Annnnywayyyy, some scumbag kicked in our back door, hard enough to rip the deadbolt pieces right out of the wall, and pull the whole door casing apart. He actually split the door "en face" (or at least that's the term I use to describe mouse ears prepared for histology split the way the door was split), and then kicked the baby gate over in an assumed battle with Fenway. The deadbolt pieces dented the wood floors, which were also scraped up by the baby gate, and when the casing fell down it took some of the wall paint with it. The insurance company, in a move that didn't completely suck for us, said that the damaged floor boards could not be replaced without making it obvious that they were not originals, and offered to pay for new flooring on the entire first floor. That part was cool.
What wasn't cool was that the flooring company insurance approved us to work with has an idiot working for them who could not figure out how to get our new floors in properly. After tearing our first floors up on a Thursday, leaving splinters and nails and random boards everywhere (perfect for toddlers!) they called back Friday morning to say, "Uhh, we don't have the proper equipment to put your new floors down." They also told us that the ordered the wrong color quarter rounds, and asked if I really wanted them to be white and match the base boards, or if it would be OK to use the ones they had instead."
Now we had new contractors coming on a Saturday, making the house not a good place for children and it was going to be rainy so my default entertainment of taking them all to the museum and walking to see the animals with two of them secured in a stroller was not going to happen. Indoor museum activities are too hard for one parent right now. Two toddlers go in two different directions and you just want to cry.
My friend Meredith suggested that we draw on giant paper, but I was busy at a symposium on Friday and needed to find refuge early on Saturday, which meant not much time to go shopping for a roll of giant paper. Then I remembered- I was at a symposium, where we all presented our data on giant foam boards that we would just throw out instead. At the end of the evening I ran around and collected foam boards from co-workers, and the next day we all went to Kenmare!
First we had a mini-symposium of our own. Chad is discussing someone's results.
Then we colored!
And then we made a fort!
The hole in the back was used for puppet shows, until Natalie and Theo wanted their toys back.
This killed a good hour and a half, and when I called Andy to see how the work was going, I learned that the contractors hadn't shown up yet. They were supposed to be there at 9:00. They finally arrived at 10:45. O. M. G. Andy was livid. I could tell just through our texts that someone at the flooring store was going to feel his wrath.
We ended up heading back home for naps shortly thereafter. We had to have all of our meals picnic-style in the gym. At some point we realized that our anniversary was like, 4 days away and neither of us had done any shopping yet, so we took turns taking Chad and one twin shopping to reduce crowding in the gym. The "anniversary gifts" for 9 years are either willow or pottery. I decided that willow could be any type of wood, and Andy decided that pottery could be amethysts. Works for me.
The floors are beautiful, but now I'm going to be caught posting old photographs if the ones I show here have different colored floors in the background.
Old floors:
I'm sorry, but there is just no little girl cuter than Natalie.
Her facial expression in no way reflects her attitude towards her hair bow.
New floors!
See the white quarter round behind him? Looks great when they install the color you asked for!
Our floors are good for making crock pot cauliflower crust deep dish pizza!
And a few weeks later we finally got the new door!
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