This week has gone by in a bit of a blur. (Most seem to do that, actually!) We filled out the refi papers saturday, locked our rate in monday, and found out the appraiser would likely come friday or monday. Based on what happened with my mom (same appraiser), he could potentially call friday mornind and say he's on his way. As I probably mentioned in the previous post, if our house appraises high enough (which the mortgage lady thought it would), we would be able to drop our mortgage insurance. I would LOVE to save money that's not benefiting us anyway. Due to this upcoming visit, I decided to do what I could to get our house in quick tip-top shape!

As pictured below, Mikayla's bathroom was hideous. We never use it much except for her baths, so it wasn't a priority yet. It had an old flourescent light in there, the walls were beat up, ugly wood towel bars, etc. We replaced the light in it a few weeks ago (luckily), so I figured a quick coat of paint and it'd be good to go. Well, that turns into tearing off the old border, which turns to repairing the wall where they had a roof leak years ago when they literally let the roof get so bad there were gaping holes (or so the neighbors say). That turns into patching up all the walls, including where the light box used to be. Being messy in painting turned into the painting the vanity as well, and the end product is TONS better! You can see a couple of the new tiles sitting on the floor, I was trying so hard to convince myself there was NO time to tile. I am excited to do so though! Just at a future date...

Last night was horrible though. When the old owners moved out, they decided to hit the wall above the stairs and leave a gaping hole. Never really having the proper ladder to reach it, it got put to the side. Luckily Ian's work happened to have the absolute best ladder ever, so we picked it up at 9:30pm last night to bring home. This was after going to Home Depot to try to buy a new 2-step stair for the door from the family room to the garage. The old owners thought it would be a good idea to leave a leaking swamp cooler line there for years, which rotted out the drywall make the stairs detach from the wall. So, of course Home Depot's smallest step set was 3 steps which was too big for our spot. Of course they can't cut it there either. Of course they're about to close and Mikayla is ticked off at anything that moves because she wants to run around like a crazed lune and NOT sit in the shopping cart. Of course we leave only buying a wall patch and joint compound.

So yeah, we finally get home after 10 with the ladder and everything, put Mikayla to bed, and get to work. Ian took out all the rotted drywall and it actually looks pretty darn good as is! *phew* I went to work patching the gaping hole, and OF COURSE joint compound dries slowly. I pulled out my hair dryer and dried it pretty quickly, thank goodness! Now it's all fixed up and looks great. Oh -- I forgot to mention why this all had to happen last night. We weren't able to fix it tonight, and if the appraiser actually comes tomorrow then it only leaves me to do it in the day. That would be fine, except Ian forgot to tell me the part about the ladder being in use at work during the day. LoL

Today I spent cleaning and getting everything immaculate. Dang, I didn't realize until re-reading this that we really did buy a fixer-upper. Ah well, at least the price was right! Onto less boring things, Mikayla was hilarious today! She found some fabric hair bands and wanted ALL of them in her hair. My mom bought her an easter jewelry set for easter which included clip on earrings. She wanted the earrings and ring on, and wound up looking like if she only had leg warmers she'd be ready to be in the 80s! LoL She's also talking up a storm now, she loves her sentences! Some are:

"I want it, I want it, I want it!" LoL
"I'm jumping on bed"
"Kitty nite nite tent"

Dang, I'm too tired to remember more. She also loves stickers and putting them on papers, as well as people. When we got home tonight she was topless and had stickers on her forehead and check -- she looked like she was ready for war -- it was great! She gets really mad when we go to get in the van and she realizes we're not going "bye bye to play" at the park. She has a huge red-headed temper, and sometimes it's so cute you can't help but laugh. She loves to sing, and has already figured out the art of replacing words to tunes to suit your own needs. There's part of a song that says "uh-oh, the rain is coming!" and she'll replace it with "uh-oh, there's a kitty!" or "uh-oh, there's a daddy!" She can't quite figure out how to say 'fingers' for some reason and calls them 'freakings' instead. She thinks make-up is 'tickles' or 'tickows' rather, and says "mommy's silly" when I put it on. LoL She's so cute!