyK and her husband Stenny helped us. Without their help we would have gone nutz and it would have taken a LOT longer.

I am being useful here, it just doesn't look like it. Haha I was dictating measurements while EdgyK marked the laminate. (Blogger loaded these pics all jumbled up.) Here you can see we were nearly done with the kitchen. The kitchen took a long time because of all those corners we had to measure around.

M discovered the advantages of a wood floor.

Here is the picture of how far we got the first day. We finished the kitchen. We had friends coming over that evening, and EdgyK had a family party to attend, so we stopped around 5pm.

M and E used the boxes as coffins. My kids are so morbid. They did a mummy exhibit and drew bodies inside the coffins.

When everything got ripped up, we discovered there was a half-inch difference between the dining room and the kitchen. Mr N had to run to the store and get some boards to even things up. This set us back about two hours.

Here is E being a mummy. Apparently mummy = zombie without a hunger for brains.

Day Two

Day 2 dawned bright and early. It was New Years Eve and Stenny & EdgyK showed up at 8am to floor the dining room. That's earrrrrrly in case you were wondering.

After the kids got bored with the mummy exhibit of Day 1, they turned the boxes of Day 2 into a tepee.

Okay so admittedly I did not work as hard as Mr N, EdgyK, or Stenny. I was on baby duty a lot. It's its own form of hard work! Day 2 while the baby was napping it was me, EdgyK and Mr N on floor duty while Stenny was our cutter.

Mr N picked up a set of laminate installation tools on a whim during his trip to Home Depot on Day 1 and they turned out to be VERY useful. The dining room was much faster to floor due to its large rectangular shape. We finished laying laminate around 1pm and Stenny stayed and helped Mr N nail all the baseboards back on. They were done around 2pm.

Dining Room - Before

Between Christmas and New Years, Mr N had the entire week off. At the top of a very short "Honey Do" list was ripping out the carpet of the dining room and cheap laminate of the kitchen and replacing it with the highest quality wood laminate we could afford. Look at that nasty carpet! Naturally we didn't bother vacuuming before snapping this pic.

I snapped this picture in case Mr N didn't feel like smiling at the end of the project.

Here's a picture of the laminate in the kitchen. Mr N had already pulled the fridge out. Sorry the lights in the kitchen are pretty yellow. There was nothing major wrong with the laminate; there were several small holes and dings in it and there was discoloration in the entire center where we walk around.

January 3, 2012

Sibling Love!

Christmas 2011

We decorated a gingerbread house on Christmas Eve.

We went on a marathon walk (nearly 2 miles) and watched that old stop-motion animation movie of how Kris Kringle became Santa Claus and had pizza for dinner. It is a tradition from Mr N's family to watch a movie and eat pizza on Christmas Eve night.

The children got to open one present Christmas Eve - their new pajamas. We were worried they would take forever to fall asleep, but they both conked out right away. Apparently the long walk coupled with weeks of anticipation was too much for our little ones.