We have carpet!

Our new basement carpet was installed successfully yesterday and it looks GREAT! It brightens up the basement so much compared to the old dark brown/orange carpet. :) We moved some of the furniture back last night and are happy with the new arrangement. The kids seem to really like it (Abby spent half an hour dancing around in circles down there this morning!) and it will be a great place for them to play.

Here are some more pictures of our basement project, starting with the 'fun' job of scraping out all the old carpet:

Some Christmas cheer

For your enjoyment...a couple of seasonal haikus that tickled my fancy. :)

Icy temps make me
Wish the baby's cold hands were
Reaching for bottles

"Mommy! We made you!"
I see their snowman's bottom.
The likeness astounds.


(from the Snow Day Haiku Contest over at Rocks in My Dryer)

Basement progress!

The downstairs project is coming along really well! The electrical work is done (hooray for a light that operates with a switch rather than a pull string!) and the drywall is up and the first day of mudding is done. We had a very successful day in Grande Prairie on Monday and not only found carpet at a good deal, but someone to install it next week as well! So this weekend you'll find us scraping up the old carpet. :)

We've added more recent pictures to the slideshow below - it's fun to watch things progressing so quickly!

The 12 days of Christmas...sort of

This is great - you have to watch! Thanks to Shauna for passing this on!

And the walls came tumbling down...

We started a big project last night - moving one of the walls in our basement! Whoever finished the downstairs in our house made a HUGE laundry room, which is really a waste of space, so we decided to move the wall separating the family room and the laundry room over about three feet, to make the family room bigger. A couple of friends (one of whom is an electrician - very handy!) came over last night to help Greg and Gavin get it moved.


Today Greg hopes to get the new part of the wall framed in (there needs to be a little jog to go around the water pipes), and maybe start putting up the new drywall. The family room looks so much bigger now and we're very excited about having the extra space!

Click on the pictures to see the full slideshow.

Don't you just want to eat her up??

Let the Christmas feasting begin!

It's December 1st and I've already got two kinds of Christmas baking made! There's a long way to go still to complete my list, but I think I'm ahead of where I am most years.

The kids love to 'help' (the quotation marks referring to Abby's intended assistance) me bake, and I usually let them in the hopes that someday they will be able to do the baking for me! ;)

In other Christmas-readiness news...we have all the kids' presents bought, and a few for other people, although we're not done. Christmas letter? Not so much. I'm not sure how December crept up on me without having started my annual epistle. I think this whole working thing is cutting into my time! ;)

My family is coming up here for Christmas this year and we are very excited! This will be the first year that we've done Christmas here, and I'm sure everyone will appreciate not having the five-hour drive on Christmas morning. Actually, this will be the first Christmas of all my 29 previous Christmases that I haven't been at home in Edmonton...I think. Mom? True? Not that I remember, anyway!