Thanks Dad and Mom

Well, on August 1st my dad officially retired from his job with Northrup-Grumman. On August 6th, they left their home and headed off on a 2 month tour of the United States. Their first official stop was our home (though they did some site-seeing for a couple of days on their way up). They were here for almost a week and it was so wonderful to have their company. Dad brought his tools up and he did a lot of handyman work around our home. He did a variety of things, from hanging drywall to installing quarter round in the basement. Will enjoyed having his own Bob the Builder in the house! It was nice to have Dad finish up the basement for us. We've been remodeling our basement over the past 6 weeks. Joe and I have torn out the carpet (with some help from Nonnie), painted the entire basement, scraped the cement floor until it was smooth (that was a pain), painted the baseboards, and laid a new floor. We've done all of this work while the kids were sleeping or while there were two of us around. It's been difficult and exhausting to remodel the basement, but we just love how it turned out. Joe did a great job on the floor and the quarter round it just beautiful. Thanks guys!Mom and I had some serious work to do this past week. We have a storage room in our basement and to be honest, it's really easy just to throw things into the storage room to get them out of the way. A couple of years ago, mom and I went through the storage room and organized it. Well, this time we didn't just organize it, we purged! Mom and I went through the entire storage room and we took 3 car loads of things to goodwill. I feel great about the work that we did down there. I still have about 6 tubs of baby stuff that I need to go through and sell at Will's school's consignment sale, but that may come at a later date. We've already sold our baby gear to some friends of ours and at Little Lambs Consignment sale. It was nice to get rid of all of those large items. Mom also helped clean out my kitchen and family room. She did some of that deep cleaning stuff that you can only get to twice a year. It was great to have another helper in the house!Dad and Mom left on Wednesday to head out to Colorado to see Paul, Kristy, Bradley, Matthew and Zachary. After spending almost a week there, they're headed out to Nevada, California, and Oregon to visit with family and friends. The kids loved having their grandma and grandpa here for almost a week. Lauren and Will really got used to having them around and they got pretty sad when they left. Lauren even asked for them the next day. Will's been a little grumpy because his grandma and grandpa have left, but they'll be back soon. My parents are coming back through in September and they're bringing my Grandma with them! We're their last stop on their tour and I'm excited because Dad, Mom, and Grandma will all get to see Will play soccer.