Yesterday evening we had new friends over from our Community Group. David grilled steaks and we fixed potatoes, corn on the cob and salad. Our friend made a delicious dessert that consisted of pound cake, pudding and cappuccino mix or something like that. Coffee flavored wonderfulness. We really enjoyed the chance to get to know this couple and their 9 month old baby. They are also new to town and we're looking forward to seeing more of them.

Today we got up pretty early. We didn't stay up super late, we were in bed by 9:30 or so but the fireworks were popping until 1 this morning. Neither of us slept well but we're pushing through it today. We made Thai coffee and got kolaches for breakfast this morning. We had a coupon buy three, get three free! Perfect. Yesterday we took advantage of the sale at the paint store and the coupon I had been hording. We picked up paint to get the living/dining area done. We're very excited to start. This morning we pulled everything off the walls and dragged the big furniture into the center. Then we started with the prep. Turns out it's going to be a bit of work. There are random holes that were covered up with cable plates and crazy things like that. David's mudding them up so we're going to have wait a day or two to do the actual painting. It's OK though, just the cutting in will take all day. It's going to look beautiful when we're through. EVENTUALLY we want to get bamboo flooring in the living/dining area but we figure it's going to take a little while before the funds are available.

Here are two "before" pictures, we have a few more but I need to get back to the task at hand. I don't think that these pictures accurately portray the poor touch up jobs that had been done with paints of different levels of shine. There are bright shiny patches of white paint in place through out the room. And places where the prior color of the room, lime green, shows through the current variety of white paints. It's all really very lovely but we can't wait to have our chosen colors on the walls!!!