Honey Do

I love updating and doing projects around the house. It usually consists of me coming up with some sort of idea and putting Ben to work. He is really pretty handy and usually likes my ideas...I think, and is willing to have at it. So this weekend we worked on updating our fireplace. Adding a mantle and getting ideas for stone to put up the wall. Hopefully we can do that during Thanksgiving break. I have been making some small, little updates to our guest bathroom upstairs so we did a little work in there too. I told Ben that all I want for Christmas is for him to do projects around the house. Nothing would excite me more than a box of stone tile planks or nice Kohler faucet from Santa. 

Honey Do List:
Update Door Knobs
Feature wall down the stairs
Kitchen Backsplash
Kitchen Hardware
New Kitchen Faucet
Quartz Countertops
Fireplace Mantle
Stone on Fireplace Wall
Bathroom Backsplash
Brushed Nickel Bathroom Faucet
New Bathroom Floors
Paint Kitchen Cabinets
Complete Master Bath Remodel

I'm taking before and after pictures so I will be adding the photos when projects are complete. Stay tuned!! 

Happy Halloween

I just realized I haven't posted any pictures of the kids in their Halloween costume. So, here you go.

Tayah decided early on she was going to be Merida from Brave (Newest Disney princess in case anyone is wondering, who??). Then we were trying to decide what Collin should be? Tayah came up with the idea of a bear because anyone who has seen the movie will know bears are sorta a big part of the movie. Merida changes her mother and triplet brothers into bears with a magic spell. So a bear for Collin it was.

 My only issue was trying to get the bear costume on Collin. He really wanted nothing to do with putting the costume on so we had a "back up costume" of a duck hunter which consisted of camo, a duck call lanyard, and his Avery hat.

 The Sunday before Halloween we did trick or treating at the family houses so we wouldn't have to hurry and try and make it to see everyone on Wednesday night. We were about to get Collin dressed in his hunting gear but then decided last minute he wanted to wear the bear costume. So, in pajamas and all, we put the costume on with success and once we had it on the jammies stayed on for the day too. So we headed over to Grandma Val's and Papa Dave's to see Cousin Blake and then stopped at Auntie Christa's, then went over to Grandma Julie's and Papa Dan's with Cousin Grace to visit Grandma and Papa Stumpf, and Christa (again) who were at mom and dad's.

Then Wednesday we just went trick or treating down our street to a few houses and back to our house to pass out candy and so Ben could scare trick or treaters. See photo below.

Peanut...the cat

Here's to having 9 LIVES because Peanut was teetering on 8 yesterday. So, for the last 10/11 years that I have had Peanut he has been an indoor cat but he has ALWAYS desperately wanted to be outside. He is a hunter and an excellent mouser. So this summer we decided to let him venture out because I frankly was tired of him trying to sneak out. He sticks around for the most part but had a couple all nighters where we didn't know where he was.
Anyway, he was out Tuesday afternoon for a couple hours and came back with burs in his fur and looked a little "messy". That night he was sleeping on Collin's bed and was being "weird". He was a little aggressive and didn't want us to touch him. The next morning I woke up and noticed he wasn't begging for food, again "weird". He was sleeping on the couch and looked ill. His jaw was open and he was drooling. I called the vet to see if we could drop him off. Ben dropped him off and I got a call from the doctor later that morning to find he thinks he has a broken jaw. YIKES!! I asked if it was fixable and they said yes, but he may need to go to a specialized orthopedic surgeon. UGH, can you say $$$$$.
I called Ben and after our discussion we decided we would see how the xrays show up but we were not going to do any sort of drastic surgery. We love him but at almost 12 years old, even I couldn't rationalized it. I had the dreaded talk with Tayah that we were going to do our best to fix Peanut but if it can't be fixed he would need to go to Heaven because he wouldn't be able to eat and we didn't want him to be in pain. There were many tears by both of us and it was hard to make that sort of decision with a family pet. 
So, I get a call later that afternoon that his jaw was NOT broken after all and it was just dislocated. He was able to pop it back into place and said it was pretty stable. YAY!! Back to a happy Tayah!!
So, with making sure he gets soft food for the next couple weeks and keep him in to rest he should be back to normal soon. And we won't talk about the vet bill because we have Peanut back and a happy Tayah, so it was all worth it. Right Ben??