Spring Cleaning

We made quite a bit of progress at the house today. The walls in J.'s room look 100% better. He decided to take his baseball bat to his walls several months ago, so there were dents in the wall all around where his bed was. It looked pretty funny after P. put spackle over them, but before he got a chance to paint. There was also a big hole on another wall...I have no idea what J. did to cause that one. When the landlord came for the pre-termination inspection, P. had filled the hole, but the filler hadn't had a chance to dry, so there was a huge difference in the color, and it was a big spot. Needless to say, the landlord was pretty concerned about whether the spot would be covered after we painted. I went in J.'s room after P. finished painting, though, and it looked great.

A.'s room is a bit of a different story. She didn't cause as much damage to the walls as J. did...well, not the same kind of damage anyway. There is a spot behind her door where she wrote on the wall with a marker. When the wall was painted, the marker bled right through the paint. P. put some of the filler over it, and it still bled through. Aahhhh, these wonderfully porous German walls! It's going to take some work to cover it up, but I know we can get it done.

We had some friends come over to help us today. With their help, we were able to accomplish so much more than we would have otherwise. The guys worked on the walls and we cleaned the kitchen and the floors. We finished all four bedrooms upstairs (except for the one wall in A.'s room) and will just have to do last minute touch-ups now.

It was rainy here today, so the kids were cooped up inside the house while we worked on cleaning and repairing. Of course, all their toys are gone. Fortunately, however, I had picked up a couple of little things for them when we went to pick up paint and stuff for the house. I got them a little tennis set that consists of two plastic rackets and a very soft ball (softer than Nerf). We let them play "tennis" in the living room, which is the biggest room in the house. They hit the ball against the wall. Sometimes they hit each other with it, but at least nobody got hurt.

Well, that pretty much sums up the day we had today. We've decided that we're going to take tomorrow off. We'll be able to get much more done while the kids are in school, plus they won't get so bored. At least today they had a couple other kids to play with, as our friends brought their two kids with them. I'm looking forward to getting some rest tomorrow, though.