It's been quite the whirlwind of a past 2 weeks.  We got our new family room furniture (sofa and chair-and-a-half) from La-Z-Boy delivered on Sunday (July 30).  We went with one of the stock microfiber fabrics in a dark, ruby red (M881208).  To get ready for the delivery, we had to move the futon down to the playroom in the basement.  No big deal, but the doorway leading downstairs is only 30 inches wide, so nothing fits down it.  So I had to take apart the futon frame.  It took me a while to figure out how to do that since we had bought the futon over 6 years ago and it had never been disassembled since.  Well, I finally figured out the least number of bolts to undo, and once i had it apart, one of the pieces was broken.  Of course, the frame has a lifetime guarantee at a store that isn't open on Sunday or Monday and I was taking it apart at 10 PM on Saturday night.  Luckily, the guy at Futon Furniture in Elkridge had the part I needed and I was able to get my futon back together in time to use it Tuesday night.

I needed to use it Tuesday night because the painters showed up to start painting on Tuesday.  We are having our bedroom, upstairs hallway, and foyer painted for the first time since the house was built.  At least that's the way it looks in the hallway.  The reason we are not doing it ourselves is that the ceiling over the steps is a cathedral and there was no way in hell I was going to get on scaffolding on the stairs.  There are just some things that I am willing to pay a professional to do.  The foyer, staircase, and hallway are being painted a green and having a lighter shade ragged over top.  In the bedroom, we went with a light blue called Cloudless and are having the room striped with a darker shade in the same family.  With just one coat on, the change is already amazing and I can't wait for the ladies to finish it completely.  It will be so nice not to see all the kids fingerprints all over the walls.

Wednesday was a very traumatic day in Caden's life.  He had surgery to repair a birth defect called hypospadia.  I won't go into the gory details, but it's a problem that only little boys get and it something that makes all the men who hear about it flinch involuntarily.  Anyway, the surgery went fine, but was longer than we had originally anticipated.  The doctor who performed the surgery, Dr. Ranjeev Matthews, said the surgery went quite well and explained to us all that needed to be done for him post-op.  Without going into all the gory details, Caden was wearing 2 diapers for a week and a half, but came through everything fine.  I think this was the first time any of my children actually work a size 4 diaper.

Since this week was the hottest week of the summer, it was only fitting that the window installers from Vytex showed up on Thursday to install the windows.  It is amazing to see how quickly windows can be replaced by people who know what they are doing.  In all, we had 15 windows and a sliding glass door replaced.  For the price I paid for the windows, I am very happy with them, especially the new sliding glass door and the bay window we had put into the kitchen.  It's great that Jackson can now easily open and close the door to the deck.  The bay window in the kitchen replaced a double window that was already there.  It's amazing how much that opens the space in that area.  They were able to get all the regular windows replaced in about 2 hours, but the bay and door took the rest of the day to do.  They caulked the inside and out and returned on Friday to cap the outside of the windows with new vinyl and put shingles on the bay.  I was able to save some shingles from the recent roof install, so the shingles on the bay match the new roof exactly.  The only complaint I have about the installers is that they didn't clean up as well as I would have liked.  I have found a large number of screws and pieces of vinyl around the yard and am going to have to probably use a lawn vacuum in the fall when the vegetation dies.

And speaking of roofs, I forgot to mention that my roof was replaced about a month ago.  I love the new look of the architectural shingles in a deep charcoal black.  What's really amazing is that 4 guys were able to remove the old shingles, replace my attic fan, and install the new roof all in a single day.  The new attic fan (the old one died) made such an immediate difference upstairs, much more than I would have thought possible.  Although the roofers install the new fan, they didn't hook it up to the electricity.  Since I am pretty comfortable with electrical wiring, I was able to get it running in about 15 minutes, even through all the sweat pouring out of my body.