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So, this is our new carpet:

I thought about taking pictures of the new paint, but... well, that didn't work out. All walls and closets and doors, etc have been painted by my long-suffering husband. And they look fantastic, darling.

Now, I do not do well when things are out of place. So, when we got the call Thursday that the carpet installers were on their way to our house, I took the kids and deserted Jared. Temporarily, of course. :) We ate lunch at Ikea [always good for an hour's worth of looking around and trying out all the furniture], then headed down to Thanksgiving Point. According to this scale, I have a goat and her kid's worth of children. Wonder if I could trade... The kids got a pony ride each, and spent a lot of time feeding corn to the chickens and turkeys. We also walked through the gardens- they're sort of closed right now, but members can get in to go walking. We saw 2 or 3 other people there. Being solitary has advantages: my kids got to run and scream and play "BEAR!" because nobody else was around. We headed back home about 5:30, stopping to get sandwiches for dinner. Normally, I'd cook [okay, normally SOMEBODY would cook], but with the table on its side, the kitchen chairs stacked on each other, plus a couch and a desk squeezed into the kitchen, I couldn't even see the counter, much less reach it to prepare anything. We ate outside. The carpet guys got all the carpet laid except for the living room, so after dinner we moved furniture again, leaving that room bare and echoing. Friday, I read a few chapters of history to the kids, and we colored in my bedroom while the carpet guys finished up. Then we straightened and organized and scrubbed things the rest of Friday and all day Saturday.

I feel like I'm living in a Stepford house. This is my new living room- all neat and tidy and dusted :)

This is my craft room. With all that scrapbooking junk out of the way [ha ha], this room is so big and open :)

Sunday my planning meeting was cancelled [hooray!] so I made bread. 4 beautiful, golden, delicious loaves, waiting for me to gobble them all up. Or, ummm, maybe I got a few bites in before I took pictures. So, 3 1/2 loaves waiting for me to gobble them all up :) Warm-because-it's-fresh-out-of-the-oven-homemade bread, drizzled with butter and honey, is my favorite comfort food. And I could totally eat an entire loaf all by myself. I didn't, but I could ;)

This morning, just because I could, I made breakfast cake. I am a baking fool.

Gratitude List:
* New paint and carpet :)
* Neat and tidy house- I know it won't last, but someday ...
* Mmmm, more homemade bread in the freezer, waiting for me.
* Hot cocoa and breakfast cake taste SOOOOOO good when it's snowing outside. Yep, those early-blooming crocuses are now under two [so far] inches of snow. And it's still falling.
* We'll have plenty of water for gardening this summer.
* I have a yard, so I can banish my children from the house instead of killing them. :) :)
* Even with the snow, it is still warm enough to send kids outside without endangering their health.
* Time this morning to read my scriptures.
* All the blessings my Heavenly Father has given me today.
* The Library.
* A working furnace.
* 4WD so I am not stranded at home, even if it does keep snowing.
* A washer and dryer, because doing my laundry by hand and then hanging it up to air dry would really stink in this weather. LOL, so would wearing the same clothing all winter and washing it the following spring ;).