Contractor Hands

Yes, I have contractor hands today - they are rough, they are dirty (even after many washings), they are calloused and they are blistered! But look what I have to show for it!!!

Thursday night Eric mentioned that now would be a good time to paint the part of the bathroom where the toilet is - while it's out of the way. I groaned and told him, "not on your life...." but by Friday morning, I'd changed my mind. So I went to Home Depot and picked out this lovely shade of green "sagey" by Behr (my favorite brand of paint). Friday afternoon, I spent 2 hours painting 2 coats in the "toilet closet", but the end result looked great!!! It definately was much better than having to paint "around" a toilet!

Friday night we installed the "backerboard" underlayment. This is basically an extra layer of hard work - you mortar down some special board (like drywall) to the floor so you can tile on it. We started Friday night (thinking this would be a "quick" job...) and finished Saturday morning at 2:30 a.m.! (And yes, that is my toilet perched in the bathtub!)

Saturday we started laying and cutting - due to all the weird corners and angles we had to work with, we cut and laid out everything before breaking out the morter. It took us 8 hours to cut and layout all the tiles. We then spent 3 hours cementing them all in - boy was that fun (not!) We finished on Saturday night about 11:30 p.m. By the time we got everything put away, cleaned up and showered, we didn't get to bed until 12:30. I was DEAD, considering we'd only gotten about 4-5 hours sleep on Friday night.

In the beginning I used spacers to layout the tiles - but about half way through I gave that up and just "eyeballed" the rest....

Sadly enough, the work is not done - Monday I get to spend my day grouting the tile and then we need to seal the grout. I'm thinking it's going to be at least Wednesday before I have a working toilet and tub again! Not to mention that I'll need to finish painting the rest of the bathroom - now that part is done, it will bug me until I finish it! Hopefully sometime this week I'll have time to do my taxes - I need to know how much $$ from my tax return this project is going to suck up. This project was

about double the cost I anticipated - and we did the work ourselves - can you imagine what it would have cost if I had hired it out!?!

What comes from....

Determination, A #5 combo from Jack in the Box (ultimate cheeseburger, curly fries and dr. pepper), and two and a half hours of listening to Edward and Bella (aka Twilight...)

The ultimate motivator - I don't like having to trapse down the hall at 5:00 a.m. to use the "kids" bathroom - yuck!!!! It always smells no matter how much it gets cleaned!

Now I can spend the rest of the evening watching Lost and folding the 5 loads of laundry I washed yesterday.....

Home Improvement Woes

Several months ago I was in the bathroom while Eric was showering and noticed a steady stream of water trickling down the outside of the shower door and down onto the floor. This part of our bathroom has carpet (another long rant for another time....) and so as soon as he got out of the shower, I began to investigate.... oh crap... we had water damage and a bit of dry rot under the carpet. So, we pulled the carpet and pad back and Eric started digging... he found more water damage than we expected. So, we "panicked" thinking that the damage might extend far under the shower and maybe even have started damaging the ceiling in the living room below. I called a good friend of ours who does Home Inspections and asked him if he could stop by when he was free to look at it for me. He was such a sweetheart - (he lives practically across the street) - he dropped what he was doing and came right over. Thankfully, the damage wasn't extensive and could be repaired very easily and would NOT involve taking the shower out (this was the "doomsday" senario that Eric was invisioning!) So, we plugged the hole with a towel, put the carpet back over and repaired the shower door while we figured out our plan for a long term solution. This is the interesting senario our bathroom presents - part is tile, part is carpet:

We called around and couldn't find anyone that sold the tile to "match" what we already have. So, we finally decided to pull out the existing tile and redo the whole thing in a tile of our choosing. So we went shopping for the tile and found some that we really love. Everyone told us that the area of tile we were removing wouldn't be difficult (about 10 sq feet). So, we started the project on Saturday... maybe these people have never removed tile before.... what a nightmare this has turned into.... it's grueling... and exhausting... and slow.... and words can't express how much we're both hating this job! Eric has spent Monday and Tuesday evenings chipping away at the mortar (it's what's under the tile that's difficult to remove). Last night we tried some "remover" paste, but seriously, that stuff isn't really helping. Good old elbow grease is what's working the best. So, if we can't get the remaining tile out of our bathroom by the end of tonight, our "schedule" will be pushed back enough that we wont' have enough time to install the new tile on Saturday... which means a full week to 10 days without the toilet in my master bedroom. Ughh... So, I'm biting the bullet and I've been chipping away at it all morning.... it's such a mindless, frustrating job that I decided to break out my old mp3 player that still has Twilight (in audio book format) on it and listen to that. It's the only thing that's keeping me going today.... as I sit here and type right now I'm waiting for the battery to recharge just enough to get me through another hour or so of work..... it had the nerve to die on me when I stopped to grab some food and re-fuel! I've decided that Twilight ranks right up there in my book favorites with Harry Potter... I can read (or listen to) it over and over again and not get tired of it at all! Many thanks to Stephenie Meyer for keeping me sane today!

California Here We Come!

Okay, not for 5 weeks and 3 days, but I am excited anyway! We are planning our visit to the "Homeland" for March 14-24.... so all you Rossiter's, Wanlass's, Muller's, McCorkles', Kuenzinger's, Henriksons's, Dayton's, Shane's and anyone else up north, mark your calendars! This will likely be our only visit home for 2008, so you won't want to miss out! (Yes, I know I sound like we are a bunch of celebrities coming to town.... wouldn't that be cool? Unfortunately, we are pretty ordinary people!)

I realize this isn't ideal timing for "spring break" and the cousin's school schedules - every year we have spring break different than everyone else on the planet, but a summer visit wouldn't be much better. Last summer was miserable - we were traveling here and there and everywhere and I just don't want a repeat of that. It's harder to leave the heat in the summertime and then come back to it once you've been spoiled in a cooler climate. I'd rather stay and be acclimated the whole summer and maybe make a fun trip to Lake Powell in July before school starts for our kids.

Public Service Announcement

DON'T FORGET TO VOTE TODAY!!!

If you reside in one of 22 states holding primary elections today, remember to go to the polls and VOTE! I've decided I'm voting for Mitt Romney. The more and more I learn about McCain, the less and less I like him. I know he's my state senator, but I didn't live here when he got elected, so I really don't know much about him. And, I'm confident that McCain will take Arizona, but there are rumors on the web that Romney may pull a suprise victory in California! So, don't sit at home just because you think your vote won't matter. Every vote counts!!!

I've taken the challenge

Taken from http://hinckleychallenge.com/

The challenge has begun!

Make Scripture Reading More Than A Goal.

Make It A Way Of Life!

President Hinckley often stressed our making the Book of Mormon part of our lives. He was 97 when he passed away, and we would like to celebrate his life and teachings by reading the Book of Mormon in 97 days.

Join me in following his teachings by reading the Book of Mormon in 97 days!

President Gordon B. Hinckley on the Book of Mormon:
"I take in my hand the Book of Mormon. I read its words. I have read Joseph Smith's explanation of how it came to be. To the unbelieving it is a story difficult to accept, and critics for generations have worn out their lives writing books intended to refute that story and to offer other explanations than the one given by Joseph the Prophet. But to the open-minded, this critical writing has only stimulated them to dig deeper; and the more deeply they dig, the greater the accumulation of evidence for the validity of Joseph Smith's story. Still, as has been demonstrated for a hundred and fifty years, the truth of the Book of Mormon will not be determined by literary analysis or by scientific research, although these continue to be reassuring. The truth about the origins of the Book of Mormon will be determined today and tomorrow, as it has been throughout the yesterdays, by reading the book in a spirit of reverence and respect and prayer."( "Praise to the Man," Ensign, Aug. 1983, 4)

If you haven't been to the website yet, click on the link at the top of this post. You can sign up (free) and track your progress. It looks like a fun way to stay motivated and finish the Book of Mormon in a quick amount of time! I was telling Eric that my stragety is going to be to read one of our navy blue paperback versions, and treat it like I would a novel. He said, "well, that should be easy. Just get into it like you would Harry Potter and you'll have it done in a week!"

I've decided that if I'm going to make this happen, blogging will be the reward at the end of the day when I've read my quota.... ya'll know how blogging can waste away an hour (or more...) without a blink of an eye..... so if I post another blog later today, you can assume, I've done my reading! (Should be easy today, no commitments, no energy, and lots of rain outside.....)

Megan's First Concert... Sort of.....

With Hannah Montana concert tickets running in the hundreds of dollars, we decided to do the next best thing - the Hannah Montana 3D Concert Experience! My good friend, Tammy, and I decided to try to get tickets for this yesterday afternoon once we realized it was only going to be in theaters for one week. Most places were sold out through the entire weekend, but we found one new theater that still had tickets available. We bought them through Fandango, got dinner and sitters for the boys and headed out the door 45 minutes later!

We drove up the freeway to the Mesa Riverview center (for those of you who visit the Scout Shop, you'll know where this is!) We grabbed dinner at Chick Fil-A and headed over to the theater. We were so lucky to get seats in the 4th row (from the front!) This is when you DON'T want front row seats! The concert was fun and the girls LOVED it, but I was sitting next to the most crazy Hannah Montana Fan in existence. She was screaming, singing, and basically going crazy the entire time. I kept looking around, and no one else in the theater had the same enthusiasm that she did. She couldn't have been more than 10-12 years old.
Here's the girls getting their photo taken with Hannah after the concert - fun, huh????

It was nice to be able to go and enjoy a fun concert with Megan - I have to say that Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus is (so far...) a fantastic role model for girls. Let's just hope she doesn't follow the same path as Brittney Spears and Lindsay Lohan as she gets older!