Cousins

Hayden was so happy to have his cousins here last weekend to celebrate Grandpa's 60th birthday.

Spanish

We were at Nancy's house Wednesday eating some cake with our new neighbors from El Salvador. Nancy had some Spanish speaking fairy tale movies for the kids to watch, and was speaking Spanish at the time to our neighbor. Nancy asked me if Hayden would get upset because he couldn't understand the movie, and they were espeaking spanish. I said probably not, but we will have to see.
As the movie played, he started looking around the room at Nancy, the movie, back at Nancy, the movie. He started to smile and then looked at the kids and said "blalalalblalalalblal". He did this by moving his tounge in and out of his mouth very fast. Then he had the biggest smile on his face, like he was joining in.

Stubborn

I am simply amazed at how strong willed and stubborn my child is.

Record breaking cold

-29. That was the temperature here this morning. The coldest day ever recorded here since 1891. That was when they started keeping records.

Hayden didn't have PDO today. Yesterday we went to Nancy's for cake. We meet the new neighbors from El Salvador. Today Nancy brought over Swedish pancakes. No school tomorrow either, I wonder what Nancy will come up with.

Cold

Right now it is 11:45 am and the true temperature is -9. The wind chill is -27. I just checked the forecast and saw that we are supposed to get 5 inches tonight. I was shocked. Snow keeps popping up. We got 7.5 inches Saturday, when the forecast was only for 3.
MOPS was canceled today. We are keeping warm inside, and continuing to get our kitchen put back together. Pics to come.
At least the sun is out!

Prep and painting

Today we are prepping the walls for painting. Yesterday I removed some old tile above the sink and the rubber back splash around 2 of the counters. I always despised that stuff. Joey spent most of the morning "evening" out the walls where I removed the stuff and where it needed to be before. Kind of a never ending job since it is hard to even out old plaster. The only solution would be to re plaster or sheetrock the whole room. Call me crazy, but I prefer the "imperfect" look. I will prove it when I post a picture of the wood floor between the dining room and kitchen.
It is full of holes and looks rough, but I think it is beautiful. Strange I know. We are hoping to get at least one coat of paint on today. In a perfect world we would get 2 on and get our appliances back in the kitchen tomorrow. We will see.

We got 7 inches of snow. Hayden keeps asking to go outside, but when I remind him that he needs to wear gloves, he drops it. :) Even though he has been telling me today all of the things you need to wear when it is cold out. I think they just went over that in PDO.

Bev and Joe were going to watch Hayden today and bring him down tomorrow. Neither of us wanted to drive in all of the snow, so Hayden stayed with us. I was a little nervous having him here because of the possibility of lead paint showing up somewhere, but he has been good at staying out of the kitchen and we haven't had to disturb the old walls to much.

Joey's family is coming here tomorrow to celebrate his dad's birthday. Hopefully they won't mind the mess, or the smaller space we have now with the house in disarray. :)

New Floor

All I can say is I LOVE MY NEW FLOOR. And I also have to say I can not BELIEVE we did it on our own. It was HARD work, but we did it. Now we are going to paint the walls and then take a break for a bit. I would LOVE new counters, but that will have to wait. I also plan to re paint the kitchen cabinets, but that will probably happen slowly this spring/summer.
The kitchen feels way cleaner, considering they built in the fridge, and my guess is it hasn't been moved for 30 years. Same with the huge 50's stove. It was nasty underneath both to say the least.

A random shot of the floor before..... stay tuned for after pics.

I am actually getting a new kitchen floor. I can't believe it. It all started with me doing research and discovering we could get an updated floor ( peel and stick linoleum) for a reasonable price. Joey surprisingly agreed (I thought it would take a lot of persuasion since he only had a few days left of his extended vacation). We went out and bought the supplies, and John and Darliene came down to help us move the oven, fridge, and help us get the floor put in.
As we moved the stove, there was a patch of linoleum missing and Joey said, "look there is hardwood under here". After some detective work by Darliene and me, there actually was hardwood underneath.
Sooooo... we decided that we should rip up the linoleum and glue. We have done some serious back breaking work tearing up the NASTY linoleum, and steaming/mopping up the old glue, but it will be worth it.
We sanded all day today. Joey rented a big sander and got a lot done. It took almost 4 hours in our small little kitchen with the big sander, which surprised us. We spent the rest of the day on the floor with hand sanders. I did a test spot with the polyurethane, and it looks like we won't have to stain it because it matches the floor in the living room and dining room.
Pics to come......
Then we just need to paint the walls, paint the cabinets, get new lights....... :)