Long recap of my last two weeks

So, I need to catch up a bit. The week before this one, I was a bad wife to a husband who really really needed to focus on school, and started two projects...one on purpose, and one accidentally.

The on-purpose one was to paint the wall behind my piano in my front room. I thought about having it all done before Brett got home, but of course, it needed to be fixed up a bit before it was painted, so I waited for Brett. It looks beautiful-a grayish green, and I can't wait to paint the rest of the walls--I think a brownish/beige color.

The next project just totally snowballed. While I was at Lowe's buying paint, I decided to look at the bathroom mirror/cabinets, because ours was totally junky, old, and disgusting, so Brett had said that we should replace it. Since we usually get the cheapest, I just bought the cabinet then, and figured if Brett really wanted something different, we could take it back. But when I got home I realized that the old cabinet wasn't the same size, so there would be a space where there was no wallpaper. So Brett pulled the old cabinet off, and even though I told him it wasn't a good idea because I've heard bad things about trying to remove wallpaper, started ripping off wallpaper. He and Jethro had a pretty good time--Jethro spraying the walls with the spray bottle, and Brett ripping off strips.

There was a Rube-Goldberg competition at Purdue that day, so we left some hot water in the tub to steam while we went. Then we went to a get-together brunch thingee that was fun, and when we got back we listened to conference while pulling the rest of the paper off and washing off the glue, and it was very much easier than I expected. HOWEVER, that's as far as we got that day, and so with Brett having an incredibly busy week at school, we haven't gotten any further and our bathroom has no light or mirror or paint on the walls. We have the lamp from Ethne's room in there, and a piece of the old mirror propped up, and actually Brett has been gradually working on the mudding, but I'm sure we could live quite comfortably with it like that for months. ;)

Anyway. I would have written all that before, but I didn't want Kami to think I wanted her to come just to help us or anything like that. Which is a huge laugh because all she did while she was here was help me with projects. Or do them for me, whichever way you want to put it. Hee hee. She made an absolutely beautiful flower arrangement for my front room that I *LOVE*, (picture to come) and she painted 3 coats of paint on an assortment of frames I had collected from Goodwill over time, and helped me arrange them in a beautiful collage and helped me to nail down just what pictures will go in them. Most of them are developed, and in the frames, but I have to wait on a couple, so no picture of it until the final product. I cannot tell you how instrumental Kami was in getting so much done. In other words, she harassed me until it was all done. Which was great-because I'm a lazy bum and otherwise wouldn't have gotten anything remotely close to finished, but after she left I did wish she could have stayed another day so we could have just lounged at the park or something. (She even tried to get me to work out with her, HA!!!!!!!!!) At least I fed her well for all her work for me.

Brett had a stressful, up-and-down, nerve-wracking week. He was starting to get really worried that he wouldn't get his prelim finished by the end of the semester (because of forces out of his control), and so not graduate when he'd hoped, and I won't go into the details but did I mention he was stressed?, but after ALL, he has his preliminary exam date and time FINALIZED!!!! WOO-HOO!!!! (by the way, does anyone want to volunteer to babysit my kids on the 29th at 8:30 am so I can go to it?) Now all he has to do is work really really really hard this week and next before his prelim, and then work really really hard all summer and fall, and then we should be done with the whole grad school scene---which is really wild. Anyway. There's this comic he brought home and it was very unfortunate just how perfectly it encapsulated his life this past week. I tried really hard to find it online, but I couldn't, so I'll have to post it later when Brett borrows it again from his labmate.

And I think that's about all for now. Except, these cute pictures of Ana and Elena (I'll send you a copy Kam). Elena had a rough time at our house--specifically around 12:00 or 1:00 in the morning when she liked to scream for hours at a time. It was very reminiscent of when we shared a tent with Kami and Elena at the family reunion. hee hee.

Today at dinner, Brett and I were telling the kids about this time we went iceskating with Kami, and Hazel said, "And Elena and Ana?" And we said, "No, they weren't around yet--Kami wasn't even married yet, so there was no Elena." And Brett's like, "Yeah, when the world was a quieter place." HA HA!

Today, Brett decided to make a fire in our fireplace (he gets the itch to do it about once a year, and then he remembers how it doesn't really work or heat anything, and just smokes). Anyway, so while he was playing with the fire, Hazel knocked into a little play kitchen we have on which was sitting a can of paint, which fell off and paint spilled out everywhere, and so Brett was trying to get that up as quick as he could, and I was at the moment cleaning up a blow-out of Ethne's, and then the fire alarm went off. It was exciting to say the least. But the paint came up rather well--we just kept putting water on it and rubbing it a bit and then vacuuming it up with the shop vac (an invaluable thing to have). Of course, it's not perfect, but we don't really mind too much because we'll most likely replace carpet before we move.

Anyway, fun and stressful week. Glad it's over. Not much on the docket for this week, but that's nice for me. Plus I made hot fudge pudding today and it's beautifully delicious.