Refreshed and Updated

Good news from today: I had both of the kids' first trimester conferences and they received high marks all around, as good students and nice classmates, so hooray for that! School is all half days this week to accommodate for conferences, which meant we had plenty of time today to also go to the dentist and BONUS, no one had any cavities! Poor Ellie has such bad enamel that I'm always bracing for at least two cavities, but this time she received the all clear, which is a relief. Ellie has her nine year well visit later this week and then we should be smooth sailing into the holiday season, in terms of appointments and check ups of sorts.

Last month we celebrated ten years in our house, which is the longest I've lived in a single address by quite awhile. And as part of our celebration, we took out one of the last remaining original components of the house by redoing our floors. It's a bummer to tear out all the parquet, but it was in really bad shape in places, and it's also not really eligible for refinishing or matching.

The best part of the project was the fact that it was only three days, versus all of the six week and three month long renovations we've done. It was easy enough to get our furniture moved, the installers were super great and did a wonderful job, and the place looks beautiful now, ready for another forty years of living!

Before:

living room

pretty room

front hallway

And after!

living room

pretty room

front hallway

After ten years of hard living, the living room carpet was in really gross shape, so I'm glad to see it go. Plus I hope the hard surface will give our friends with cat allergies an additional 10 minutes in the house before their faces begin to swell shut. 

Taco is not a fan of the noise of construction. 

Also this past week, Adam learned to ride a two wheeler! He's using the bike he got when he was three, so he looks like a circus bear on a teensy bicycle, but good news is that Santa will be coming soon. 

Halloween and More!

It's November already!

The kids had a blast this year - they are really at a fun age to trick or treat because they don't require quite as much supervision, but still want their parents to go and hang out with them. Adam was a Minecraft guy with diamond armor, and Ellie was a very cute little raven, with lots of hot glued feathers.

Then Friday morning we headed out to Chicago for John's wedding! The last of my cousins is officially married, and so this felt like the last time to really go and blow it out family style, so lo, we did.

Everyone in the wedding looked absolutely gorgeous (I stole this picture from Facebook) and so happy.

Grandpa Charlie was able to make it to the wedding and stay for cocktail hour. Olivia made a beautiful flower girl, and let me have her flower crown when she left for the night, which is the best thing that's ever happened to me.

Plus Tim looked very handsome and we were able to do a lot of great dancing. A+ evening all around. 

The kids spent the weekend with Mimi and Poppy and as usual, had a great time. The movies, the zoo, doing a hands on project at Home Depot, plus Adam's baseball game and Ellie's Ocean Heroes class (plus then a special girls night dinner with Mimi.) 

Double bonus: we didn't have to wake up with the kids with daylight savings!