Yeah - I'm Back :)

I realize I haven't posted in a few months (although I have been reading all of your blogs!). One of the reasons for the long silence is the construction on our kitchen that started in JUNE and only finished two weeks ago. This was a job that was supposed to take 6 - 8 weeks. I never would have thought that a kitchen remodel could be such a horrid soul sucking time sink - but ours certainly was...

Well, at least the kitchen is finally 99.9% done (we only have to paint the celing and re-hang a few pictures). Here's what held us up for six months:



Yep, a measly pair of sliding doors. You would think that sliding doors had been done before the year 2008. In fact, you would think that sliding doors are pretty commonplace. Well, if you were our construction company than I guess you would be wrong. Apparently fabricating and installing sliding doors is something akin to inventing the wheel.

I won't bore you with all the details of what went wrong etc...- I'll just say I am mighty glad to have our groceries off the floor and out of our entryway. After the doors were finally in place, Hubby and I installed the shelves.

So here is the finally finished product:





We have a matching closet in our family room that will contain the kids games, puzzles and the like.

The silver lining to this six months of serious hassle and expense is that we have a really kick ass kitchen.

The other big reason I haven't posted is that my Mother has breast cancer. This is her second bout with it but we thought it was over for good since the first time was 15 years ago. I don't plan on posting much about my Mom and her situation. It feels too much like an invasion of her privacy to make all of her trials public by posting alot of detail about them. I'll just say that she is doing really well so far. She has had her surgery and will start the chemo in a few weeks. So this is a long process that our whole family will be going through. If anyone reading this takes a second to send out a positive thought for my Mom I'd really appreciate it!

And since I like to try to end on a good note...here's another photo of my beautiful Clementine. I am so grateful for her snuggles and companionship these days! There's a reason why English Toy Spaniels were historically called "comfort dogs".