The Great Crazy: Week Five

Sunday: Mercy made it all the way through Sacrament Meeting today. We Skyped, napped, and ate some dinner. It was a much needed day of rest.

Monday: I mowed/edged the lawn and weeded the driveway. It was the first time I have mowed with Mercy around, and she just followed along at a safe distance, neither scared nor overly fascinated. After her nap, she and I went to Meijer for paper plates and some pre-prepared meal options. Matthew will be putting in the new kitchen counter and I won't be able to prepare food or clean dishes for a week. In the evening I went through our lock box and threw out about half it's contents. Matthew finished the shelves for the upstairs vanity, installed and patched the molding in that bathroom, and started piecing together the kitchen counter. The boys spent several hours protesting cleaning their room. It ended up taking them most of the day to pick up a pile of dirty clothes and a few plastic dinosaurs. For Family Night, Hyrum gave a lesson on being nice, Abraham had us play a rousing game of indoor tag, and Dad dished up bowls of orange sorbet for the treat.

Tuesday: I cleaned the house, primed the molding and vanity, the packing assesment lady came, I cleaned out the refrigerator, we called and reserved temporary housing in ABQ, Matthew talked to a loan pre-approval company as well as a realtor in ABQ, I sanded the molding and vanity doors, Matthew sprayed the vanity and I hand painted the molding, our home teacher came over and helped put up the new siding around the porch, and in between all this I made some meals and Matthew continued work on the kitchen counter.

Wednesday: Matthew stayed up until 4:00 am last night (this morning) so I got up with the kids and did odd jobs while attempting to keep them quiet so their dad could sleep in as long as possible. He mostly worked on the counters today, though we did finish painting the vanity and the bathroom walls. I did some sanding, took Abraham and Mercy for a walk, and cleared off the existing kitchen counters and under the sink (which involved fun tasks like cleaning out the toaster oven). 

Thursday: We finished the bathroom today. Matthew also finished making the kitchen counter. He took out the old one, along with the sink, so we are officially no longer cooking, probably for the rest of the time we are here. I emptied the kids' rooms so they are ready for new carpet, and then spent the rest of the day doing odd jobs like cleaning window tracks and the storm door. Mercy and I did some shopping and we set up the bounce house for some afternoon entertainment.

Friday and Saturday: Matthew stayed up past 5:00 am last night. He finished putting most of the upstairs bathroom back together and worked on sanding the kitchen counter. I was up with the kids at 8:00 and started working on the long list of things to finish. At 10:00 pm, our to do list looked like this:

light switches and outlets
toe kick in kitchen and bathrooms
wash windows
touch up paint in kitchen and bedrooms
clean off computer desk
light bulbs
linen closet door
toilet
vanity doors
vent under bathroom vanities
mow, edge, trim lawn
freshen mulch
sweep porch
clean driveway
wash floors
put in carpet
put kid furniture back
take boxes to recycle
clean bedroom
install kitchen counter and sink
mirrors in bathrooms
clean laundry doors
clean downstairs bathroom
transition pieces at doors
tidy living room
sweep and buff stairs
towel rack in upstairs bathroom
rinse outside of house
door knob on bathroom door
smoke detector in hall

Matthew went to pick up the carpet from Home Depot around 8:00 pm. The guy cut the pieces he wanted wrong and in so doing ran out of the cheaper stuff, so they gave him some nicer carpet for the lower price. He got it home and both pieces were too small, so he had to go back across the river and have them try again. I put the boys to bed on the couch downstairs and we started installing the first piece in their room. This was around 10:30 pm and we worked straight through the night until 10:00 am when the realtor arrived to take pictures and go over paper work. It truly was a miraculous feat that we finished everything we needed to, and without a moment to spare. She was here for over an hour, then after she left we went to Mary Lou's for some birthday doughnuts. Mercy mercifully went down for a nap after a quick lunch and Matthew and I were able to sleep for a couple hours while the boys watched awesome cartoons from the 80's like Sonic Underground and Super Mario. In the late afternoon we walked over to the Smith's for their kids' combined birthday party. We stayed until nearly 7:00 pm and I was hoping the kids would go to bed early, but alas. Mercy screamed and fussed until 9:30 pm and the boys were restless as well. Matthew let them stay up and watch RoboCop, the free Red Box movie he got for my birthday (there were slim pickings). I was too tired to pay attention to a movie I wasn't interested in though, so I went to bed.