a life beyond running shoes.

here is dennis finishing the dining room ceiling and our new light fixture. mom got the kitchen ceiling painted.... walls are all prepped for some color! we had finished all the trim on wednesday during nap time. de nnis cleaned windows and scrapped the old paint off the trim.... that was a serious job... and he hates doing windows! and john got the kitchen painted. phew. we are not sure if we love the color.... i may need to call in some decorating help to figure it out. it blends with the cabinets..... we'll wait until we can get all the canisters organized and off the counters to decide.

mom and dennis are here in work mode. here is the recap from thursday and friday. we got the dining room wainscoting sanded & painted. hall & bathroom light fixtures changed out..... i should put a picture up of the old ones but i didnt' want to waste my time... they are gross. got the boys room painted. daddy did that. it is orange..... better pictures later. more work for saturday....more painting, more light fixtures, and some window cleaning.

here and there we keep getting things done. this past weekend g'pa & g'ma were back up.... he replaced the window in the bathroom. the night light with sensor now registers when it is day. john primed the kitchen with a little help from the three-year-old. and last night started painting the trim..... half of work crew #2 arrived sunday....my mom. she is prepped and ready to paint.... we'll try saturday. today she helped me unpack three more boxes, use animal urine enzyme cleaner (for the third time), and got me some running shoes. not bad for a days work. and we keep pressing on.

here is our very, verbal three-year old. and our less-than-verbal-but-still-communicative 18 month old in the background.

my husband is a busy little bee. he was out of town last week and before leaving got a few things done in the house. i tried posting last week but was having trouble. forgive the delay. the boys room..... wall finished. floor sanded & painted. carpet down. beds up. toys creeping out of boxes. air conditioner installed. inside front door painted. (we have two front doors) new bathroom door.... new as in found in the basement. painted, shaved, and installed. it used to be green....lovely. john's office... painted. carpeted with carpet tiles. books on shelves. desk up. (okay, so i was the busy bee and did all that while he was out of town two weeks ago with help from friends)

considering our life of recent, we have not seen many movies. but the two that we have seen have been worth a comment. lars and the real girl. premise is strange and somewhat intimidating to risk renting.... but really quite worth it. lars orders a life-size doll off the internet. shockingly, there is nothing sexual about it in the movie. i found the film to be touching and sweet as the community surrounds him as he works through his delusion of her being real. once . a modern day musical. really! the movie is about 60% music. i loved it. my romantic fantasy of being sung to on a street corner by a brooding heart broken song writer. beautiful songs, sparse script but engaging story that houses the music perfectly. i absolutely loved the music.... like one long music video that doesn't drive you mad because it sucks. we watched some of the extras on the dvd and learned that the actors had written the songs. it made me like it more because they were musicians that tried to act in...

having finished up my semester, turned in my grades, i look back and realize i read two whole books on the subway. for some of you that may not seem all that impressive but consider how rarely i am on mass transit by myself, it is remarkable. truth & beauty : tragic from the beginning. but compelling none the less. the story of a friendship between to authors. i am curious to read the biography of ann patchett's friend. i do enjoy her writing and loved bel canto . in a sunburned country . most enjoyable, laugh out loud on the subway, makes me want to visit australia again with new eyes. i loved it. the secret river . our most recent book club book. turn of the century australia. interesting. all agree we enjoyed her writing style. not much discussion but i find that to be true with books that we all like. so, i didn't read this on the subway, but i did read in a week in part because my husband was out of town last week. also, i got my nap times back (no papers to ...