First day of fall? - doesn't feel like it!

So sorry to hear that you're shivering in your bed these mornings in VT - we're still sweltering! 80+ degrees again today, and should be much the same all week! Very bizarre considering we had such a cold snap for the start of the month. Any day now I expect the weather to turn again, and the snow to start to fall!

Haven't got photos for you yet, alas, but the breezeway is officially No More. It is now to be dubbed The Dining Room, or at least it will be as soon as we put the finishing touches on it and move the table/chairs in for good. Kevin and dad installed the vinyl tile on Friday (and very nice it looks!), and put in the window trim and baseboard moulding on Saturday. It looks fabulous, Kevin does such good work.

Now it's up to dad and I to finish it off: repaint the walls one last time (Kevin got a fair bit of grungy fingerprints and dings on the walls when he installed the wood, to be expected), and I need to lightly sand the interior windows and put on a coat of varnish. Then we call the Edina inspector, get him to sign off on the "breezeway window replacement", and then we cut the hole in the wall to tie into the heating ductwork & remove the kitchen door for good.

Another piece of good news, in an odd sort of way, is that Nicole has outgrown her competition dress, and needs at least one (if not two) more. Yeah! more to barter with Kevin! We gave Nicole three practice dresses from our stash basket when she came on Sunday to be re-measured. I'm going to perform a quick panty transplant on her existing dress so that she can get through the St. Cloud competition without a wedgie, and by then she should have her new music for me to start her new dress. We'll have to consult together over Christmas....maybe I'll even have the basic dress done by then, and you can help me paint and embellish over your break.

I'm thinking about bartering with Kevin for help in refinishing the living room floor and retiling the entry way. Kevin spent the weekend trying to convince me that it would be a snap to refinish the floor ourselves, with a rented sander from Menards. The worst part will be moving out the furniture for a couple weeks until we get it done, but I think we can manage....Lydia won't be happy, though, because we'll have to walk through her room to get to the kitchen! We'll either do it this fall over Thanksgiving, or wait until spring when I can open the windows when we put down the varnish.

Other than that, the weekend was productive but uneventful. I stockpiled food (cooked enough on-sale hamburger from Cub for two batches of spaghetti sauce and two bins of dogfood), roasted three on-sale chickens (for dinner, future enchiladas, and a frozen chicken noodle casserole), and generally felt like a contented prairie wife. Learned how to stabilize polarfleece for embroidery, so Lydia can have an embellished pair of bright yellow fleece pajama pants this week. Did a cute door hanger for Miss Amelia that reads "Do not disturb the princess" with a frog prince and some rhinestones on the crown on the letter P. And I think I told you about the mini kleenex holders - good Christmas gifts.

Nothing much in store this week except getting through it. Dad is recording at the CTC (Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe music) on Tuesday and Thursday. Nothing special for me or Lydia except surviving geometry homework and housecleaning. I'll keep you posted as things run along.

In the meantime, best wishes for the week, and good luck on the chem. test!
Love,
Mom