With a little help from our friends...

Tyler and I enlisted the help of our very generous, very awesome friends and neighbors this weekend to make substantial progress on the home front. Tyler spent all day Friday tearing out the carpet and dragging it to the dump. (You'd be surprised by how much you can load in and on top of an Outback). Matty and Tyler spent Friday night ripping out the remaining staples - a job made more tolerable with a couple of Blue Heron beers.

With the stinky carpet off the premises - the house smells remarkably better. Our very own smell tester (Ellie) showed her approval by willingly stepping inside the house. Previously, she preferred to remain on the front porch. She has an incredibly sensitive nose...I'm wondering if there is a way to harness this talent for profit. Ideas anyone?

Sky Stewart arrived from Port Townsend with his son River in tow as a playmate for Ellie. I was again placed on child duty while Sky, Matty, and Tyler tackled plumbing and electrical issues and repaired walls. Meanwhile, the kids and I hit up waterfront park and the fudge shop, made a picnic lunch, put together a few puzzles, took naps, baked cookies, and watched part of Wall E. I'm telling you - rough day.

Sara and Matty invited us over for pizza and sports on Saturday night. I proceeded to make an ass of myself by explaining to Ellie that we were going to watch a basketball game while dining. Imagine my surprise when we tuned in to men with pads and helmets. What season is it anyway?

This morning Sara and I took the kids on a run to the beach while Tyler worked on painting the floor with Kilz. (The fact that it appears through this post that I am exerting minimal effort towards house issues is not lost on me. However, the intense damage that I am preventing by keeping Sam away from any ongoing projects must be given its due credit. More on that to come.)

Ellie helped Tyler remove...um...some heater cover things? not really quite sure what to call them...from the wall after our run and then we headed back to Fir Acres Drive. After Tyler finished "Kilzing" the floor, we dropped Sam off at the Otepkas for a play date and headed to Home Depot. We ordered counter tops, picked out a toilet (we opted against both the wooden toilet seat and the pink toilet seat that were Ellie's top choices), and purchased new door knobs and door handles.

My favorite part of the outing was catching Tyler in the tool aisle surrounded by four - yes four- sales associates with boxes of drills and saws piled at their feet. Two of the associates were pretending to drill phantom holes in the wall in demonstration. I'm not sure what they were attempting to illustrate - proper holding technique? - while the other two eagerly talked over one another to discuss the finer points of tool maintenance. Tyler looked like a kid in a candy store (and believe me, I know the look - I just took three of them to the fudge shop yesterday). "They're having a sale!" was about all he could muster. I left him there and took Ellie to the demo counter stations. When Tyler caught up to us he had three items in his cart. "You have to spend $300 to get $75 off, so we definitely needed the extra drill!" he assured me. I agreed wholeheartedly, not only because Ty will undoubtedly use these tools for years to come and he is doing an amazing job on the house, but also because this logic is going to serve me insanely well come the next major sale at my favorite shoe store on the island. Yes!

Tyler spent the rest of Sunday installing the new toilet, mulling over new closet doors, sinks, and faucets, and spackling a few more walls. I spent the rest of the day catching Sam in several destructive acts. He found a red pen in Ellie's box of art supplies and scribbled all over the couch cushions, he ripped open the bag of M&M's I had in my purse as an emergency pick-me-up for the extended Home Depot outing and scattered them across the floor, and he attempted to dump a handful of his rice from dinner into the heating vent before I caught him (I swear he stowed it in his cheek while I was taking him down from his high chair). I write about Sam's indiscretions only to prove that my efforts to entertain him away from the ongoings at 201 Ihland Way are also worthwhile.

A couple of big weeks ahead for us - wall cleaning, outdoor painting (forgot to mention in the post that the house was pressure washed on Saturday), deck staining, indoor painting, and carpet installation. We are so excited to have this project done! It is going to be beautiful!