house progress and life lately.

we had a busy, but mostly productive weekend. let me rephrase, joe was productive, and i mostly hung out with ben, ran a few errands, and went to bed early. i've been exhausted lately. it doesn't help that bennett had been waking up in the night most nights for a week or so... dang teeth. thank goodness that seems to have passed and we've had full nights of sleep the last few nights!

over the weekend we had the carpet in bennett's room replaced. we hope to put this same carpet throughout the house in the next 6 months or so, but wanted to at least get ben's room done, since his carpet was TEAL to match the TEAL walls and TEAL trim. gross.

here's a before and after... this room has made quite the transformation so far! the pictures don't really do it justice, but you get the idea at least...

Before (obviously not our stuff ;)
you can't see just HOW teal that carpet was, but it was bad...

after: new carpet, new white trim, walls painted light gray
(the walls look green-ish in this picture, but they're sherwin williams zircon gray)

joe also got the new hidden hinges installed in the lower kitchen cabinets and got them hung. they need the 3rd (final) coat of paint, but that will be easier to do now that they're hung up. he did a great job! he's hopefully going to finish the upper cabinets and get the final coat of paint on all of them soon! can't wait to have a finished kitchen!

cabinets: painted with sherwin williams snowbound in a satin finish.
after much debate, we went with the hardware on the right.

joe also got a ton of unpacking done in the kitchen this weekend. he's a saint; have i mentioned that? it's starting to feel like a house instead of a post-natural-disaster area, which feels great.

outside of house-related stuff, we went to "a day out with thomas" in duluth with our friends mike, meghan and landon on saturday. honestly, ben was probably a little too young for it, but all things considered he did really well. he loved looking out the window on the train ride! it was fun to get out and do something fun as a family rather than just another day home working on the house.

us with the conductor before the train ride!

nice, long naps on the way to duluth and the way home for this boy

bennett's new thing is giving hugs or "snuggles." he always gives his lion a snuggle when he sees him, and has been giving mama lots of snuggles too. he's a little more stingy with dada though!

this is blurry, but shows him giving snuggles to his lion!

bennett started at his new day care full time this week. it's been going great! all the little boys get so excited when ben gets there in the morning, one yelling "GUYS! bennett is here!!" and then they all come running to see him. :) becky said he's been taking good naps, eating well, and that he's been giving lots of hugs to everyone. such a sweetie. they went to story time at the library on monday and are having the spanish teacher there for an hour today. i love that she has lots of fun activities planned for the kids to do! good day care is such a blessing. we really lucked out with both day cares we've used.

we don't have much going on the rest of the week. joe will be out of town friday and saturday for work in chicago. ben and i are going with my friend katie and her little boys to the splash pad on friday morning. saturday morning we are meeting my friend nicole at the farmers market and then we have landon's 2nd birthday party saturday night. other than that, i'm hoping to make some more progress on the house, do a little cleaning, and get some relaxing in!