House Update

Grandpa asked if we'd been busy this week while he & Grandma are on mission trip. Sounds like a good time for an update. On Monday, the texture was sprayed in the house. We were up there bright & early to see a sample. It's basically orange peel looking.

Alan's been collecting more troughs for the retaining wall / planters along the back of the house. He's since picked up another 6' oval off Craigslist (not pictured) and drained all of Grandpa's stock tanks. (just kidding, he only drained the one you said we could have)


We've also been enjoying the price war going on in town between the two gas stations. Hey, aren't the owners of this station on Mission Trip this week? I wonder if they know how cheap their gas is... And how sad is that, that I think this is now cheap gas?!?! I also wondered if it could be this cheap now while other places are still 30c higher, why can't it always be that way?

The kids spent the day with Grana & Papa while Dad & I caught up on some paperwork, entering receipts into Quicken, etc. It was a very long day. No wonder I kept putting it off! I also made some yummy bread with my new favorite bread recipe!


On Tuesday, I discovered that Uncle Bubba & Aunt Wee are also out of town. Nobody told us!

Anyway, we headed out almost early to Seconds & Surplus, a huge warehouse store in Dallas that has, well, seconds and surplus building supplies. I hadn't really thought about summer in a huge surplus warehouse. With no air conditioning. With the previous day's high temp at 106*. Boy, was it hot!

They had these huge fans setting around in different places, but it was still miserably hot! The kids & I hovered around the fans while Dad loaded up the stuff. (See David on the other side of the fan?) I felt bad for the employees. It actually felt better outside with the hot wind blowing. Anyway, we loaded up with a lot of baseboard / door casing trim, the office doors, closet doors, and bedroom doors. We saved over $100 over the big box prices, plus the contractor's fee since we picked it up ourselves!


Today was Preschool Music Day again. I forgot to take my camera today, so here's a picture from last time.

After that, I took the Saturn for an oil change and new rear tires. (We keep running over screws at the house.) Then the plan was to take the kids to MawMaw's about 4pm, they'd both* spend the night, and we'd be able to work at the house as late as we needed and start early in the morning.

What really happened? About 2:30 Dad called me saying Mr. Builder had given him a list of things to pick up. Such a large list that he didn't think he could get it all alone. So, I got the kids packed, took them to MawMaw early, and we headed to Home Depot & Lowe's. An unfortunate delay at HD set us back on some time, then there was nobody in Lowe's. No customers, no workers. I've never seen it that vacant. We learned that the call-for-help button gets really annoying when nobody answers it! Finally a guy appeared who didn't know where the stuff was we were looking for & he had to call someone else. I wondered why the guy on the phone hadn't answered the page! When we finally left, we didn't have everything we needed and we were running out of daylight.

The guys started installing the doors & trim today and we're supposed to meet with the painter sometime tomorrow. Now I need to go to bed so I can get out there early in the morning & make up for tonight! I'm scraping sheet rock mud off the floor so it will be smooth enough to lay the laminate. The sheet rock crew wouldn't do it since we have a wooden sub floor in there. They were afraid they'd mess it up. : \

*And I miss Elizabeth. This is her first overnight away from me!