March Madness

We look forward to the tournament every year. And every year we are hopeful that our Boilers will go all the way!

We all fill out a bracket, trying to go with reasonable guesses not our heart, well most of the time anyway. Paige loves it! And has won several years. Drew picks the lowest number every time and only has to make a decision as to which number #1 to pick when it gets to the final four and the championship game. This year the winner gets a night to pick the menu for dinner (and if I win, well I was told they would prepare dinner with for me)

So we will see how it goes.

I know we are already to a good start when as soon as we finished filling out the brackets, Drew says "Who won?" Um, it has just begun. Then "M" says, "Is this football?"

No Snow

Well it didn't come. There were a lot of disappointed people. I, however, was NOT disappointed. I will go to the mountains if I want to be in the snow and look up yonder at them if I want to look at it. To most of you who have had snow for a few months now, it probably seems weird to want snow, but when you only get snow once every blue moon or so, it is a novelty. Growing up with it, myself, not so much. Maybe next year.

Rain/Snow Showers

I just checked the weather forecast and this is what it said:

Tonight

Rain/Snow Showers

Low 36

I have never since we have lived here seen that in our forecast. I heard about a snow over 10 years ago, and apparently everything shut down.

This will be interesting.

Not the news I wanted

I received a letter from our social worker a couple of days ago. She had talked to the social worker in charge of our finalization. She sent me a list of the paperwork that was left to be done and the date that the other social worker was giving the court for finalization. She told me earlier in the month that the dates he gives court are usually very accurate. So with anticipation I skimmed the form and found "date of finalization" which read: 11/19/11. Oh, my heart sank. I knew that it would not be early spring, but at least early summer! I haven't broken the news to "M" yet. She is so anxious to be adopted. I know that there will always be a bit of uneasiness until it is official. Why, oh why does it have to be that far away. The only thing left to do is his part which is a child study (whatever that is). But as I have heard before, there are others that have waited longer. At least we have her, so to me there really isn't going to be too much of a difference, but to her, it is a huge deal.

My New Floor!

I mentioned a little bit ago about getting new flooring. This weekend we worked on it and finished the family room, dining room and kitchen. And I love it!!!

Those three rooms are all opened together. The family room and dining room both had carpet, which was in really bad shape. Carpet under a table with kids is really not a good idea. The kitchen had linoleum, that was well, pretty ugly. It was beginning to pull up, so to me that was reason to replace it.

After a lot of thinking and not knowing for sure what I wanted, I started thinking about laminate flooring. Still I wasn't sure when it would be that we would take the plunge and purchase it. Then a couple of weeks ago, after church, a friend (Candace) was telling how they had some water damage on their laminate in the kitchen because of a leak in there roof. There whole house was laminate only 1 year old, but they decided they wanted tile instead, so they decided to pull it all up and sell the undamaged part. She had just listed it on craigslist for $400 for all of it. Another friend (Karen) was wanting to pull up the rug in their living room and was interested and kinda acted first, so I quietly told Candace that if Karen decided she didn't want it, let me know because I was interested.

Well a couple of days passed and Karen's husband calls and says, "hey the laminate is beautiful and in really good shape and I will help you lay it." I was a bit confused and asked why he didn't want it. He then told me that there was plenty for both of us.

So here we are with two homes getting the laminate we were wanting for $400 total. That even included quarter round that hadn't been used, floor transitions, plastic moisture barrier and several unopened cartons of the laminate.

We are so blessed and I am so excited. I love it! Here are a few pics...

Here is the old and the new next to each other.

The dining room.

Working hard and remembering to measure twice, cut once.

Happy Belated Valentines!

I hope that you had a wonderful day yesterday. I am a little late in posting, but that is mostly because I was a bit busy to sit at the computer for any length of time.

Jathan and I celebrated Saturday night with dinner out at Chili's (I love gift cards), a little shopping (now that is something that I don't love to do, but Jathan insisted that I buy a belt since my one and only one fell apart and purchase new running shoes) then we headed over to some friend's house for a game. The game was guys against girls. It wasn't exactly marriage building, but it did help us practice seeking forgiveness from each other. And just to let you know the girls won! To help Jathan's sore feelings we stopped by Coldstone Creamery (yet another gift card) on the way home. That will lift anyone's spirits!

Yesterday, was more of a working Valentines. The kids and I had school. And with it being Jathan's day off he worked really hard at tearing out the carpet and padding and removing/prying off the nail strips. The nail strips were not easy to get up from the concrete, I image they had been there since the 80's when the house was built. Before Jathan was finished he took "M" to an appointment and I took over the job. The other three kids were at a neighbors house, I enjoyed the quiet (except the pounding of the hammer on the concrete and my music blaring) Jathan said he didn't want me to mess with it, but once he left I changed clothes and got to work. As I was working I was formulating in my mind my answer to convince him that it was good I didn't listen to him and did it anyway. I was practicing my "I love you and I wanted to be an encouragement, I enjoy this type of thing, so it was fun, I was careful not to hurt myself" speech. Thankfully when he got home, he was happy on the progress and admitted that he was beginning to get overwhelmed with this project and how he was going to get ready for a bible study on Tuesday and a sermon on Wednesday. So I wasn't in trouble. Jathan's parents sent the kids money to take us out for dinner, so that was what we did in the evening. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa!

In case you are wondering why Jathan was ripping up carpet, we are redoing our floor in the kitchen, family room and dining room. It has been something we have wanted to do for a while, the carpet is quite disgusting (it is under our dining room table, you can probably picture what it looks like) and the linoleum in the kitchen, well, it is an eyesore and beginning to come up. In the midst of figuring out what I want, God blessed us with wood laminate flooring at an amazing price from a friend. When it is all said and done I will show you pictures and share with you more about how we got the floor.

Anyway, I hope you had a wonderful Valentines Day.

Empowered to Connect

One of my favorite blogs to read is one of person I do not personally know, but I sure feel like I do. She has adopted children from the "hard places", she homeschools, and she seeks to follow Christ is all she does. And she is very transparent in all of it. I have found great encouragement from reading her posts about how she is learning along the way. Anyway to get to my point. She (Lisa) posted today about a 1/2 off special on two Empowered to Connect conferences being held in Tennessee and Colorado. Empowered to Connect is a great adoption resource. Also a giveaway of one of Dr. Karyn Purvis' DVDs (from Empowered to Connect). Click here, to check out the giveaway and the 1/2 price on the conference. If you have adopted I really think you would love reading Lisa's blog.