While Taylor is suffering...

It's finally here. The BAR. Taylor left Sunday evening to stay some place quieter where he could be guaranteed to get a full nights sleep and have undisturbed study time all Monday, which turned out to be a good plan since Ethan has been waking up every night between 4:30 and 5am either because he's scared of the dark or needs a drink (who knew we shouldn't let him watch Veggie Tales- The Pirates who don't do anything, I mean seriously, it's vegi tales, but apparently the rock monster scared his pants off and he's been having nightmares ever since). So it was good that Taylor left. But knowing that I'd go crazy by myself for 3 straight days, I invited my friend Jessica up. She's a 4th grade teacher so she's off for the summer and has lots of time to play with us. Yeah!
Isaac doesn't like sitting in the sand and is still confused why he can't pick up the sand castle Ethan has just made, as well as why Ethan screams at him for doing it. Luckily beach balls are great fun to kick around.

Jessica was great. The boys eat up her attention and she even loves dogs so she let Oscar out from Taylor's parent's house and played around with him.

And the sidewalk chalk was a hit. Anyone know if it's non-toxic? Cause Isaac sure loves licking the stuff. Yum.

Jessica also brought up her little dog Socks. Poor thing is so little and my kids are so crazy and loud that they scared her the whole time. The one exception was when they were still and watching TV. Isaac was so in love that he even started saying "dog" and barking like one.

The real reason Jessica came up though was to help me with a project I've been planning. Living in DC for 6 years in apartments, it never seemed worth it to paint since we'd just have to paint it all back white at the end. So I lived without any color but I've been waiting for the day I could paint a baby nursery. And it's finally here!

So Monday Jessica helped me pick out paint colors and all the stuff we'd need for the job and then we got started: moving furniture, taping, spackling holes, removing outlet covers, etc. The carpets are really gross and old so luckily we didn't even have to worry about a drop cloth.

Here's the first phase of painting: green. I tried to go neutral or semi-neutral so I can switch it to a girl's nursery in a few years (if needed) by just adding some pink curtains or something.

I wanted to do a chair rail so I could have 2 colors together. In some ways it was easier than we thought- we just leveled it by drawing a chalk line on the wall with Ethan's sidewalk chalk. And in other ways it was harder- getting the nails all the way in is rough. So there's no finished pictures since it's still not totally done but here's the idea at least.

We got it all painted and one chair rail up and I think Taylor will be happy to help finish this weekend.

To make Taylor's BAR experience twice as bad, Wednesday was our 6th anniversary. He did get to take the day off of work, but not to do something fun- unless you consider 200 multiple choice questions in 3 hours fun. So once the test was finally over, we left the boys with a babysitter and went out. Joe's Crab Shack provided a fun taste of DC and was great besides the weird Macarena dance the workers performed.

After that we joined his parents for the MLS All-Star Game which was being played in Utah because they finished this brand new stadium last year. The All-Stars played FC Everton from England and it was a really great game.

Sadly, we let them score in the first 10 minutes on a really stupid mistake (our guy tried to cross the ball in- actually IN the goal box so of course their player snagged it and hammered in a goal). After that, the US basically controlled the game. We scored and had 9 or 10 really good shots on goal. Unfortunately their goalie is really good as well.

So when the game ended in a tie, they announced to everyone's surprise that their would be penalty kicks. And when those ended in a 3-3 tie, they started in on individual penalty kicks and tragically they kicked one in and we missed ours. So we ended up losing but it was a fun game and nice to sit through a soccer game without Isaac on our laps and Ethan stepping on our feet.

I'll update later on the room progress. The funny thing is that Taylor came home from work tonight about 5:50 while I was blogging and before he even changed his clothes, he started working on the babies room. He's been playing outside with the scroll saw and the chair rail pieces now for over an hour and is in high heaven to be able to work on some "personal" projects instead of studying for the BAR.