"Girls... do you want to go look at paint?"

It seems impossible that it's been 20 days since we were rained out of our house.  Since the last post when the city turned off the water at the rental house things have settled down and we're (for the most part) settled into our temporary home.  Lisa's fighting a sinus infection but other than that we're doing OK.

The girls are enjoying school and doing well.  Meredith started soccer practice and the season starts next Saturday. Madie had her first cross country meet and Meredith received a pin for math at her school's weekly assembly (Antler Alert).  Lisa and I were able to attend both which was nice given that it was a Friday (leave without pay can be convenient sometimes I suppose, but that's another story).

We WILL say that the temp house is in a very handy location.  Except for being about 9 miles from our house, it's convenient to school, my office and any type of retail one would need.   AllState is having us keep track of all the travel back and forth to the house (at least one trip a day) and is reimbursing us for that expense along with everything else we're being troubled with.  (Is my wine tab covered?)

The house has officially entered the demolition mode.  Everything is dry, all of our stuff has been moved into storage and they've just inititated ripping out ceilings and walls.  Every bit of flooing on the main floor needs to be replaced, including the tile in the master bath which surprised us.  We'll probably replace it all (including what had been carpeted) with a combo of manufactured wood and tile.  The contractor thinks the carpet upstairs and in the basement won't need replacing.  Here are some new pics showing the one ceiling they have removed so far above the dining room (with a nice view from below of Meredith's room and vice versa).

 

Hopefully this won't take as long as the 3-4 months they think but we'll see.  One interesting thing (and good thing I think) is that the contractor is using the same guy who did the original drywall work when the house was built.

So, today after visiting the house and feeding and loving on the critters we went out for burgers (of course Meredith had chicken) and then to Target to pick up birthday gifts for a kids party tonight.  As we were leaving Target and heading to the car, Lisa asked, "Girls... do you want to look at paint?"  You'd have thought from their reaction that they'd been asked if they wanted to go to Disney World!  I couldn't believe their excitement but there we went, next door to Lowes, to look at paint chips.  Here is what we selected (today, anyway) for various rooms on the main floor and for the girls rooms.