Another busy day!

Jason came home early, Shelly came to babysit and J and I took off to End of the Roll to see about flooring. They'd been able to send out someone right away to take measurements of our new house and we had to pick out some floors.

Ugh, it was SO hard. There were many beautiful styles, and don't even get me started on colors! If only money was not an option! After getting pricing on a few different options, we went to Lowes, then Home Depot to comparison shop. End of the Roll ended up still being the cheapest, though the overall total was much higher than we expected. This is partly because we have 14 stairs that I want done. Stairs are really difficult and its $40 per stair! Yikes. But I won't give on them, I HATE vacuuming stairs and they will get so much traffic... its worth it!

Because of the high install cost, we had to go a bit cheaper on the flooring . I wanted the highest end we could afford, and we are doing that, but after seeing the super high end stuff, naturally, I wanted that :) We've decided on a nice two strip, reddish brown. Its nice.

While at Lowes and Home Depot, we checked out various appliances and I drooled heavily over a dual oven, 5 burner beauty. Oh heavens, I lust after that range. But its $1300 and even I can admit its too much. But oh, I'll probably dream about that stove.

I've found the type of fridge I want. Its called a "french door" design. It has the freezer on the bottom, with a pull out drawer and sliding shelves to organize things (helps with not losing stuff at the bottom). The top is the fridge and it has split doors. Its a really cool design.

While we were at the new house the other day, I took some measurements in the drawers for an in drawer spice rack. They have some super nifty things for cabinet and drawer inserts. Ideally I'd like to outfit my kitchen cupboards with pull outs, and even put in one of those appliance lifts. The appliance lift fits under your counter in a cabinet, holding something like your mixer. When you want to use it, you open the cabinet drawer, pull on the lift and the mixer is lifted and locked at counter level. Its extremely nifty.

Everything I want right now is so expensive. Floors, appliances, accessories.

The kids are doing well. Ethan is amazingly talkative and vocal now. He's developed a real love of books and will sit through many readings, even of books without touch and feel options. Gwen is also growing fast. Still not walking, but talking and expressing herself much better than Ethan did at this age. She's full of drama and attitude and sweetness all at the same time. As her independence develops, her and Ethan are starting to get into fights more. I let them try and work it out on their own without too much interference. I think its kinda interesting to watch :) Sometimes they seem to come to an understanding and other times Ethan will just reach out and push her over or she will leap onto him. Its pretty funny!