Labor Day

Over the weekend, we made major progress in getting this living room done. They don't call it "Labor Day" for nothing! John Mark painted the walls!!! Eight years of staring at the green walls, and then this last year we've staired at white primer. And the last two weeks staring at









Not being able to make up our minds, five areas of our room looked like the above.

Now...we have one coat of Artisan Tan!


At first we thought it might be too dark, but it has grown on us.

Over the fireplace we have Decadence




We still have another coat to do, but you get the picture. I'll show the whole room, once we get our chandeliers in. It may not look like it goes together, but it really does look good! I'm pretty excited about it.

Also, don't know if I ever showed a close up of our finished wood floor...



And here is one of our rugs. It is under our piano.

This rug was meant to be under our dining room table, but we've placed it in the sitting area in front of the fireplace. It looks wonderful there.


We still need to order one for under the dining room table. Also we need window treatments. The girls are thinking a "gold" color. At this point, I don't care. I just want it done.


Here's a picture of a tomato worm on my tomato plants. Sam and some friends tortured it and took pictures of it with flowers around it. Did they teach him that in Middle School? Speaking of Middle School, he has adjusted really well. We are pleased with the school and everything about it.

Picture Autumn took of herself

Autumn is doing fine as well. This past week she discovered the American Girl "KIT" books, which take place during the Great Depression. She read through all 6 books this week. That miraculous, considering she doesn't read much on her own. We also saw that the Kit stories were going to be made into a major motion picture in July, 2008. How exciting! I also checked out the old movie "The Grapes of Wrath" with Henry Fonda to show her another story from the Depression. It's...depressing.
I am currently reading A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett to her. It was written in the late 1800's and is pretty wordy. It's not easy for Autumn to follow exactly, but she's doing okay with it.

Sam is re-reading all the Harry Potter books. He's also taught himself how to make scrambled eggs on the stove for breakfast. He's going to try it some school morning, and hopefully will allow enought time in his schedule for the cooking.

John Mark goes back to Windsor Castle in England next week.

Autumn has befriended a new girl at school (with my coaxing, cause I felt sorry for her). We had her over on Saturday. When I took her home, the mother invited me to talk in their backyard. I struck up a conversation with the dad and found out he was a banjo player looking for someone to play along with him. I told him about JM wanting to play mando w/ someone and now we're hopefully going to meet once a month for their little jamming session. He's from the College of Architecture and they're only here one year.