My cleaning lady with a "holy big mess"

After we returned to our newly tiled house, I told Noelle that we would need to spend the day cleaning. She apparently took my comment very seriously because she turned into an official cleaning lady, along with a cart of supplies.

At one point Noelle asked if the high chair needed to be cleaned to which I replied, “Oh yes, the highchair always needs to be cleaned.” My cleaning lady’s sympathetic reply was “I understand, when my kids were babies they made a ‘holy big mess’."

I’m not sure if my mess is holy, but it’s certainly big!

Our new kitchen/dining room flooring

Here is a before and after picture of our kitchen and dining room floor. Brad did an awesome job and he had everything looking so good when the girls and I returned from VA.

We were advised to get dark grout so it won't stain. We plan on replacing the cabinet knobs and getting something darker to tie in all the colors.

Home Improvements

I was very excited to vacuum my dining room floor one final time on Monday...starting tomorrow the carpet in the dining room will no longer exist (carpet in casual dining areas should never exist to begin with, if you ask me).

This week has been a rather spontaneous week of home improvements. 2 weekends ago Brad and I decided it was time to move forward with reflooring our house - something we've been planning for about 2 years now. To complicate things we've been wanting to paint our basement and it only makes sense to paint before getting new carpet.
My mom was extremely gracious to fly from VA to help me paint. I should rephrase that, she was extremely gracious to fly from VA to do all the painting. It looks awesome.

Now we're ready for the next phase: laying tile in the kitchen and dining room. Since my talented and ambitions husband wants to do this himself (with a lot of experienced help), laying tile will be a 3 day project. I'm thinking it might be hard to have 2 preschool children in a house while the refrigerator, stove, dishwasher and dining room table are in the living room and we can't go near the kitchen and dining room so.... we're flying to VA with my mom tomorrow. It should all be a lot of fun until I have to fly back with the 2 of them by myself! What could go wrong? (please don't answer that).

I'll post picture once I return to my lovely palace.

My Nanny

I told the girls it was time to brush their teeth before bedtime. A few moments later I walked by the bathroom to see this sight. Noelle is taking care of the job herself. (for those of you not familiar with the little "finger toothbrush", it's a little rubber tip with soft bristles that goes on your finger to brush toddler's teeth... and protect mom from bites!) My 'nanny' is a good thing until she takes it upon herself to cut Sadie's hair or change a dirty diaper.

The Little Engine that Could

Now here's one way to get around.... Just sit back and relax and let your little sister do all the work.

What Sadie lacks in speed, she makes up for in cuteness :)