No pain, no gain.

This was a weekend for the record books.

After spending nearly 3 years planning to have the hardwood floors redone in our current home, at last the task has been accomplished...but not without a bit of hardship and sacrifice on many levels.

As with any task with a family this size comes with, so come major obstacles at times that definitely separate the weak from the strong.

We started preparing for this weekend months ago with anticipation of getting the house ready to be put on the rental market. These floors had to be redone, they were unfinished and a huge eye sore, nothing more needs to be said.

Last week was spent getting as much laundry finished and organizing as much as I could to get ready for this event, we needed 2 rooms done and 2 closets, so all the furniture in those rooms had to come out and go...somewhere else. Space in this house is decent, however, with the amount of people we have stashed away plus other things (like furniture) we are like a bunch of sardines. Everything had to go into the front room. Thankfully our LR is pretty big so it wasn't an issue, but it made the logistics of last week a nightmare. To top it all off the kids did not have school Monday, so my week got off to a late start as it was.

When Friday rolled around, I was still working on packing, had the teen to drop off (she was staying in town for my niece's sweet 16, HBD Catie!! ;) ), plus we had everything to move, and snow to shovel.

Speaking of snow, I don't know why it never occurred to me to actually check the weather map, but I didn't . More than likely it's because like most people I listened to how many inches others said we were getting versus actually looking myself. That inevitably was a HUGE mistake because while the snow was still falling here at 5pm when we left, it was melting as soon as it hit the roads, and I hadn't aticipated it doing anything other than what I could see right in front of me. Well, that was a really big mistake! lol We got about an hour south of Toledo and stopped to fuel up after dinner and the exit ramp was a sheet of ice. That was my first clue that maybe this was worse than we thought. About 15-20 minutes down the road, we went from a decent 65 down to 40 mph, and while some people are comfortable driving that speed to get somewhere LOL, I was not, especially with 7 babies in the (mini church bus) van and with the roads getting worse. Eventually that 40 mph became 30 and the roads had snow sticking to them. I insisted we turn around, ...as much as I wanted to see my Dad and friends, I couldn't see us continuing to drive that far with all our kids in the car risking something bad possibly happening. It wasn't like we HAD to travel. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to see my family and friends, but according to my weather.com linkup on my crackberry, the snow in OH wasn't getting any better over the next 2 days and that's 75% of the journey for us. We made the decision to turn back and head home. Once we got closer to Toledo the roads got better again...it was like this huge patch of super bad road between us and Indianapolis. As as sad it was, in the end it ended up being a blessing in disguise and I truly think where God ultimately wanted us.

As we rolled back to town, I called the local holiday inn exp,...no fresh air rooms room left at that inn. Then I called a nice quiet hotel my mom stayed at when she was here last year and sure enough they had 2 rooms side by side for us and a good rate for both for 2 nights. We got there checked in and got everyone settled in (girls in one room, boys in another, except for my tiger cub, he slept with mama ;) ). We went to sleep at about 10:30 or so...well, it wasn't long before my nice night of rest turned into a full blown nightmare. Lettie got up at 12, 12:30, 1:15, 1:45, 2:30...3:30...you get the picture. Every time she would fuss, and I would try and soother her back to sleep, all the while I was thinking it was just the room being different, I adjusted the temp in the room because she felt kind of warm...well by 4am I was about to lose my mind, I felt her and she was HOT. Poor thing, she had only a diaper on and her temp had jumped majorly. Dean was in the room by then trying to help, I was severely losing patience as I had literally had no sleep, and neither had she so she was fussier than I was LOL. We finally got her to go to sleep at 5am, and she slept till 7:30. In the morning I felt like DEATH. Dean had gotten up with her so Cohen and I could sleep a little more, we went down for bkfst (free bkfst = carb city LOL, I never eat food like that seriously but I didn't care). By 9am Dean suggested I take her in to med check. Sure enough, double ear infec :( And The doc ended up giving us something to cover pneumonia as well, seeing as she had that right before xmas (we had H1N1...she had it too and also got the pneumonia with it as well, poor baby!!).

By last night, things were starting to get better, everyone got baths (the kids got to swim with daddy while i took her in, it worked out great!)...they were TIRED lol, thank you God! By 8:30 everyone was in bed and were either out or on there way. I would like to tell you that at this point we had a great restful night and woke up feeling like a million bucks....but that's not what happened rofl!

In a nut shell, all day yesterday we saw young to middle age adults carrying in coolers into the rooms all up and down our hall (which was pretty vacant the night before). This kind of worried me, but I don't like to not give people the benefit of the doubt in situations. Well, as it turned out, by 9pm they were in full fledge "we've been drinking for 4 hours already" mode and were being loud as all get out, slamming doors, screaming, laughing and running up and down the hallways (these were grown adults mind you). I asked them to knock it off once....they rolled their eyes at me lol. The second time I called the front desk, and then stood outside the door waiting for her to show up and lay the smack down. They were smoking in the hallway too, a NON SMOKING hallway *rollingmyeyes*. As i was standing there, this guy comes out and I can hear him trying to coax this female he's speaking with into the room to *stay* with him. After she got smart (read left) he started down the hall toward me and seriously had the nerve to freaking hit on me! I told him that they needed to be quiet because I had already asked once and there were kids in our room, sick, etc. He started mouthing off to me saying it was a *hotel* and I needed to expect that and just get over it. LMBO! Um............yeah, I don't think so, that's what the BAR is for dude. Well after a few seconds of him running his mouth, out steps my commander in chief ;) he had been woken up and had heard this guy talking to me this way and he was NOT happy! He told the guy to quit talking disrespectfully and go back in his room and shut his mouth. This guy had some serious liquid courage running through his veins because he continued to be an *ss right at Dean, I was DYING laughing!! he had to have been seriously drunk off his butt to be that bold and not scared. I kept thinking, does he have any idea how much my hubby can bench press? LMBO!!

He finally went into his room and slammed the door (lipping all the way, lol) The hotel staff lady was finally up there lecturing people about smoking in the non smoking rooms and hall to all the drunkards. I told her I wasn't trying to crash anyone party, they just needed to keep it in their rooms and stop yelling already.

After that we only heard a few door bangs over the next hour or 2, and I finally fell asleep after that. I got roughly 7 hours worth of sleep, not stellar but enough to where I could more than function this morning.

This morning we took our time packing up and playing with the kids, Lettie looked 150% better already. As Dean was going out to get us coffee, he lokced the keys in the van. I could tell he was pretty much over this weekend from h*ll as when he called he said...don't get mad when I tell you this (lol) but I locked the keys in the van. I said, well,...you've been blessed today because I kid you not, the HS told me friday to stick my spare in my purse (!!) :D How's that for God's providence??

So after alllll that, we did arrive home to find beautiful floors in our home,...
take a look!!













We still have quarter round to put back and trim in the rooms to fix, but that will come later this week.


Thanks J-gina for my awesome floors!! They are beautiful and I'm so sad that I only get to live in them for a few months lol...someone else is going to get to enjoy them ;)

So in the end, it was worth the sacrifice I think. Things are coming along quite nicely, this was a huge house rental/move obstacle for us, and now that its over we can focus on the kitchen next which is a decent sized project as well. Dean asked me if I wanted to stay in this house now that the floors look so pretty...ha, not a chance ;)