More catch up! This seems to be my life. And I’m not allowed to get up from the computer until this blog post is done. (failed on that one…finishing this morning :)
10/5—Finally! 10pm the night before the new carpet is installed. They are installing it in 2 days. We moved 1/2 of the furniture to one side of the house. Darrin vacuumed it all which is funny cause they’re just throwing it away. 
10/6—Most of the downstairs furniture was in the kitchen so the kids had to eat breakfast in the family room.
The crew got here at 8am and within 5 minutes were ripping up the old carpet. They didn’t waste any time. This is a pic of the family room from the kitchen. Down that hallway is a laundry room and garage to the left, full bathroom straight ahead, and office on the right.
With no pad. This is front room/dining room. After the carpet and pad was pulled up, I had a layer of dust and dirt on everything especially in the kitchen.
Piles of old and new carpet in the driveway. The crew worked all day until about 4pm to get that first half of the house done. The kids were so excited to get home from school to check out the new carpet. They just wanted to lay down and do somersaults on it!
This is the upstairs playroom-finished with the new carpet! Carpet always looks so different in your house than it does on the little sample, so I was worried that I wouldn’t like it. But whew! I love it! It’s a super soft carpet which makes it even better.
The stairs.
We spent the rest of the night moving everything we own to the opposite side of the house. Luckily Chad and Julie and family came over to help us. Boy! were we blessed. It would have taken us HOURS to do what they helped us do in only one hour. I don’t have any pics, but they were rock stars! And although the rooms with the old carpet were cleared out, we were definitely left in a huge mess for the days to come.
10/8—I spent most of the day trying to get our house back in order. There was lots of boxes that weren’t unpacked yet, because we were waiting for the new carpet, so I was able to unpack lots of those. We still worked on potty training, but wore undies under a pull-up. So many Hello Kitty choices!!!
10/10-10/12—As if we didn’t have enough going on, Dumpster Weekend finally came. Dumpster Weekend is when 2 big dumpsters are dropped off in our neighborhood for a weekend so people can throw away junk without having to pay the dump. We had lots of stuff that needed to go to the dump, so I decided to organize it instead of paying the dump fees. It’s something the HOA pays for. I guess you could say it was success, because the dumpsters filled up super fast. By Saturday at 3pm when we got home from soccer, the dumpsters were overflowing and people were starting to pile stuff on the sides. It was out of control. Darrin and Terry (a neighbor) spent the next 3 1/2 hours dumpster diving to make all the junk fit. They cut up furniture with a saw and rearranged things to make more room. Thanks to the scavenger man that rode up on his bike looking for valuable stuff and ended up helping out, they got it all to fit. We locked the dumpsters and prayed no one would dump anything else! Luckily it worked out. I was sooo glad to see those dumpsters go Monday morning. And next time I will just pay the dump fee for my own junk lol.
10/13-10/17—The next week of my life was spent looking and researching a vacuum that would work well on our new carpet. It’s silly I spent so much time this, but I really feel like a nice vacuum will help protect our investment. After some research I went Monday and bought a Shark vacuum at Costco. I put it together and tried it out and could NOT push the thing through the thick carpet. It killed my back to just vacuum the downstairs, and I was afraid it was ruining the carpet. So I began to do a little research on this kind of carpet and the best vacuums to use. I ended up taking the Shark back to Costco and I went to the local vacuum store to ask their opinion about a vacuum. He sold me on a Panasonic vacuum. I brought it home Tuesday and guess what?? I couldn’t push it through the carpet either! I got smart and took a roll of the new carpet with me to the vacuum store. He tried several others that didn’t work and found a few that did. One of which was a 1 year old Kirby vacuum. He let me take it home and try it out for a couple days. I decided it was way to heavy and clunky. I didn’t love it and if I was going to pay a lot, I wanted to love it. So I took it back. That’s when he showed me a Sebo and I fell in love. I bought it (for a super good price) and brought it home and have really loved it and have been using it ever since. I was sooo relieved to find something that I liked and feel is working well to clean the carpet. In the end I learned TONS about vacuums and had no idea there were so many different kinds and brands.
10/16-10/17—Josh went on a over night field trip with his class to a tree farm. They slept in cabins on these super comfy bunks. lol. Darrin went and chaperoned for the night. Josh had so much fun being with his class, being out in nature, and learning a lot about the world around us.
They made these cards with the veins of a leaf. Some bug eats the leaf and not the veins. Josh thought that was pretty cool.
10/17—I may or may not have clogged the kitchen sink twice in a 24 hour period. Sorry babe. Thanks for using your handyman skills to fix it…twice :)
10/18—Soccer pictures!! Gotta love those cute smiles!
10-/20—I took Andrew to the orthodontist for a consult. The dentist thought he might need them sooner rather than later because of the significant crowding in his mouth. The orthodontist said he doesn't like doing 2 step orthodontic work, so we will wait until all his molars come in to start. Whew. I was pleased with his advice.
10/21—I taught preschool. Katie was the only one who came. We had the sniffles so we scared everyone else away. We painted ghosts, played with shaving cream, practiced writing our names, ate goldfish and grapes, and painted gumballs. The 2 of them had a blast!
Some of Luke’s school work.
10/22—Pack meeting. Josh received a few awards. The boys loved playing the dodge ball game that was related to responsibility.
10/23—I worked the book fair most of the day-something I always enjoy doing.
Later that day was cultural night at the school. We had fun eating yummy food from different cultures and walking around the school looking at all the displays the different classes and grades had made. These are a few pictures of the kids art work on the walls…
Love this poem Josh wrote!
And Luke’s poem about Fall.
Ella thought she was pretty cool sitting on this chair in Josh’s classroom.
To top off the night, we watched a martial arts demonstration. The kids liked that a lot. At one point they used loud drums and sticks that were super cool.
10/24—We took the kids to the pumpkin patch. aka Winco. They weren’t too impressed at first, but we had fun in the end when Dad stopped by Sonic for shakes afterwards. Then we came home and finally decorated for Halloween!
10/25—Soccer Saturday!! We had 4 games (Andrew had a double header). The weather was supposed to get rainy and windy so we were holding our breath as to when the storm would roll in. Luke had his last game. The weather was dry and boys did a great job playing hard and winning their last game.
We had a tailgate party after with donuts, hot chocolate, and trophies!
Such a fun little team! Go green lightening bolts!
Then we headed to one of Andrew’s games and the rain began. lol. And then the wind came. It wasn’t the most pleasant soccer weather, but it must not have been too bad because Josh won his game and Andrew’s team won both of theirs. It was a winning day at our house!
10/26—Was the primary program! I’m the primary pianist so I was very much looking forward to this day being over! Everything went great. Luke said part of a poem about the prophet, Andrew sang a song with his class, and Josh was part of a skit about baptism. As the pianist, I was most nervous for the closing song which included a solo, whole congregation singing, and duet with the organ. I was shaking so badly playing my part that I could barely move my fingers. It turned out okay, but I hated feeling so nervous!! Whew I was definitely glad it was over!
This past week has been the first week in a long time that I hardly have anything going on. It’s been super nice to have time to do other things like blog. lol.
10/29—Yesterday the weather was nice aka not raining, so we played with friends at the park. It was scary to think about these kids in a truck in 10 years. Yikes! Don’t grow up Luke!
And why not get a haircut at the park?! I’ve been needing one for months and Lucy had a free 30 minutes so why not??? It was awesome. Hopefully Ella didn’t learned any bad tricks watching me. lol.
So there it is. The month of October in a nutshell.
Happy Halloween!
xoxoxo
