Long Overdue Update

I just realized it's been several months since I updated this blog.  Oops!  Time for a photo dump!  Here's the September highlight:

Mr N caught a fish bigger than Baby C!  She liked splashing it with water from the hose.

October Highlights:

Mr N caught another fish at the beginning of October.  Yay salmon!

The kids goofing around posing for pictures in some new pajamas.  

Miss E as Tinkerbell.

M as a ninja.

Baby C as a duckling.

 The night before Halloween Mr N & I went to a haunted house with our friends.  We dressed up because that is FUN.  That zombie's pretty creepy, huh.  I was a black widow and Mr N is a lumberjack.  Just in case you are especially obtuse and cannot tell.  :-)

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.

Learning from Daddy

Mr N: Who do you like more, me or your teacher?
E: My teacher.
Mr N: Why?
E: She teaches me things.
Mr N: I teach you things.
E: Dad, all you've ever taught me if how to shake my booty.

I figure anyone who reads this blog knows Mr N and what a goofball he is. He loves to tell the kids: "I need you to do something." He's done it so many times that they now just roll their eyes and say, "We already know - shake our booties." Then they all put their hands in the air and shake their booties. My family is nutz.

Tulips for a Clean Room

Mr N made a deal with Miss E that if she cleaned her room she could have tulips. It took a very long time (she must have inherited her procrastinating skills from both of us!) but eventually she got those tulips!

Playing Daddy

I especially like the pointing finger. She really knows how to act like Daddy! Ha ha

He's Not a One-Trick Pony

We are all very happy and delighted here that Mr N is so strong!

And such a good sport. Ha ha

Pumpkin Patch

Mr N took the kids to the Pumpkin Patch! They had oodles of fun, but flatly refused to pose nicely for any photos. Poor Mr N!

This is the cheesy grin Mr N gets from Miss E when he asks her to smile. And Bonesteele just does his own thing.

The Patch had a bouncy castle which both children LOVED!

Believe it or not, this is the closest both children came to looking at the camera at the same time.

Kayaking Fun

Patrick and Carli came out for a weekend visit, and the men decided to go kayaking. They had fuuuuuun! And they saw bald eagles.

L to R: Kirk, Mr N, Patrick.

Mr N's Birthday

Tulip Farm

Mr N took the kids to the Tulip Farm. I didn't go because my allergies are pretty bad this year. We didn't know it, but Miss E was getting sick. You can really tell in the photos; she looks miserable, poor thing!

Bonesteele felt great though!

Mr N managed to coax a smile from Miss E.

(Poor baby.)

"Stop telling me to smile, Daddy!"

Mr N says Bonesteele went up to this thing and looked out of it for five minutes. Which in two-year-old time is approximately three years.