Last week of summer. Where did it go?

We've had a great summer, a fantastic summer. I hate to see it go, but at least it wasn't wasted.

Last May, the last day of the school year at about 3:00 p.m. when I figured we were more or less done, we started removing the doors from the kitchen cupboards to begin our kitchen facelift. It was supposed to be a short (week or two) diversion, the first little thing in a summer of construction.

Nothing ever turns out as it should, does it? It took us most of the summer to refinance, so we still haven't started the three bathrooms that we thought would be the centerpiece of the summertime. But we did get the exterior painted (I love it! even if I did have to sacrifice my shinbones) and the kitchen is so improved.

The last two weekends we've been working on installing the bargain kitchen flooring. It's so beautiful. Our kitchen table is in the piano room which is a minor temporary inconvenience, but will be so worth it. We're just about a half hour from done, but we had to stop early on Saturday because when we pulled up the old flooring in front of the back door to prepare it for the new flooring, we saw the subfloor had quite a bit of water damage. So Emma and I hopped into the Suburban and drove an hour to Home Depot while Blaine and Christian took out the back door and cut out a section of subfloor. When we got home they patched and replaced the subfloor, but all we could do was set the new door (with a window! natural light in my laundry room! oh squee, I love it) in the hole. B had to install that yesterday.




The door is the sort that has a miniblind right in the window, so I never have to dust it and it doesn't bang against the door when the kids slam it. I hope we'll finish the last remaining bit of the floor in spurts in the evenings after Blaine gets home from work this week. The kitchen still isn't done—needs trim around the base, around the windows and doors, but I love it anyway. :)

We're working with a plumber, I believe we'll begin the bathrooms in the next couple of weeks. Lots to do there, and we're doing the bulk of it ourselves—but that was going to be the case even during the summer, if we'd gotten the start we'd wanted to.

We're all beginning school next week. I imagine the swimming pool will have to come down sometime this week—nighttime temps are falling, the water is getting pretty cool, and after school starts the kids won't swim anyway. Oh, I hate to see another summer pass! I love summertime. I love the warmth, and I love the ease in my schedule. But I love teaching the kids, too; Kyrie is crazy excited to get started with kindergarten this year, and of course I need to make the most of the school year with Christian as it's the last year before he follows Emma to the Academy.

We took a trip to Priest Lake for a week, we went camping with my extended family in May, we took a number of day trips up to SLC. The McManii came and stayed with us, and I saw my high school/college friend Janae and her family. Christian was able to take over the job of tugging hoses, setting sprinklers, and keeping the lawn green. Emma and Christian were responsible for all the mowing. The kids kept their bedrooms clean (mostly) and stayed up on their housework jobs (mostly). We've had great vacations and done a lot of hard physical labor this summer. Seriously, it was one of the best. The kids were active, busy, and helpful, and so much got done. I'm happy. I do sort of wish it could continue another three months at least, but there's a sort of magic to autumn and learning and rearranging the schedule to fit in what's most important, as well.

Summer of 2009, you were a great one.

----------------
Now playing: Muse - Uprising
via FoxyTunes

Priest Lake

August 8-16 we went to Priest Lake in northern Idaho with my sister Joan's family. It's the same cabin where we went for Christmas, and it's a pretty darn long drive. The first few days were sunny, gorgeous, and warm, and the cousins had a great time together in the sand and water.

(This is me, showing my sister my back diving technique.)

We rented a boat one day—a day it was cloudy and rainy with brief rays of sun.

Water skiing! I love it so.

The kids loved tubing.
And Libby learned to ski. That's my girl!

The rest of the week was cloudy and cooler.

But it didn't keep the kids out of the water, and every time the sun peeked out from behind the clouds we rushed down to take advantage of it.

Blaine taking Jackson and Macklin out in the kayak.

The swimming dock

The floating island

We had a totally fantastic trip—so relaxing. The kids all got along together so well, and so did the grown ups. What's not to love?

I loved John Hughes

John Hughes, Jr.
February 18, 1950 – August 6, 2009

I remember, wistfully, when teen films were appropriate for teen viewing (unlike, in my opinion, American Pie and other very R-rated stuff). Some Kind of Wonderful was my favorite movie *ever* for a long, long time, and probably four out of the top five favorite movie slots were John Hughes films*. He was the voice of my generation; his films struck a chord with everyone I knew. And the soundtracks rocked—he had fantastic taste in music. Ah, John. John, John, John. I feel like an important part of my youth is gone, never to return.

Here's a lovely, lovely tribute:
http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes.html

* The other film, Better Off Dead, starred a John Hughes discovery, John Cusack.


----------------
Now playing: Cry Like This - Blue Room - Some Kind of Wonderful Soundtrack
via FoxyTunes

< fangirl >

If you click this link, you can listen to Muse's new single "Uprising."
http://uprising.warnerreprise.com/
(Totally reminds me of the Dr. Who theme song.)

I am mad about my music, but I'm a screaming teenage girl about Muse. If I weren't 40 I'd have their Tiger Beat posters all over my room.

Just because they're cute

Ethan and Macklin, doin' their own thing. :)

Push pull click click.

That's what my dad used to say when he meant perfectly, without any hiccups or unexpected things. "If everything tomorrow goes push-pull-click-click..."

So we finally jumped sufficiently through the hoops, and were able to close on our refinance loan on Thursday night. Bathroom renovations, here we come! It's a relief to finally have the qualifying/waiting behind us. And the great thing is now we don't have a mortgage payment due until September, so the money we usually set aside for our big summertime family vacation, which we already spent on the kitchen renovations, now we can get out of our not-due-in-August mortgage payment! :)

I've spent most of this week, knowing we were getting close to closing and funding, looking for kitchen floor options. I've driven hither and yon looking at samples, I've been reading and researching on the internet. Vinyl, tile, and laminate were all contenders, and I was trying to take into account color (obviously), price, how waterproof it is, permanence, and the ease with which we can do it ourselves.

The kitchen facelift, as deliriously happy as I am with it, cost a lot more than we thought it would. Doesn't it always? We were hoping for hundreds of dollars, and it was thousands. So Blaine and I were sitting in our closet this morning (yes, our closet) and we were talking about priorities and how we're going to spend that money and will we have enough to do what we want? All of it? Emma's window? All three bathrooms? What I really want, as you know from my frequent whining, is a new kitchen floor. CARPET SUX. But given that our kitchen cost already way more than we intended to spend, and given that we have a finite amount forthcoming and I'm a huge dreamer, we were talking about if we should have spent those thousands on a floor? We can't get it back now of course, but maybe the floor is out, at least until we get the bathrooms done and see what's left over. Because the point of the refinance and the money is the bathrooms, whatever else I may want and dream about.

We'd just calculated our square footage last night, and determined that at $4/sq ft (which might be an unreasonably low estimate) it would be about $1200 in flooring. So Blaine dressed in his work clothes and got started on a list of chores, and I made breakfast for the kids and then got on ksl.com classifieds. One of the first ads I saw was for laminate flooring. Enough square footage for our needs, used but in great shape, for all of it they wanted $175. It was 120 miles away, but we stopped everything, hopped in the car, and drove there.

Long story short: I have my non-carpet kitchen floor. :) It is lighter than the color samples we were looking at, but it looks great with the paint, cabinets, and counters. It'll take this week probably to install it, but afterward no more carpet! And at a tiny fraction of the amount we thought we couldn't spend on it.

Another ad was for a screen door. Our back door has no screen and we want one. The one we found listed fits our door perfectly, and was $5, instead of the $300 the stores want new. So yay! We brought that home as well, and the glass and the screen are both in perfect shape.

I feel pretty good about today, pretty darn good. :)

----------------
Now playing: Madness - Our House
via FoxyTunes