The Brown Kiddos: A Summary of August's Happenings

In August, we spent a lot of time busy working on a house project that I had been wanting to do for a long time. Also that month, we enjoyed a great weekend with my best friend, Andrea, and her family, and then we planned, planned, planned and packed, packed, packed for our much anticipated vacation to Hawaii! Eventually, I will get around to posting those pictures, but for now, I will continue to build up all 3 to 5 of my readers' anticipation! It'd be funny if they end up being a huge let down!

When we bought our house three years ago, we loved it, but it needed a lot of modernizing, mainly with paint and flooring colors. Well, the painting part was easy and cheap, so that was done immediately, for the most part. We use our front room as a formal dining room, and the very green carpet in there always bugged me, and I have always wanted to make a change with it. I had a hard time figuring out what to do, since there are hard wood floors in the living areas, kitchen, hall and entry way. I had thought that I could do wood floors, but I know that it would be nearly impossible to match them to the entry way, beside the fact they'd be really costly, and I hated the idea of putting more carpet there. Something about food embedded into carpet fibers just doesn't appeal to me for some reason. Finally, I decided that laying tile would be the best solution, but I wasn't too sure of how expensive that could get. Based on estimates I calculated from Lowe's, it could get VERY expensive. In Longview, we have a Surplus Building Supply store, and I was able to get the 16" tiles like I wanted for a total of $124! After getting the rest of the needed supplies, I figured that we did the whole project for about $225. I was very excited. Of course, if I had been required to pay my hard-working, wonderful helpers (Dane, Mama, Daddy & even Sydni, a little bit), I'm sure it would have been much more. Anyway, I'm sure that was really boring, but to me, the dreaming, planning and purchasing end of any project is always the very most fun, so I couldn't leave out any of those details. I definitely get that from my mother, who has always looked for ways to rearrange or add on to her house.

Of course, I decided to start the project while Lane was gone on Trek with the youth group. When he's out of town, I think I just get so stir-crazy, and I just like to stay really busy so the time will pass faster until he gets home. So, that Wednesday night after church, I got Sydni in bed, and Dane and I moved furniture and started ripping up carpet. That was so fun! Carpet is not hard to pull up at all! It was heavy to drag out the door, though. I was a little worried at first, but I had to get it out of the house, and I just gave it my all and got it out somehow.

These pictures are of Dane helping me pry up the carpet nail strip, which was very tedious work. I had never done this before, so I asked Dane what tools he thought we would need to pry it up, and very matter of factly, he replied, "We'll need a hammer and a flat head strewdriver." The hammer made sense to me, so we tried that but were still having some trouble. So, I called my daddy to ask him, and he told me to use a flat head to work it up a little, and then use a hammer to pry out the nails from the slab. So, Dane was right all along! He was the best helper, and he helped me non-stop for about 2 hours. About 9:30, which is 30 minutes past his bedtime, he yawned really big and looked so tired, and I asked him if he wanted to keep working or go on to bed, and he said so sweetly, "Let's just keep on working." I just love that he gets so excited about the little projects we do together. I just know we are going to have so much fun together as he gets older. I just love him so much! Anyway, he ended going to bed about 5 minutes later - he was so tired!

Working hard! With gloves and boots, of course!

Taking a break for a picture

That Friday and Saturday, my Mama and Daddy came to help us actually lay the tile and grout. Such a hard job, and I know that I couldn't have done it without Daddy's expertise. As you can see, lunch was served on the bare slab that day! Sydni had helped me scrub the slab the night before - Dane and I used scrub mops, but she just skating around barefooted in her nightgown. She was so dirty afterward!

Dane double-checked all of Pa's measurements with his own tape measure.

Before...that green carpet!

And After...Ta Da!

We had the best time with my best friend, Andrea, and her family when they came to visit one weekend in August. She was one of my randomly assigned suitemates at Harding my freshman year of college, and we joked after we met about how we were best friends since Monday, and she truly is one of those precious people in my life that I feel most comfortable with, laugh the very hardest with, and love so much. We've always hated that we live so far apart. Since college, we have always made an effort to get together at least once a year, and we've been able to do that so far. She has a great husband and two super sweet kids, and I just love them all! This year, it was their turn to come to us, so we had a great weekend eating, of course, visiting, going to the indoor waterpark in Tyler, and they also got to worship with us that Sunday morning before they started back home after lunch. Her daughter and Dane play so well together, and it's so neat to see them getting to know each other and become friends, too!