A whole new room!

Wow! I cannot believe the difference in Acadia's bedroom!!! Not only did we change the flooring, we added beautiful molding around the baseboard and changed the layout of her things. It feels like there is alot more space! Here are some pictures:


Before:



Removing Carpet:



Laying the Underlaying:



Laying the Laminate flooring:



Attaching the last of the molding:



Acadia in her new Princess room:



I had been thinking of getting rid of her old dresser and getting a white one to match the room better. But now that the floor has a cherry tint, the dresser looks great!

Remodeling Update

Tonight we were hoping to borrow an air compressor to start texturing. Since we didn't get it yet, we decided to not waste time and instead we're going to replace Acadia's flooring.


We just pulled the carpet, padding, carpet strips and tons of staples. And I only sat on one:blush:- Ouch!

We found some laminate flooring (like Pergo, but different brand) on sale at Lowes. It isn't a perfect match (it has a cherry tint, the rest of the house is more of a honey oak), but it doesn't really matter. It's a completely seperate room from the rest of the house.

Cadi will sleep in her playroom tonight while Farl, Ryan and I work. When she wakes up, she'll have a new bedroom. I had purchased a little Princess rug to put at her bed, so when she gets up her feet won't be cold. :thumb:

I will post pictures when we're done.

M-U-G spells mug.

I am taking Acadia shopping today. Among other things, she is going to buy her gift for Ryan for Christmas. I am having her think of ideas of what she could give him. And she is writing them down to take with her to refer to.


She is sounding the words all out herself, so they aren't actually spelled correctly. But that is normal and it is good for her to do it by herself, even making mistakes because it is how she learns. But one of the items on her list is mug. After sounding it out, she wrote her word. She got it right! Yeah Cadi!

I know it isn't that big of a deal, but to me it is exciting to see her learning. She has learned great skills to help her read and write on her own. Everyday she is able to do and understand more.

She has also grasped the concept of dates. She said to me a couple days ago, "Today is the 8th, tomorrow is the 9th, the day after that will be the 10th...". She can actually look at a calendar and understand which day it is and visually see ahead.

Learning can be so fun! And watching your child learn is even more fun!

I think they might actually like me.

Last night was my first YW activity in over 11 years! (Man, I'm getting old!:lol:)


We met at the church at 6:30. What I did not realize is that the whole YW and YM have opening exercises together. Cool. The bishopric was there too. I'm told they usually are. I think it's great how much support the youth get from our ward.

So, we had opening exercises then carpooled over to ShareHouse to wrap gifts. I was able to take almost all of my girls there last night. It was great because it gave us time to talk and get to know eachother better.

We talked about favorite colors, school, things they want to do. Emilie wants to be a writer. Her favorite color is red. Kalynn had a hard time choosing a favorite color. She said blue, green, purple...maybe another color or two. This led to singing rainbow and color songs from primary. Lyndel likes The Lord of the Rings and is hoping to get the full box set for Christmas. (I like her!:thumb:)

The actual wrapping was fun too. We were divided into smaller groups and assigned to rooms. Then they brought us boxes of gifts, had us describe them on a piece of paper, wrap the gift, tape the description to the package, then place it back in the box it came out of. Next week we are doing the same thing for a Midweek activity for RS. But I think we might be getting to fill orders for families. (Choosing which gift for each person.) We will do whatever they need the most I guess.

I gave a couple of girls a ride home afterwards. They were Laurels but lived really close to me. Half of my Mia Maids had either parents or older siblings there to ride home with. The girls I took home were great! I had the soundtrack to Return of the Kings in the car, so we talked about The Lord of the Rings most of the way home. Then Harry Potter.

I was so worried that I wouldn't know what to talk about with the girls, but I don't think that will be a problem.

1) They like to talk alot! I don't have to start a conversation because they do that all by themselves!

2) They are great kids who have good interests. They have goals and talents that they like to share.

So I think I might actually be able to do this! I really like the girls in my class. They are fun, sweet, friendly. They seem to really get along with eachother well too. Most of my girls are active. We have a couple that are less-active. And we have one who lives between two parents. When she's here, we get her. Plus we have a deaf girl who attends a deaf branch, but will often join us (with Mom to translate) on Wednesdays for activities because they don't have a YW program in that branch.

I am getting more and more excited about this calling!

Boy, were we wrong!

I posted yesterday about Ryan getting called into the Stake Presidency's office for a new calling. We thought it would be in the Elder's Quorum presidency because of a recent vacancy...


Uh...we were WRONG!!! But I'm not going to post it here because Ryan says I shouldn't tell anyone until Sunday. However, you are welcome to put in your guesses. The only hint I'll give is that it isn't a HUGE deal, just bigger than we expected.

Who is up at this hour of the morning?

ME!


I swear, whenever Acadia gets up in the middle of the night I should just get up for the day and not bother trying to get back to sleep! She didn't even wake me up originally. This time she got Ryan and was getting ice water. But when she was on her way back to bed, I woke up and well...here I am almost an hour later...and in case you couldn't tell, I'm not asleep.

So, I checked e-mail, deleted 21 attempted spam posts, answered a question from an e-bay bidder, ordered a couple of books from Scholastic Books for Cadi (Actually, this time one is for me! :smile:), and after this I think I will read from the Ensign. I'm still trying to finish November's Conference addres issue! I need to hurry, then move onto this months.

But get this! Ryan got a call from the Stake Presidency asking to meet with us tonight! Uh-oh. Well, it can't be me...that leaves him. I said I make it a habit to only change callings once in a week, thank you! We have deep suspicions on what it will be. And its not as scary as any other calling coming from a Stake Presidency would be.

As it turns out, I cannot make it to the meeting because I am scheduled to attend my first YW activity tonight! We are going downtown to wrap gifts for a shelter. They will give us a family list that includes ages of each person and a little wish list. Then we go through the warehouse and select the gifts for each person. Then we wrap them. It sounds fun because you get to actually do the shopping for them. I'm looking forward to it. I hope the girls are.

Well, I'm off to read some good stuff from some good men (and women). Then hopefully I'll fall asleep in time to get an hour or two of sleep before I wake Acadia. I can't just go back to bed after that though - today's a full day! 1st work in the classroom, then dance, then girl scouts and finally YW. Any other sleep will have to wait until tonight.:sleep:

We've brought in the recruit!

Monday morning Ryan's step-father, Farl flew up to help us with our remodeling projects. We are so happy to have him here! This is what they've gotten done so far.


Before:



The framework:



And with the drywall up: