Exhausted but happy

I hope everyone had a very happy Thanksgiving! Ours was really nice - very mellow and relaxing. We had a great time at our friends' house, and R and his friend Z got along so well all day. After a delicious dinner and some time for digestion, we all had dessert in front of a warm fire. Heaven.

Our friends' firewood was wet that day, so they ran out to the store and bought some Java logs, which are made from coffee grounds. A and I were intrigued by the logs because they claimed to be clean-burning and low creosote-producing. The fireplace in our house can't be used because the draft needs to be corrected; if we light a fire, even if it's been going for awhile and the chimney is primed and warm, our house fills with smoke. This was so heartbreaking for A and me because the fireplace was a big part of why we bought our house. Anyway, our friends let us take one of their Java logs so we could try it out. On Friday afternoon, A lit it up, and it worked! I can't even tell you how happy that made me and A. And, R was absolutely fascinated by it. He asked me if we could play a board game in front of the fire. Fine by me! A immediately went to the store and bought a case of Java logs. More fires for us - woohoo!

A and I have been quite busy the last few days getting our house in order. I've been very frustrated recently with the sheer amount of stuff in our house, and it felt completely overwhelming. So I finally got down to the business of dealing with it. I spent hours going through everything in my home office and our kitchen and sun room/porch, throwing a lot of stuff out, making a bag of stuff for our yard sale next year, and organizing what was left. We replaced the rug in my office with one that was on clearance at Home Depot ($57 for a $250 rug!). My old one was literally falling apart - I was finding chunks of it all over the house. Everything looks so nice now!

A worked on painting the bathroom. (We never finished it after our renovation over the summer, and we've been living without a bathroom mirror and medicine cabinet for months.) Unfortunately, the paint color we picked weeks ago looked horrendous once it was up on the wall, so we had to go back to the paint store and choose another one. This one is better, but not exactly what I wanted. But if I make A change it again, I think he'll strangle me. Hopefully he'll finish up the painting tonight so that we can completely reassemble the bathroom before my mom comes for a visit at the end of this week. (YAY!)

The other project I finally completed was going through our photos and choosing some for the frames I bought early this year. The empty frames have been hanging on our living room wall since then. I've tried many times to pick photos, but until this week, I just couldn't choose the right ones. So that's done, too!

Hmmm ... what else did we do? A and I finished raking all the leaves in our yard because the last pick-up in our town is this week. We bought a few Christmas presents. A and R went to a birthday party. We went ice skating and grocery shopping. We played Trouble and Candyland and Hot Wheels. We helped R put together some wooden model cars and paint them (our new favorite craft for R!).

It's been a very productive few days. A and I are exhausted and not looking forward to work tomorrow. But I am so excited for my mom's visit later this week. I can't wait! Neither can R!