Adventures in Painting and 5-Year Old Disposable Cameras

As many of you know, Dan and I are working every spare moment (and in lieu of sleep) to attempt to finish the basement before Ethan's birthday party. This has involved me painting for 6 hours on Monday, 5 hours on Tuesday, and 4 hours today. Thankfully many hours and 5 gallons later, we are nearly done with the second coat of paint and have some final clean-up to do before we unroll the underlayment and begin installation of the laminate. I'll be so happy not to be breathing paint fumes any more and don't plan to do any more painting projects in the near future! One adventure in painting I had yesterday when I was up on a step stool when our power went out. Our basement has no natural lighting (not even egress windows), so it was pitch black, the wall in front of me was wet with paint, there are all sorts of tools and paint cans strewn about the basement floor, and the sump alarm was blaring (while Ethan slept). Needless to say, it was difficult to get off the step ladder without touching the wet wall, to negotiate our obstacle course of tools and random items on the floor, and to get up the stairs. Lesson learned: Keep a flashlight down there in the future!

On a funny note, Dan and I are preparing to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary on August 10th. As some of you may remember, we had disposable cameras on each table at our reception for guests to take pictures with. After the wedding, we had most of them developed, but 6 of them had half or more of the roll yet to be taken. So, we stowed the cameras away in a closet planning to finish them off in the near future. Along came the age of everyone having digital cameras, and we preferred to use our digital camera over the disposable ones, so flash forward 5 years, and we still have these unfinished cameras. Mom refuses to learn how to use a digital camera, so she always uses disposable ones and makes trips to CVS or Walgreens to get them developed often. So, she volunteered to take these cameras in to be developed since it did not appear that we would be finishing them any time soon, if ever. I haven't seen the pictures yet, but Mom said that they are fun to take a look at and reminisce! One table of friends (with Christa, Nate, and Rose) took a picture of the meal that was served in addition to photos of the guests at their table. I'm glad to have that picture too because we never even thought to capture that memory ourselves! ;) I'm really looking forward to seeing all of the pictures that Mom got developed!!