Emily has a friend coming over to play tomorrow. So, first thing off the bat this morning she announces she needs to clean her room.

OK WELLL... knowing that Emily is truly my daughter I knew that she wouldn't be able to think of anything else but cleaning her room once her mind was fixed on it.

So.....

I started Bran on some school work and went in to help her get her room straighten to her satisfaction. I was hoping against all odds that this would relieve her mind so I could get her to concentrate on school work afterwards...

During about 15 mins. into the work this is just a few of the things said to me:

"No, MOM that doesn't go there."
"MOM, that goes to the other castle."
"No, we are going to play with that, leave it out."
and my personal favorite...
*heavy sigh* then.....
"MOM, don't you know I want it to look pretty!"

I have capitalized MOM because she said it real snotty like that.

After all this lip I decided I obviously have NO idea how to clean up a 5 yr old's room and left her to it. It appears clean to me now, but she is still in there making final touches. May be one day when she has the patience she will take the time to teach me the proper way to clean.

I am AWESOME!!

OH, OK so is Brandon.

I love building things. OH, the sense of accomplishment! OH, the joy of success. OH, the happiness of showing your husband you can figure out things that he can't and that YES you can do it without him!

In the land of 3 guinea pigs in one small cage there was much trouble. A tad bit of fighting it seemed. So, I was given an extra cage exactly like the one I already had and separated them. OH, the pain and anguish this caused the little dears! They chewed and chewed on the wire between them. They wanted to be together. I really think it was just the small space that drove them to fuss with each other. So.....

I took to two solid metal bottoms and drilled five matching wholes down one side of each and took bolts and wing nuts and bolted them together. This made a little 1 1/2" ledge they have to hop over. Just to be safe I used a wrapping paper tube slit down the side to slip over the ledge to make it a smooth transition from one cage bottom to the other.

Next I took the two wire tops and cut a side out of each one. I left extra wire on one side to wire the two together. Brandon was a lot of help here. Neither of us really had the hand strength to make this an easy job. So, I’m really glad I had his help. I guess this could count as a shop class credit?

The result was a cage twice the size of the original and very happy guinea pigs! When we put them back in they started popcorning. This is a cute little jump they do where they kind of just pop up into the air booty first.

Any way it was great to see them happy again. Also Bran is really proud of the work we did together to make such a nice new cage. He had me take pictures to post.

Laying carpet seems like a simple enough thing, right? You move a little furniture, roll out padding, roll out carpet, and put the furniture back. Simple. Well, I don’t do simple. See my grandparents had a wood burning stove that wasn’t set up correctly when this was their house and because of that our ceilings were stained and covered with soot. Well, actually when we moved in everything was but we had cleaned and painted everything but the ceilings. I decided while the furniture was out of the living room we should paint the ceiling. Since our living room is fairly large I had divided into a living area and a dining area. However, with carpet in the living room I decided I was going to have to move my school room into the living room and move my dining set back into the dining room. So, a one day job became a four day job.

Then I don’t know if I mentioned this but this is gently used carpet given to us by and older couple so we didn’t exactly go out and buy just the right measured amount for our living room. The end result was that we didn’t have enough for every inch of the room. So we have a hallway from our front door to our back door. This in the end turns out perfect, because now all three doors coming from the outside come in on linoleum before you ever step on the carpet. We still have to go get some new linoleum (our current flooring is 20 years old, doesn’t match anything in the room and is u-g-l-y) and we need to get a long transition bar from where the carpet goes to linoleum. I used some of the left over pieces of carpet to make a rug in front of each door and used double sided tape to hold them in place. My biggest concern was that I always sweep up so much sand and dog hair and now it’s going to be all in the carpet… Well, as I’m behind on blogging about this the carpet has been down a week and a half. I vacuum it daily. I know I’ll slack off when the newness wears off but oh well. Oddly enough all the floors seem to be staying cleaner, less sandy, etc. I think the little mats by each door are making a world of difference. Who knew it could be so easily solved?

The dining room looks so nice as an actual dining room. We had stopped eating as a family at the table together every night, but have reinstated that tradition since the change. It has been really nice. I was also really surprised by how homey-er the living room looks with carpet. But the biggest surprise is that we’ve always just used the school room to hold our school supplies but now it is actually functional and we use it every day.

Our FREE carpet ended up costing us supply money to get it laid, plus we paid a neighbor to show Cecil how to lay carpet, then the paint that I added in, then we still have to buy new linoleum to match, BUT I think it has made many well worth it improvements to our house and family.

I have been tagged by my friend Ladyhawk, which is good because I've kind of slacked off on blogging!

THE RULES: Each player of this game starts with the ‘7 weird things about you.’ People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 7 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 7 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.”

1) I love lemons! I cut them in half pour on the salt and go to town. However, I don't like anything lemon flavored. No cookies, cake, pie, nothing will do but real lemon with salt.

2) I have a habit of saying bold when I mean bowl. I don't know why I add a "d" I just do. I also drag out aluminum and cinnamon. alummmmmminininummmmm LOL

3) I don't feel like doing housework until sometime around what is considered bed time. Then I get a huge burst of energy and a consuming desire to move furniture and scrub things.

4) I've found teaching phonics challenging because I've discovered that I mispronounce so many words and trying to pronounce them right is almost painful.

5) I'm a compulsive talker or nervous talker, whatever you want to call it. When I catch myself blabbing on… the more I try to stop… the more I go on and on and on and on and on.....

6) I have traffic issues. I can't stand multiple lane highways, overpasses, bridges, road construction, etc. And I don't mean I get irritated by them or road rage, I mean I hyperventilate and have a huge urge to jump out of the vehicle.

7) Once I start something I can’t stand to stop until it is finished. It doesn’t matter if it is reading a book or painting a room, what ever the project is I WANT IT DONE, I WANT IT DONE ALL AT ONE TIME, I DON’T WANT TO PUT THINGS UP AND FINISH IT TOMORROW OR LATTER, I WANT IT DONE NOW! Now, I can put doing things off forever…but once I start I want it done and nothing else exists until it is done!

OK now ya'll know. The secret is out. I'm weird!

Well today is the day. Back to school after the long Christmas break. I tried my best to get the house clean from all the holiday stuff before we went back to work, but then a neighbor gave us their carpet! So now I have this huge roll of carpet and carpet padding in the living room floor until next week when Cecil says he’ll lay it.

We had a great break and I made sure to spend a lot of vegetable (umm….err is that valuable) time with the kids. We played board games, had a fire, popped fireworks, made cookies, set up a bed in the living room and camped out there with snacks and movies. (nope that is definitely vegetable time) But today is back to work day.

How are we doing? Well, since our bed times are shot both kids were still up to around 1-2 AM. This means I was up until 2 AM. However, despite that I got up when DH got up to go to work. I woke Bran up about 30 minutes later and Em up an hour later. I had Bran eat, walk the dogs then do about 20 minutes of exercise to get him going. So far he has done Bible and started his new Saxon 65 (thanks Carmen). He is about to start his history assignment for the day after that I imagine we’ll have to break for lunch.

Emily has drawn a few pictures this morning while I read to her. We read The Story of Exodus, Dr. Seuss’s ABC, Ira Wordworthy, and Puddle’s ABC. Then she did a few pages in her HWT. After that she promptly announced she was tired, crawled into my lap and I’m now typing around her little body in my lap!

Not a bad start I guess. Well, I better get off and get to working with Brandon on his History.