Week 41

Bonnie came into town for the weekend and we tackled remodelling Mom and Dad's laundry. Whew - what a lot of work! We spent all day pulling down wallpaper and ripping up the floor that had been damaged by multiple washing machine accidents. It was a huge task and very slow progress.
The kids loved helping and were suprsingly good helpers - and not just at picking up nails we removed from the floor. Kaitlyn taught herself how to use the hammer and crowbar. And by Saturday morning Tyler was using the power drill ALL BY HIMSELF to pull screws out of the floor. Sadly, the demo was the end of our progress on the laundry room thus far. The wallpaper is off, we re-textured the walls, and all the icky subfloor is up. Now I just need to find some energy and pin Dad down so we can get the new floor in. Maybe after Halloween...
The other big activity of the weekend was playing the Zombie vs Flowers game on Bon's Ipad. On Sunday, the kids went with me to Alisha's house and we got to me baby Sophia. She's such a cutie! Kaitlyn couldn't get enough of her. And Tyler eventually decided he wanted a turn holding her too.

We also got the first snowstorm of the season. Ick Ick Ick. As you can see, it bothered me more than it bothered the kids. They were happy to suit up and go shovel.

Wednesday we took the time to carve pumpkins. The night before we all sat around the computer and looked at pumkin templates. Kaitlyn of course was excited to find Hello Kitty.

And Tyler chose Lightning McQueen. I have to say, my first REAL attempt at carving anything other than the quick and easy silly face pumpkin, while overly ambitious (did you see Lightning?!? Yeah, I had to get tricky with that one and actually peel some of the skin off! geesh! and do you all remember that it's me and the kids here? 2 kids, both hyper as anything, both wanting my help...it was intense), did turn out really well. Especially after I got the pumkins hollowed out and the kids could quit having to say "gross!" every 10 seconds. Tyler thought the slimy guts were so nasty he only pulled out 2 single seeds with a spoon before refusing to help with that part. Kaitlyn gamely dug at hers until I finished with Ty's and could tackle it myself.
In fact, Ty was a great little cheerleader while I did pretty much everything on his. Kaitlyn was happy to help as much as she could and did most of the pinholes for the pattern transfer herself during the half hour? hour maybe? it took me to get old Lightning finished. But gosh, aren't they cute?!

Next year I'm totally making Sam scoop out pumpkin guts no matter how much he hates it... :)

Also of note: 2 steps forward, one step back on the whole house selling/moving stuff. We extended the contract on the sale of our house because the paperwork is of course taking longer than they predicted. But Ty and I did make the trek down to the base for our pre-move briefing (one more thing I can cross off the list!). They were gearing up for an inspection at the base and the jets were out and flying all over the place - as Ty would say, "it was awe-some!"