Sweet friends commented how they'd miss my posts. Talk about feeling the love, people! Sweet. You made me smile. Truly. Thus, I decided to update the blog more often. This is my first edition of The Collins Monthly. And yes, I will post the link to Facebook, but I will not check the comments at all. The comments section is open below if you should want to leave a few kind words.
January can be summed up in 1 word: chaos.
Right after Christmas, I began painting our lower level guest room to turn it into Super C's new teenage bedroom. Paint is cheap, easy and quick, but with working 6 1/2+ hours a day at the office, coming home to make dinner, do laundry, clean house, there wasn't much time on my docket for home improvement. Of course, once I had the ceiling painted a fresh bright white, our friend who was going to start our upper level flooring project called and announced he'd be starting that very next week. So, I had to rush my paint job so that my whole house wasn't a construction zone. The room isn't quite ready to reveal yet as there is more to do to give this room some personality, but here is a sneak peak at Super C's teenage bedroom.
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| Walls are a very light grey. He picked the bedding out from Walmart. The set didn't come with a bed skirt, so I'll have to do something there to make that look nicer. |
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| He bought his own TV, just like I did when I was 13 and was allowed a TV in my bedroom. I still have to finish the 1 cabinet door for that dresser. Nice photobomb by Reese. |
Then, our long awaited flooring project began and we finally said goodbye to an entire floor of 20-year-old carpet and hideous bathroom linoleum. We chose a wood-looking tile from Menards and our friend who flips houses did the install for us. It took him about 2 1/2 weeks, which was quite long. It also took twice the budget (like house projects tend to do) so now we save to rebuild the saving account a little before saving up for the next house project. But at least we know it was done right and oh, it was so worth it! The floors are GORGEOUS!
But for 2 weeks, all of us were living downstairs: Quiet Tiger slept on the floor of Super C's new lower-level room, Super C and Super E slept on air mattresses in the living room, I slept on the couch and Jay slept in Super C's new teenage bedroom/former guest room. We each had 1 laundry basket of clothes and we all shared the 1 downstairs bathroom. Dogs were kenneled in the basement while workers were here and during the night, so that they didn't disturb the drying tile upstairs. The house was a HUGE dust bowl for 2 1/2 weeks. Dust everywhere was so thick you could write your name on my tables and shelves. I won't even discuss the floors as the workers tracked dust all over the place. But like I said, oh so worth it! We LOVE, LOVE, LOVE our new tile floors!!!!!!!
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| Close-up of our new tile floors! |
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| Super E's Room. |
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| Quiet Tiger's Room. |
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| Upstairs kid's bath. |
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| Master bedroom floor. |
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| Master bath floor before bathmat. |
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| Even closets were tiled! |
On the school front, the boys were still doing homeschool on their own while I'd been at Jay's office. I have 1 week left of work before Jay's assistant comes back from maternity leave. What started out as about 5 hours in the office per day has now increased to about 7 hours a day. It's a busy office and there's no way the job can be done on part-time hours. I'm excited for Jay to have his BOA back and I'm excited to return to the home to teach my boys. I've missed them so and I know they've missed me. During my absence, Super C has finished Algebra I and Super E has finished 5th Grade Math. They'll enjoy a few days free of math until I return home. Quiet Tiger continues to learn in public school, but we've had some ugly issues pop up at school too. I'm not ready to go into detail yet, but it hasn't been pretty and we're now dealing with new insurance and trying to get her the help that we need. Prayers appreciated because the timing of all this just wasn't good, and frankly, as her mom, I'm just toast. So more than over all this stuff.
We celebrated Chinese New Year with friends both local and 1 family from Chicago who came up to visit. The Mall of America put on a CNY event and we spent a few hours downtown making crafts and listening to Asian music. It was quite wonderful, but we did miss the lion dance at the end. The next day we had our visiting friends over to our dusty, construction zone for lunch. I made fried rice that didn't turn out half as good as it usually turns out. But the sweet and sour chicken and beef lo mein were good. Quiet Tiger had fun playing with her friend A and my boys had fun hanging out with A's big sister E in the basement playing Minecraft, Nerf and video games.
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| All dressed up for The Year of the Rooster! |
We wrapped up the month taking a client and her daughter to a show at the Guthrie. We saw The Royal Family which was quite good and lighthearted. Just what we needed after a chaotic month.
Thanks for staying in touch and be sure to visit for the February edition of The Collins Monthly.
