Painting & Cleaning

For the last several years Doug had chosen a project to complete over New Year's Eve weekend.  This year he threw out several ideas, but finally settled on painting the small bathroom on the main level and cleaning out the storage room.  It was an exhausting day for both of us, but I was impressed with how much we got done.  The yellow bathroom had been updated to "banana bread", all of the Christmas had been taken down and everything in the storage room had been stacked and ready to be organized.  I was amazed at how many boxes of Sports Illustrated magazines that Doug really had stored under the stairs in the basement.  He pulled them out and was committed to getting rid of them.  I was surprised by that as well.  Meg also joined in on the day of cleaning.  She took down all of her Christmas and organized her desk.  It was nice having her home for the day.  

Even with the amount of cleaning we did, we still had time to play Ticket to Ride.  That game has been a lot of fun.  We also have been enjoying Cam's Connect Four Shots.  We haven't tried out Brett's Villianous game yet, but plan to soon.  The only dud so far of the Christmas gifts has been the chameleon robot.  The pieces just don't seem to fit together.  We may give up and return it, but Doug said he'd give it one more try first.

Cal spent the afternoon in Fort Wayne with Hannah-Marie.  After all of our talk about "mules" from yesterday's movie, Cal called us to report  that he wouldn't be following Clint Eastwood's career path as  he got his second speeding ticket for driving 70 in a 55.  He was disappointed at first, but realized that it wasn't as much as he thought it would be.  He definitely didn't want to drive after that.

Doug tried a loaded tater tot recipe tonight that was wonderful and also made a new family favorite - pepperoni pinwheels.  Those two along with red lobster biscuits made for a delicious dinner.  Cal left before it was done to watch the Bears game with his friends. We made sure to leave him some of each for lunch tomorrow.  Thankfully, Chicago won, so he wasn't too disappointed about missing the food.