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Will someone please inform my daughter that I am her MOMMY. Emphasis on the "MY" please. I am not ready to be a Mom. Especially not with the teenage two-sylable drawn out drawl. Mo-om. No, no no. It's Mommy. MomMY. MOMMY!!! Just for a little while longer...pretty please....with a cherry on top?

Need I say more? I am so excited! So is Anna. She keeps saying, "Mommy! COME LOOK!!! My new room has stairs!!!"

I finally made Anna a little seat in the doorway, because she won't stop watching. She is so excited. It's so much fun to watch her grow. She's a joy - every day.

Geez - this has been the most stressful thing so far. I had SUCH a hard time picking out paint for the house.

Curtis wanted it to keep the same base color, so we wouldn't have to repaint the existing house. I wanted AT LEAST the trim color changed, because what I wanted to be slate blue looks more like PURPLE trim. Uck.

I originally wanted green. Something nice, light, muted, subtle, sage colored. Maybe light or white trim. Maybe dark trim. But every color combo I tried out was nasty, or I loved it and everyone else veto'd it.

Then I tried charcoal grey trim on the beige, which actually probably LOOKED nice, but it just wasn't me. Grey and beige - depressing. Or as my dad would say, "Muddy colors." Blech.

Now, you'd think this wouldn't be such a monumental decision. It's JUST paint. But, knowing how much Curtis HATES to paint, I have this feeling that whatever paint I choose is going to the color on the house until our children reach retirment age....so I feel a certain pressure to pick something GOOD! And the hurry is that I have to tell the roofer what color shingles and gutters I want, so we can get a ROOF on our house. (Nice bonus - having a roof, huh?)

So - with the help (and hindrance) of everyone I know, I FINALLY made a decision last night. I was sorry to inform Curtis that we WILL have to repaint the base color, but it would have been impossible to match the 4 year old painted, weathered, dirty color that's on there now anyway. He's always a good sport though - and he loves me.

So, without further ado, here are our new paint colors. A nice neutral combo. I'm not sure what the 'accent' color will be yet - but THAT I can change. So (unless your initials are C.P.S. and you sleep next to me) I only want to hear that you LOVE these colors, and that they’re the perfect choice, unless something is incurably wrong with them. If your initials ARE C.P.S., you’re entitled to veto rights….but that means we have to start ALL OVER AGAIN. (Do you REALLY want to go there, honey…?)

Let's see....what's new at Schloss Schmitt.

You can tell that we've been working our BUTTs off, becuase I have been too tired to blog or post pictures. Now THAT'S tired. We are making good progress though. It's kind of hard to see the full scope in pictures, because it doesn't all fit in one frame anymore.

Curtis and I spent just about every evening last week working on the roof repairs. They are pretty much done. Anna 'helped' by dragging the magnet bar around the back yard picking up loose nails. That's a safe job for a 3 year old, right? We still have to do the facia boards, but otherwise, the roof is ready to go. We're having someone else install the new shingles. WHOO HOO!! It's 106 freakin' degrees here. They are worth WHATEVER they charge us.

Otherwise, we're surviving. Tired of living in a mess, but it could be worse. If I don't post again soon, send help. It means we're working too much. :-)

OK, just cats, actually. Holy heart attack.

So, it's about 1am, and I'm at the computer working, as usual. Everyone else is asleep and the house is locked up tight. All of a sudden, I hear what sounds like the entire ceiling in Anna's former room next door falling down and a big THUD! Then it occurs to me - there IS no ceiling there....we already took it out. Uh oh. This can't be good.

So, I go look, and half of the black plastic sheet that was stapled to the ceiling to keep the attic dust out of the house has been ripped down, and a big black and white cat is sitting in my hallway. We don't own a cat. "MEOW?" Kodi goes on instant alert and is about to woof. Rigby, that useless sack of....well, anyway. The dog that barks at every SHADOW all day, fails to lift his weary head from my pillow where he is sleeping next to Curtis, while all of this is happening.

Yikes. I woke Curtis up to hold on to Kodi (not that he actually bothered to get up or woof afterall) while I scooped up the kitty and put him back outside. Turns out he was our 'adopted' neighborhood cat, Sylvester Kitty. The contractors just started the tie in from the second floor to the attic today, and there was a little space at the edge of the second floor and the eve at the roof line. Sylvester Kitty must have gone in and gotten the shock of his life when he plopped straight through the plastic ceiling and came eye to eye with Kodi. To his credit, he did not shit in my house.

The house, that is. It's been very hard to visualize what it would look like from the architectural drawings. Now, seeing the start of the second floor go up, I just look at it and think - "WHOA! It's so tall!" Quickly followed by the paranoid mommy thought, "Maybe I don't want Anna up there - it looks too high." YIKES! It's going to be so cool though! I can't wait!

...they were coming inside? A few weeks from now? Uh huh. Sure.

Don't get me wrong! Quicker is better! It's just that everytime they have some major milestone, I have another "HOLY CRAP!" moment. This is exciting-scary-fun-stressful! A new word! Ex-car-un-ful!!!

We have downstairs walls and the start of a second floor story. Yipee!!!

We've decided to adopt a new "no privacy" policy in our house. This has mostly been because we have no interior doors left, and very few walls. Curtis and I looked at each other this morning, (I was in the bedroom and he was in the bathroom - but we could still look at each other) and said, "So - did you think it was going to be this bad?" We both said, "Uhhh...not really." But, we're still having fun, and know that we're VERY blessed to be able to do this.



This weekend was ROUGH. VERY little sleep. VERY hot weather. VERY MUCH WORK. We (and when I say, 'we' - I mean Curtis and I, and our whole crew of wonderful, amazing friends and family!!) got the entire roof torn off, about 95% of the rest of the interior demo done, and all of our debris piles loaded up into the trash bin. We filled our 40yard bin almost to capacity. It's amazing how much CRAP you can take out of one house and still leave it standing.

The biggest change (visually) to me this weekend was the living room wall demo. I LOVE IT!!!!!! Curtis keeps teasing me because he only half heartedly wanted to do it, but it opens up our main living space SO much more. AWESOME!!!!!



OK - I have to go shop for our new hot water heater now. Because, after 48 non stop hours of being covered in roof tar, fiberglass, dirt, insulation and CRAP, Curtis got the last of the hot water and I took a COLD SHOWER last night. Yes, Murphy's Law. It seems when we turned the gas off to re-route the HVAC gas line, our pilot light went out in the hot water heater and the pilot light valve is broken (or something like that). So, either we put money and time into getting a new one, or we bite the bullet and figure out how to get the new tankless one that we were going to do anyway in a few months installed. It never ends.....

Mostly because I'm too tired to type.