The House, The Mouse, The Kids

Well, it has been quite a while since I've posted. Some updates from the last month:

The House:
Let's see - we've passed the electrical and plumbing inspections - yea! and Pete finished tiling and grouting the floor of the upstairs bathroom. I got pretty excited when I heard that Chad was coming over to set the toilet upstairs now that the tiling was done. If you remember the downstairs toilet requires a bucket of water for flushing. I did not realize that we were not setting the tank (need to wait until the walls and trim are done.) So - still using the bucket. But Chad did hook up a hose so we don't have to run two floors down to the basement to fill the bucket.

The big project this week was hanging drywall. My job was the "getter". I would get the tool belt, get the light or get a pop for Pete. After a while I was promoted to assistant driller. Luckily Pete is pretty smart and knew about a critical tool called a drywall jack (yellow thing in the first picture). I did not realize just how heavy sheets of drywall are. And with 13' ceilings in the dining room, I don't know how we would have done it without the jack.

On Friday I spent a good chunk of the day scraping wallpaper since Pete's dad was helping with drywall in the dining room. We are down to the original plaster in some parts of the hallway - Pete was the first to uncover this cool paint/stenciling detail. We thought for a minute about repeating it when we paint. But we decided against it.

So still more drywall to do. then we will hire someone to mud and tape. The we will be painting 'till the end of time. We also have the kitchen floor to tile, cabinets/doors to sand and paint, doors and trim to sand and paint and figure out if we will refinish the hardwood or carpet the living/dining room. It will probably come down to how much cash we have left. We are hopeful that it can be available for rent on May 1. If we keep things moving along, we might be able to start listing it in early March. We'll see....

The Mouse

Good news here. There was a showdown a few weeks ago. Pete went into the bathroom before bed one night and I heard what I can only describe as a ruckus. Apparently he had the mouse cornered and was able to "exterminate" the little guy with the Clorox wipes container (and then the wipes came in handy for clean up.) So we have not seen another mouse since this incident. So either there was only one (not likely) or word got out about the mouse hunter....

The Kids

Christmas was great at our house. The threat of Santa only bringing toys to good girls was lost on Wynne. She told me that "Santa brings toys to all the PRETTY girls, mom!" Apparently this is line from the Charlie Brown Christmas. Kind of sad - she is only four and has figured out that you don't have to be good, just pretty, and you will still get what you want. We did get her the Play Dough Ice Cream Shop. We broke it out and I was the assistant ice cream maker. I had some questions about what kind of sprinkles to make and Wynne said "less talking, more selling, mom". It is kind of hard to correct sassy behavior when you are trying not to laugh.

Emmett's love for food has expanded. He is now demanding pizza (PEEE-TA!) and has figured out how to climb on the kitchen chairs to swipe food from the table. I expect he will soon climb out of his crib to fix himself some eggs in the morning. That will make things a lot easier on us. Emmett is also very sweet and loving. He is very generous with the open-mouthed, drooly baby kisses and almost never bites you now (before it was hit or miss - sometimes you would get a kiss - sometimes a chunk of your face was gone.) He also loves to give hugs and will hug any baby or dog that he can get his hands on.