Rest for the Weary?

Now that the whirlwind "wedding Bonanza week" is over, and all the family have gone home to their various states we're hoping that we can get back to some semblance of normalacy.

It was so nice having G'rats family so we could enjoy all of the wild childs. We got to watch them one night so that G and J could have a date night. Something they don't get to do too often. It was nice having g'ma A and CYEIEIO visiting at our house and leaners.

A trip to the zoo, the Grand Canyon, the Botanical Gardens made for one crazy week. But other than being exhausted we really enjoyed spending time with family. Only one thing wrong in it all and that is that our bear wasn't able to be here.

How great it is to have kids that actual seem to enjoy each others company and want to share in each others lives. It was also great having extended family that showed up early to help get the food together and then stayed til the end to help clean up.

Don't know what we would do without all of you and want everyone of you to know how much we love you and wish that everyone could have been with us as we welcomed the newest member into the Carter family.

Bath Party

Last night we threw a bridal shower for SLO of course Rhayn got quite excited and asked her mom if it was going to be a Bath Party like we had for Meh Meh before Madders was born, pretty good for a 5 year old.

Ten minutes to seven and three people had dropped gifts off and told us they weren't going to be able to come. We were all a little worried that we wouldn't have anyone there. Rhaynnon was assigned the job of answering the door and taking the gifts to the gift table, she took her job quite seriously. At seven there was only the immediate family and a next door neighbor. Not too great of a turn out, but in typical MST fashion (and that isn't Mountain Standard Time) the rest of the party started arriving at promptly 7:10. There were over 25 people there and after games we opened gifts. After the gifts we had our traditional Costco Cake, which Rhaynnon helped serve.

SLO recieved a lot of really good gifts, nice things that she can use around the house, including measuring cups and a cookbook. She also received some fun stuff to decorate the house with and a big fluffy bath towel. The most exciting gift may have been the candy bra, which the

bride to be modeled for us after most of the guests were gone. According to the package it is a 30 serving bra. Hairball also gave her the great gift of chocolate body paint, which she informed us was quite good. We all told her that that was WAY too much information.

One thing leads to another

A week ago Monday I went to Mesa to meet Jesse to help him buy meat for the wedding. I planned on buying paint to redo my big bathroom. It has been purple for over 3 years and wanted to spruce it up. Jesse went home and I continued doing a little shopping. Jesse called and asked if dad had called and told me about the water leak in the little bathroom. He hadn't so I called home and decided I better get home to find out what was going on.

Apparently the moisture build up in the bathroom had nothing to do with 6 adults taking showers. There was a hole in the ceiling and a very visibly broken pipe. Craig was covered with dust when I walked into the bathroom and he told me that it looked like he would stay home over the weekend and work on the bathroom while we went to Safford to Jason's play. I told him that I would have to stay home with him and work on the other bathroom and we could get a lot done. We would send the kids with G'ma and have the house to ourselves.

He turned off the water to that part of the house, which meant we could use the other bathroom, and kitchen but no hot water, no laundy. We walked across the street to Jva's apartment for showers. Did dishes by boiling water so it wasn't too bad. The laundry piled up, but only for one week.

In the meantime, Jesse took his dining room table over to his apartment and Brie tried to clean the really antique linoleum. What we found is that part would clean nicely and part was really bad. So we decided to retile over the existing floor. We bought 250 square feet of tile and on Friday night we redid the floor. Did you know that when you get older crawling around on the floor can leave you sore the next day? We finished around midnight, and then we looked at our new floor and realized that the counter- which was really gross before- now looked even worse.

On Saturday we got up and moved all the furniture out of the living room to try and polish the wood floor. The kids and g'ma left so we cleaned and polished the floor then went to the local home depot (20 miles away) to buy base board to put around the entire room. As we were driving we both decided that maybe we should go ahead and buy a new countertop. Not the tile one we had planned on putting in, but a laminate one since anything would be better than what we have. We checked on delivery time for a countertop and found out it would take over 2 weeks. So we walked over to the tile and decided that we should take the plunge and lay the ceramic tile. Long story short is they didn't have the tile CLA liked so off to the new Lowes in Chandler.

By the time the kids walked in the door Sunday, after a fun time at a play and then geocaching in the Gila Valley, we had the tile complete (except for the grout), the bathroom back together the furniture ready to put back in the living room. We worked more than we rested and since the weather was perfect we just opened up the house and got so much accomplished. The big bathroom did not get repainted, it still has purple cabinets (which isn't as gross as it sounds). We did get a new shower curtain and took down the flowers from Elise's wedding.

Now we have one week to finish the wedding preparations and do a little touch up, clean up around the house.