A weekend to remember

I had the joy of returning to Colorado this past weekend to stay with my brother and sister-in-law. One of my very best friends flew in and met me there and we all had a wonderful weekend together. I am so very blessed to have such incredible, Godly, and wonderful family and friends! This weekend was one of sharing our hearts, hearing God's promises for one another, and recounting God's faithfulness. Of course, it was also full of baking, 4-wheeling, Jillian Michaels workouts (AAH!), building legos with the kids, and girl time. I was so refreshed by the conversation, laughter, jokes, late night talks, and beautiful scenery.
We woke up to this..
Drove up the mountain to see this....

And were greeted by this at night...

The scenery was beautiful, but what I enjoyed the most was time with my family and an incredible friend! What a joy!

A funny side note...Jason was so sweet to suggest months ago that I do this without Hannah so the 2 of them stayed here for the weekend. Hannah was beyond excited for me to leave so she could have her Daddy all to herself (where is the love?!?!). On Friday, as they prepared to take me to the airport, Hannah said "Daddy, since Mama is leaving, you are going to do my chores this weekend!"

Floor reveal

Since I mentioned our floors, I thought I would put some before and after pictures on the blog. We love the new floors by the way, but the process of staining concrete is about 95% prep work and about 5% new work. It was certainly interesting to watch.
Here are all the floors after old flooring was ripped up.
Dining room:
Living room:

Master bedroom:

Kitchen:

This was after they cleaned and sanded the floors. Notice the plastic up the walls about 2 feet? They put that on there because part of their process was the run a scrubbing machine over the floor with water and a soy based cleaner. It was a mess to say the least!

Kitchen:

Dining room:

Living room:

Master Bedroom:

And finally, after 4 long days of work by 2 men, we have these beautiful stained concrete floors!

Dining room:

Master bedroom:

Living room:

Kitchen:

View from the front door:

We love the floors! However, if you come and stay with us in the winter, bring slippers! It is mighty cold if you walk on them barefoot. I am sure it will feel great in the Texas summers, but for now, we don't dare walk barefoot.

It's been awhile...

It certainly has been awhile. We have been quite displaced for the past 2 weeks. We had a broken hot water pipe which left us without hot water for over a week during Christmas. And 2 days after we got that fixed we had movers move us out of our downstairs so that we could have the floors completely redone. Now, we are finally back in our house after being away while they worked, but we are still without furniture downstairs. Monday will hopefully come quickly and we will be back to some normalcy around here.
It certainly does remind me though that some are without water permanently and without furniture. It is in these times of discomfort and annoyance that I am reminded to be so very thankful for the days of hot water that we do have!

In our desperation to keep a 3 and a half year old occupied amidst a bit of chaos around here, we sometimes had to resort to desperate measures. In this case...Daddy got his toenails painted blue. He still acts a bit shocked when he takes his socks off as they are still blue after being painted about a week ago! He sure is a good sport!